536 
Commercial  Ethics. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
L     August,  19 19. 
creed  of  ethical  value  to  which  all  our  business  interests  may  ad- 
here ?  It  seems  to  me  that  we  ought  to  have  a  standard,  a  touch- 
stone by  which  our  mutual  trade  conduct  is  measured  and  guided. 
The  home,  the  church,  and  the  state  acknowledge,  each  for  itself,  a 
platform  of  moral  declaration  by  which  it  appeals  for  support  to 
the  peoples  of  the  world.  In  different  lands  the  articles  of  faith 
vary,  but  they  never  deviate  from  the  supreme  purpose  of  incul- 
cating a  common  morality  in  accordance  with  the  best  thought  of 
the  land.  The  great  institution  which  we  call  business  deserves  such 
a  creed,  so  that  men  north  and  south  may  acknowledge  it,  just  as 
most  of  us  acknowledge  allegiance  to  the  Ten  Commandments  of 
Moses,  a  creed  to  which  the  guardians  of  economic  integrity — and 
every  honest  business  man  is  such  a  guardian — to  which  he  may 
point  and  say,  "  You  may  count  upon  me  to  follow  that  ideal  so  far 
as  it  is  humanly  possible."  It  would  then  be  possible  for  us  to  hold 
up  any  phase  of  business  conduct  to  the  creed  and  to  determine  how 
far  it  followed  the  ideal  or  departed  from  it.  It  would  mean  that 
in  the  very  beginning  of  a  transaction  the  several  parties  involved 
would  accept  the  guiding  principles  in  which  they  could  concur 
without  debate  and  thereby  clear  the  ground  of  any  basic  misunder- 
standing before  actual  trade  ensued.  It  would  mean  the  same  unity 
of  spirit  and  purpose  that  actuates  all  the  members  of  a  church  or 
of  a  political  party.  It  would  satisfy  the  intense  longing  of  the 
honest  and  capable  business  men  within  the  realm  of  the  Pan- 
American  Union  to  know  each  other  better  so  that  coordinated 
business  conduct  is  made  easy  and  pleasant. 
Needless  to  say,  the  adoption  of  such  a  creed  would  automatically 
exclude  from  our  confidence  those  individuals  who  could  not  or 
would  not  subscribe  to  its  articles. 
Without  doubt  there  exists  in  the  minds  of  most  good  business 
men  a  list  of  non-ethical  practices  which  are  known  to  commerce 
but  are  abominated.  These  frequently  take  the  form  of  prohibitions 
expressed  in  negative  terms,  such  as  a  resolution  that  we  will  not 
attempt  to  ruin  another  man's  market  by  the  process  of  selling  goods 
below  cost  next  door  to  our  competitor's  best  customer  for  the  sole 
purpose  of  annihilating  that  competitor  and  his  customer  at  any 
cost.  Likewise,  no  good  management  will  throw  a  hard-pressed 
dealer  into  bankruptcy  for  the  purpose  of  stealing  his  business. 
Neither  will  a  good  management  secretly  bribe  a  customer's  pur- 
chasing agent  to  take  goods  of  inferior  quality  at  high  prices.  No 
