Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  \ 
August,  1919-  -* 
Commercial  Ethics. 
537 
good  management  should  deliberately  hire  away  the  valuable  em- 
ployees of  another  concern  for  the  purpose  of  crippling  it ;  this  is 
an  evil  which  is  too  prevalent  now  and  would  be  abolished  if  there 
could  be  an  agreement  on  its  unmoral  character.  No  good  manage- 
ment thinks  it  permissible  to  adulterate  the  goods  of  a  competitor 
and  then  to  sell  as  of  representative  value  in  order  to  damn  the 
competitor  in  the  eyes  of  his  regular  trade.  Even  the  practice  of 
selling  second  grades  or  so-called  job  lots  at  properly  reduced  prices 
may  be  considered  justifiable  only  when  the  goods  are  indelibly 
marked  for  recognition  as  to  second  quality  by  the  consumer. 
There  is  no  need  to  recite  the  entire  list  of  tricky  practices  which 
the  high-minded  commercial  men  of  North  and  South  America 
condemn  as  individuals.  These,  however,  might  be  carefully  re- 
hearsed and  written  down  and  by  a  process  of  studious  analysis 
reduced  to  several  fundamental  prohibitions  in  principles  on  which 
Pan-American  agreement  could  be  expected.  I  would,  however,  be 
in  favor  of  an  explicit  and  detailed  exhibit  of  those  practices  as  the 
first  step  in  formulation  of  the  creed,  so  that  the  underlying  prin- 
ciples would  be  thoroughly  apprehended  by  those  people  who  need 
daily  direction  in  the  same  way  that  the  great  moralist  Moses  gave 
it  to  them. 
Practically  all  instances  of  suspicion  directed  against  a  customer 
or  competitor  as  to  his.  motives  would  completely  disappear  if  we 
knew  that  he  had  pledged  himself  to  a  code  that  we  ourselves 
support. 
Further,  let  me  say  that  business  should  explain  to  the  world  the 
irresistible  economic  laws  on  which  it  is  founded  ;•  it  should  en- 
courage and  advertise  the  superb  morality  of  its  directing  heads ;  it 
should  formulate  and  profess  a  creed  appropriate  to  the  commercial 
idealism  of  the  day,  and  it  might,  with  great  profit,  define  a  code  of 
business  honor  which  good  business  everywhere  would  gladly  em- 
brace for  its  own  protection. 
Business  Integrity  to  Replace  Credits  Destroyed  by  War. 
At  this  particular  juncture  of  world  affairs,  when  we  may  count 
the  loss  by  war  of  $250,000,000,000  worth  of  accumulated  credit, 
representing  the  earnings  of  millions  of  people  during  the  last  cen- 
tury, we  must  look  forward  to  commercial  operations  based  on 
future  earning  capacity.    The  credits  and  the  negotiable  values 
