By some carelessness of his own, his fraud was revealed. In an instant, the whole business of mathematics ceased for that lecture room. Mr. Pierce spoke to us, ashy pale, faltering in voice, on Truth. What was all this study for, but the pursuit of Truth, — if, haply, one could attain it? And here was a creature who pretended to such truth. Pretence in the temple of Truth! A Lie as the work of purity! Truth! None of the twenty men who heard that word of pathetic indignation have forgotten it."
"Mr. Jones," said Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, to a lawyer, "I owe a gentleman in Boston sixty pounds on a note, which he has sent to Vermont for collection. I cannot pay it just now, and want you to postpone settlement until I can raise the money."
"All right!" replied Mr. Jones, and when the court next assembled, he arose and said:
"May it please your honor, we deny that this signature is genuine." He knew that this course would require the summoning of witnesses from Boston, which would give Allen all the time he wanted.
"Mr. Jones," shouted Allen, in a voice of thunder, "I did not hire you to come here to lie! This is a true note! I signed it, — I'll swear to it, — and I'll pay it! I want no shuffling. I want time. What I employed you for was to get this matter put over to the next court, not to come here and lie and juggle about it." The lawyer quailed, but the case was put over as Allen wished.
Did you ever think of the blackness of white lies? There are no white lies. They are all black.
Look at the placards in city stores announcing: "Very lowest price," "Discount price," "List price," "Wholesale price," "Half price," "Below cost," "Far below cost of manufacture," "Closing out sale," "Fire sale," "Lowest price ever known," "Reduction sale," "Selling out at cost," "Bankrupt sale," "Assignee's sale," and scores of other lies. Do not go to such stores. If you do, you will be cheated.
"If I hire you," said a Detroit grocer to a boy who had applied for work, "I suppose you will do as I tell you?"
“Yes, sir."
"If I told you to say that the sugar was high grade when it was low, what would you say?"
The boy did not hesitate a moment. "I'd say it," he responded promptly.
"If I told you to say the coffee was pure, when you knew that it had beans in it, what would you say?"
"I'd say it."
"If I told you to say that the butter was fresh, when you knew that it had been in the store for a month, what would you say?"
“I’d say it."
The merchant was nonplussed. "How much will you work for?" he inquired, very seriously.
"One hundred dollars a week," answered the boy, in a business-like tone.
The grocer came near falling from his stool. "One hundred dollars a week?" he repeated, in astonishment.
"With a percentage after the first two weeks," said the boy, coolly. “You see," he went on, "first-class liars come high; and, if you need them in your business, you 've got to pay them the price. Otherwise I'll work for three dollars a week.” So the boy caught the grocer at his own game and got the job at three dollars a week.
And he never sold a pound of sugar, a pound of coffee, a pound of butter that was not all right; and both grocer and boy prospered in their integrity.
“Truth, unfaltering integrity, justice, and honor are never to be departed from,” wrote an eminent American statesman to his son. "Lies come from meanness, low vanity, cowardice, and of a depraved nature, and they always fail of their object and bring the liar into contempt. Without strict integrity, justice, and honor, no one can have continued success in anything, or lasting respect from anybody. Everyone is found out sooner or later, and much sooner than he supposes. Indeed, your true character is sure to be known and sure to be justly appreciated."
A man took a seat in a railway car, says a western periodical, and he piled the seat at his side with bags and parcels. The car became crowded, and a gentleman asked if the other half of the seat was occupied. “Yes, those things belong to a man who has just gone into the smoking-car, and he'll be back presently.” The gentleman, having reason to suspect the truth of this statement, said, "All right, I will sit here till the man comes back." Proceeding to remove the bundles and bags, he placed them on the floor or in the rack. The other man glared, but could say nothing. As a matter of fact, "the man in the smoking-car" was an invention. By and by the owner of the bundles arrived at his destination, and began to gather up his effects. "Excuse me," said the gentleman, "but you said these bundles belonged to a man in the smoking-car. I shall consider it my duty to prevent you from taking them, since by your own statement they don't belong to you." The man became violent and abusive, but dared not lay his hands on the bundles. The conductor was called in. He listened to the statements of both men, and said: "Well, I will take charge of the bundles myself, and take them to the station in the city; and if no one else claims them meanwhile, you" — indicating the man who had once repudiated their ownership — "may have them." Amid the laughter and applause of the passengers, the man got off at the station, just as the train was pulling out, without his luggage. He obtained it the next day, but was well punished for the lie he had told for the sake of monopolizing a seat that did not belong to him.
Suppose we lived in a world where natural things would lie and deceive us, — a world where the mountains, the sea, the forests, and the rivers were all shams; where the earth, which looks rich and fruitful, would mock us by refusing harvests in return for our seed; where what appears like a beautiful landscape would prove only a deceptive mirage; where gravitation could not be depended upon; where the planets would not keep in their orbits; where the atoms were not true to the law written within them. But it is not so, for there is no sham in nature. It is in regard to man alone that we can say: "Vice has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all."
"It is an old saying," says Margaret Sangster, "that one lie obliges the teller of it to speak half a dozen more, and that before he or she knows it, the situation becomes terribly complicated; but this is not all. The possibility of one's telling a falsehood in any circumstances shows that the character is wanting in perfect integrity or wholeness. I have seen a very beautiful diamond which had lost a great deal of its value because the eye of an expert had found in it a slight flaw. A person who deviates from the truth in the slightest degree has thus produced a flaw in his character. It is something like the little speck in fruit which shows the beginning of decay. Having once persuaded yourself to tell what is not true, you will find it easier the second time to deviate from the truth for some fancied reason."
If a youth should start out with a fixed determination that every statement he makes shall be the exact truth; that every promise he makes shall be redeemed to the letter; that every appointment shall be kept with the strictest faithfulness and with full regard for other men's time; if he should hold his reputation as a priceless treasure, feel that the eyes of the world are upon him, that he must not deviate a hair's breadth from the truth and right; if he should take such a stand at the outset, he would, like George Peabody, come to have almost unlimited credit and the confidence of all; and could have developed into noble man-timber.
Soon after his establishment in Philadelphia, Franklin was offered a piece for publication in his newspaper. Being very busy, he begged the gentleman would leave it for consideration. The next day the author called and asked his opinion of it. "Well, sir," replied Franklin, "I am sorry to say I think it highly scurrilous and defamatory. But being at a loss on account of my poverty as to whether to reject it or not, I thought I would put it to this issue: at night, when my work was done, I bought a two-penny loaf, on which I supped heartily, and then, wrapping myself in my great coat, slept very soundly on the floor until morning, when another loaf and mug of water afforded a pleasant breakfast Now, sir, since I can live very comfortably in this manner, why should I prostitute my press to personal hatred or party passion for a more luxurious living?"
In our war for the Union, when General Robert E. Lee was in conversation with one of his officers in regard to a movement of his army, a plain farmer’s boy overheard the general's remark that he had decided to march upon Gettysburg instead of Harrisburg. The boy telegraphed this fact to Governor Curtin. A special engine was sent for the boy. “I would give my right hand,” said the Governor, “to know if this boy tells the truth.” A corporal replied, "Governor, I know that boy; it is impossible for him to lie; there is not a drop of false blood in his veins." In fifteen minutes the Union troops were marching to Gettysburg, where they gained a victory. Character is power. The great thing is to be a man, to have a high purpose, a noble aim, to be dead in earnest, to yearn for the good and the true.
Truth, as between man and man in the conduct of business, will never fail if each party will put his conscience into his dealings.
“Trust that man in nothing,” said Laurence Sterne, "who has not a conscience in everything." Is not a man who is partly honest, wholly dishonest?
"Put that back," said President John Quincy Adams to his son, who had taken a sheet of paper from a pigeonhole to write a letter. "That belongs to the Government. Here is my own stationery at the other end of the desk. I always use it for letters on private business."
This conscientiousness in regard to what many would consider a mere trifle may appear excessive. But the dividing line between vice and virtue is so fine that the boundary is often unconsciously crossed, and it is just as dangerous for a young person to play at hazards with conscience as it is for a child to toy with a dagger, or to play with fire. He who is honest in small things can be trusted in great.
A nickel is so small a sum that many people think they are not defrauding any one or acting dishonestly if they retain the fare which the streetcar conductor has forgotten to take. These people would indignantly resent any imputation of dishonesty, yet they have no hesitation in keeping that to which they know they have not the shadow of a right. They would feel themselves injured and defrauded if they knew that their grocer, in weighing tea, or coffee, or any other commodity, had knowingly deprived them of even the most infinitesimal part of their just weight, or that their milkman had held back for his own benefit but one spoonful of the milk for which they had paid. The virtuous indignation of these people against the fraudulent grocer, milkman, or other tradesman, would be fully justified if they themselves observed the Golden Rule. But, if we are not strictly honest ourselves, have we any right to demand or expect that others will be so? The necessity for absolute integrity in the business world appears from the very nature of the transactions between man and man. The time will never come when men will not have to trust one another in some way. Yet it will always be possible for a man to commit one or two frauds — just as it is now possible for any man to go out with a revolver and kill one or two people whenever he chooses.
“I remember,” says Minot J. Savage, “talking with one of the clearest-headed businessmen in the West I ever knew. He made a claim I was not willing to allow, — that it was honest for him to take advantage of the ignorance of any man with whom he was dealing to get the better end of a bargain. He said that, if he happened to know more than the other man of what was going on in the world, he was justified in taking advantage of the man's ignorance, for he had no one to blame but himself for his ignorance. I question whether that is defensible. Ought we to take advantage of the ignorance, the weakness, the infirmities, the frailties of our fellowmen to leave them worse off than they were before?”
Mark Twain tells us that an impoverished descendant of Audubon, in sore straits, was willing to sell a copy of his great volume on “Birds” for a hundred dollars; it was worth in a market a thousand dollars; the purchaser chuckled over his mean bargain. "How different was Hammond Trumbull," he says. "A lady in the South, in straitened circumstances, wrote him that she had an Eliot's Indian Bible which she would gladly dispose of for a hundred dollars. He wrote to her that, if a perfect copy, it had its market value, one thousand dollars, and he would sell it to the British Museum for that sum. It proved to be such a copy, and she got her thousand dollars in gold. That is the honorable dealing which exalts humanity."
The very least that can be said of a man who cheats his neighbor, through his neighbor's ignorance, is that his character is "out of plumb." We are to use the plumb-line in character-building.
A golden rule for every businessman is this: "Put yourself in your customer's place." I have read a curious story of one. When Philippe Wurtz began to do business for himself it is said he used to kneel and pray over his account book that he might make no entry there that the eye of God would not approve.
Honest money-getting is a timely topic in our modern world. The principle of all right exchange is equivalence, the quid pro quo as the common phrase is. In all honest trade, for every good received, an equivalent good is rendered. In every legitimate bargain both the persons interested are satisfied, and permanently satisfied; each gets what he wants.
Two farmers in Virginia exchanged horses, the condition being that, at the end of a week, the one who thought he had the best bargain should bring the other two bushels of wheat. One week later they met halfway between the two towns each with a bag of wheat. Each thought he had the best bargain. If everyone inclined to do a dishonest deed should "put himself in the place" of the other man, and "love him as himself," he would not do it. That is a development of Christianity yet to come.
"No business transaction is honest," says Lyman Abbott, “unless it has for its object the well-being of both parties.”
Nathan Straus, the great New York merchant, when asked what had contributed most to his remarkable career, said: "I always looked out for the man at the other end of the bargain."
What a lesson these words contain for the young man of today who thinks that long-headedness, shrewdness, cunning, and sharpness are the only success-qualities worth cultivating!
Mr. Straus says that if he got a bad bargain himself, he could stand it, even if his losses were heavy, but that he could never afford to have the man who dealt with him get a bad bargain. He felt that his own loss, however great, might possibly be repaired; but that if a man who had dealings with him should lose, or be deceived thereby, nothing could ever compensate him (Mr. Straus) for this, as his character would be permanently injured.
The history of the leading business establishments in this country shows that the men who built them up always looked out for “the man at the other end of the bargain.”
One of the most successful grocers in America says he has made it a rule never to have a dissatisfied customer, if it is possible to avoid it, for he feels that such a customer would be a perpetual enemy to his house. Besides, he says, it injures his self-respect to know that any one reasonably lacks confidence in him, because honesty was the foundation stone on which his business was built.
Young men who are in too great a hurry to get rich, who want to build up a successful business in a year or two, without any apprenticeship to the drudgery of details, have their thoughts so selfishly centered on their own aggrandizement that they are very apt to forget "the man at the other end of the bargain."
"Why did you not sell her something?" asked the proprietor as a lady went out of a dry-goods store in Boston without purchasing. "Because," replied the clerk, "she asked for Middlesex, and we did not have it." "Why did you not show her the next pile, and tell her that was Middlesex?" "Because it was not, sir," said the clerk. "You are too mighty particular for me," exclaimed the proprietor. "Very well," said the boy, "if I must tell a lie to keep my place, I will go." The honest clerk became a wealthy, respected merchant in the West.
George Peabody once left a grocery store where he was employed because they sold cigars, declaring he would not sell any man an article which would do him harm.
There is nothing crueller than the course taken by some employers, which is a constant temptation to employees to be dishonest. Justice Crane, of New York, recently induced an employer to withdraw a charge of theft made against a young man who had stolen an article of small value, and pointed out that the young man's wages — five dollars a week — were a provocation for him to steal. The magistrate thus cited his own experience as a struggling youth in New York City:
"I had to get along on two dollars a week the best way I could. My employers paid no more attention to me than if I had been a dog. I knew that my services were worth at least fifty dollars a week to them, and they paid me two dollars. There were days when I did not eat at all. There was one day — and I shall never forget it — when I was handed two thousand five hundred dollars in cash for my firm when I did not have the price of a meal all day. I confess that, upon that day, only the knowledge that I had a mother who believed in my absolute honesty restrained me from stealing. The firm was one of the largest and most influential in this city. I was pretty near the rock upon which this youth before us foundered, you see."
There is a lesson for every employer in this statement.
To many a man, and sometimes to a youth, there comes the opportunity to choose between honorable competence and tainted wealth. This is especially true in our large cities, and it is one of the great temptations of our luxurious life. If we could only be content to live in a simple way, as our ancestors did, and as these in the country do, able to look the world in the face because we owe no man a dollar, then there would be less stealing at the till and thieving at the safe. The young man who starts out, willing to be poor and honorable, holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success.
A Federal colonel, when Vicksburg was taken, says a southern newspaper, had strict orders not to let a bag of cotton go out of the lines. In a short time he had a visit from representatives of some northern cotton mills, and a hint of live thousand dollars was suggested if he would be blind for a time. He cursed the men and ordered them out of his lines, saying: “Do you attempt to bribe me? Leave or I will have you shot.” His integrity asserted itself. In a short time he had another visit from those who wanted cotton and a hint of ten thousand dollars suggested. They were cursed and ordered out of the lines. In time a third party visited him and wanted cotton and a hint of twenty thousand was offered. He cursed and ordered them out of the lines. His integrity stood by him so far; but he began to feel troubled in mind. He went to his commanding general and told him of the orders he had received and the temptations offered. Said he: “I want to resign and go home; it is getting most too warm for me. I can stand some things, but not everything. Human nature has its limits, and I am afraid I may find my limit. See here, I was first offered five thousand dollars, then ten, then twenty, and I have stood all that, but the next one who may come along may offer me fifty thousand dollars and I am afraid human nature and self-interest will not be able to stand it. I want to resign and go home before I lose my honor.” He saw that if he put his honor and pocketbook in front of him, his pocketbook would win and his honor lose. So he thought it best to get out of the way of opportunity and temptation. Cotton was bringing nearly a dollar per pound at the time.
"Character before wealth," was the motto of Amos Lawrence, who had inscribed on his pocketbook, "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
Let me, at this point, go back a moment to the statement I made that the time will never come when men will not have to trust one another in something. It is impossible to do this except upon a common basis.
"There is a point," said Minot J. Savage to his congregation one Sunday, "that I need to call your attention to for a passing moment. I have had occasion to remind you several times during the past years of the fact that this civilized world of ours is only a little way at any time from destitution. If there were no production, if nothing were added to the stock of the world, the world would wear out and eat up all that there is in the course of two or three years, and so perish. Here, then, is this stock of general good; and it seems to me a fundamental principle of business honesty that any man who proposes to take out of this accumulated wealth of the world the tiniest particle for his own use must see to it that he adds something to the general welfare that shall be an equivalent, at least. If he leaves it no richer or if he takes what he has no right to, he becomes, no matter what his position, what we mean by a thief. That is what theft means. Rendering some equivalent, serving the world, adding to its legitimate amusement of welfare in some way, is the only honest condition for any man, woman, or child. Then, when you engage in the world's business, see to it that it is honest, that there is equal exchange. These are the principles that underlie honesty in business.
"Honesty in business, political honesty, religious honesty, honesty in every department of life, — these should be our ideals. We should build not only our houses, but build our social order, our business, our political order, our religious structures of sound materials rightly related to each other, sanely and truly adjusted, so that they will stand, so that they will become a part of the divine order. If we do this, we not only achieve the happiness of other people, the welfare of other people, but, in the long run, we of necessity attain our own happiness and our own welfare, for we cannot possibly live alone. We are dependent every moment of our lives for not only happiness, for not only wealth, but for comfort, for health, for peace upon the general condition of the world in which we are units, of which we are parts. For the sake, then, not only of other people, but also for our own sake, and that we may join hands with God and become a part of His divine order and may help on the perfection of that order which means the kingdom of God, — for the sake of all these things, let us walk honestly."
Not long since, soon after one of the largest defalcations known in the history of American banking, several bank presidents and capitalists in New York made the statement that the only practical protection that the people have for their money is common honesty. All the schemes devised cannot keep criminals from taking what does not belong to them. The best banks in the country have been robbed by the employees who were most trusted. The fact that the wrongdoers had been speculating or living beyond their means came out afterwards, but proved little as to the carefulness of the institution in taking care of the money intrusted to it.
After all is said and done, after every plan has been put in operation, the final safety is common honesty. It is that way in other departments and enterprises of life. Schemes may be invented, bonds may be taken, and efforts may be made to bring honest results, but in the end common honesty is depended upon for protection and for security.
If, therefore, there is anything in your own life which is in the slightest degree at variance with common honesty, you are to that extent an enemy of well-established society, and if all men were like you no society would be possible.
There are men who choose honesty as a soul companion. They live in it, with it, by it. They embody it in their actions and lives. Their words speak it. Their faces beam it. Their actions proclaim it. These are the men who uphold civilization.
“Down on School Street the other day,” says a Boston pastor, “a poor Italian took a two and a half dollar gold piece in mistake for a cent. What did he do? Did he hide it away? No. He wrapped it up in a piece of paper and put it where he could give it to the man who had made the mistake, and when he came for it there it was waiting. Was it a trifle? Any of us would trade with that man hereafter, because this tells the story of character, the stuff of which a man is made. When you can break off a little fragment of a man's character, and find it firm and solid, you feel that if he is made of material like that he can be trusted. You have confidence in that kind of stuff and you can build on him. These may be trifles but they make character.”
Apart from all question of sentiment there is no doubt of the cash value of business integrity. If civilization IS an advantage, in a mercantile point of view, the common honesty which makes civilization possible is an advantage; that is to say, common honesty has a cash value, and a reputation for common honesty is necessary if you expect to succeed in business.
Mayor Hart, of Boston, recently said that in fifty years he has seen the outworking of honesty and fair dealing, that ninety per cent of the successful men have been distinguished for their business integrity, and that those who have taken a counter-course have perished by the way. "Honesty," said he, "is a natural law and the violation of it means retribution, a day of reckoning and punishment.” As unerring as the law of gravitation when honesty is violated, it is followed by retribution. The consequences cannot be avoided. They may be deferred but justice must always be faced in the end. A merchant has something that somebody wants, and in return for it he wants that which somebody has. When the trade is effected, if it has been done honestly, both will profit. In the affairs of capital and labor, honesty on both sides must prove advantageous to both. Capital cannot prosper if in its dealings with labor the most rigid honesty is not adhered to; and the rule works the other way as well, just as the experience of ninety per cent of the successful men of the community shows that it works in all affairs of life.
Integrity is the ground of mutual confidence. Upon this ground a youth advances with sure steps. "He is," says Bulwer Lytton, "already of consequence in the world, when it is known that he can be implicitly relied upon."
When Ingram, of the “Illustrated London News,” was a young newsdealer, he once walked ten miles to deliver a single paper, rather than disappoint a customer. He could be depended upon, and nothing could hinder him from pushing into the front rank of newspaper men.
What a lesson in honesty is the story of Meyer Anselm, the founder of the great fortune of the Rothschilds, who lived, at the close of the eighteenth century, in that little corner of Frankfort known as Jews' Lane, where his fellow countrymen were terribly persecuted. Even after Napoleon battered down the gates of the city that had locked them in at night and on holidays and Sundays, they were still required to retire at a certain hour, under penalty of death j and they were hounded in a manner which seemed designed to drive them to the lowest condition of life and far from the practice of honest dealings. Anselm, proving an exception to the ordinary ruling character of the Jews around him, established himself in humble quarters, over which he hung a red shield, giving to his family the name of "Rothschild," the German for “red shield." There he conducted the business of a money lender.
When Landgrave William of Hesse-Cassel was driven from his estates by Napoleon, he gathered together five millions of silver, and left it with Anselm, not daring to hope for the possibility of getting it back, for he thought the invaders would surely capture it The Jew, however, was very shrewd, and, after hiding it in his garden till the danger from the enemy was over, he put it at such interest that, on William's return, Anselm was able to send by his eldest son, to the Landgrave's great surprise, a report that the sum loaned, with the usual interest, was at his disposal.
In all the generations of the family, not one member, it is said, has brought a stain upon its business integrity. More than all else, this reputation for sterling honesty is the foundation of the colossal fortune of the Rothschilds.
When A. T. Stewart went into business in New York he determined that the truth should always be told over his counters, whatever the consequences. No clerk was allowed to misrepresent or to cover up a defect. He once asked the opinion of an employee in regard to a large purchase of goods of novel patterns, and was told that the designs were inferior, and some of them in very bad taste. The young man was just pointing out the defects of one particular style, of which he held a sample in his hands, when a large customer from an interior city came up and asked:
“Have you anything new and first-class to show me today?”
The young salesman replied promptly, "Yes, sir; we 've just brought in something that will suit you to a dot."
Throwing across his arm the very piece he had criticised a moment before, he expatiated upon its beauty so earnestly that a large sale was the result. Mr. Stewart, who had listened in wondering silence, here interrupted, warning the customer to give the goods further and more careful examination, and telling the young man to call upon the cashier for any wages due him, as his final account would be made up at once.
Stewart's integrity paid, and paid in cash. "In building up a business the grandest advertisement ever written is poor compared with a reputation for keeping honest, goods and telling the exact truth about them. Found your business on truth, and the superstructure will be a success."
Wedgwood, the potter, although he rose from a workman, was never satisfied till he had done his best. He would tolerate no inferior work. If it did not come up to his idea of what it should be, he would break the vessel, and throw it away, saying, "That won't do for Josiah Wedgwood." Character makes reputation; and the Wedgwood pottery, with Wedgwood's honesty behind it, won world-wide celebrity.
When Lincoln became a lawyer, all clients knew that they would win if the case was a fair one; and, if not, that it was a waste of time to take it to him. After listening some time, with his eyes on the ceiling, one day to a would-be client's statement, he swung suddenly round in his chair and exclaimed:
"Well, you have a pretty good case in technical law, but a pretty bad one in equity and justice. You'll have to get some other fellow to win this case for you. I couldn't do it. All the time, while standing talking to that jury, I 'd be thinking, ' Lincoln, you 're a liar,' and I believe I should forget myself and say it out loud."
After giving considerable time to a case in which he had received from a lady a retainer of two hundred dollars, he returned the money, saying: “Madam, you have not a peg to hang your case on." "But you have earned that money," said the lady. "No, no," replied Lincoln, "that would not be right. I can't take pay for doing my duty."
He refused to argue a case when he learned that his client had deceived him by representing that his cause was just. His partner, however, took the case, and won it, receiving a fee of nine hundred dollars, of which Lincoln refused to take his half.
His integrity came at length to be bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh; and no one could meet him or hear him without knowing he was honest. “I won't hear him," exclaimed a man, as he left the hustings where Lincoln was speaking in 1856, "for I don't like a man that makes me believe in him in spite of myself."
When an attempt was made to secure the passage of an ordinance of repudiation in Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas lay ill at a hotel in Springfield. He asked to be carried to the convention; and while lying upon his mattress, wrote as a substitute for the repudiation bill: “Resolved, That Illinois will be honest, although she never pays a cent.”
It was adopted, and was the deathblow to repudiation, not only in Illinois but also in all the other States. The credit and prosperity of the whole nation rose at once.
In 1837, after George Peabody moved to London, there came a commercial crisis in the United States. Many banks suspended specie payments. Many mercantile houses went to the wall, and thousands more were in great distress. Edward Everett said, "The great sympathetic nerve of the commercial world, credit, as far as the United States were concerned, was for the time paralyzed." Probably not a half-dozen men in Europe would have been listened to for a moment in the Bank of England upon the subject of American securities, but George Peabody was one of them. His name was already a tower of strength in the commercial world. In those dark, dark days his integrity stood four-square in every business panic. Peabody retrieved the credit of the State of Maryland, and, it might almost be said, of the United States. His character was the magic wand which in many a case changed almost worthless paper into gold. Merchants on both sides of the Atlantic procured large advances from him, even before the goods consigned to him had been sold.
When Walter Scott's publisher and printer failed and six hundred thousand dollars of debt stared them in the face, friends came forward and offered to raise money enough to allow him to arrange with his creditors. “No,” said he proudly, “this right hand shall work it all off; if we lose everything else, we will at least keep our honor unblemished.” What a grand picture of manliness, of integrity in this noble man, working like a dray-horse to cancel that great debt, throwing off at white heat the "Life of Napoleon," “Woodstock," “The Tales of a Grandfather," articles for the "Quarterly," and so on, all written in the midst of great sorrow, pain, and ruin. "I could not have slept soundly," he writes, “as I now can under the comfortable impression of receiving the thanks of my creditors and the conscious feeling of discharging my duty as a man of honesty. I see before me a long, tedious, and dark path, but it leads to stainless reputation. If I die in the harness, as is very likely, I shall die with honor.”
Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), one of the world's best known and best loved men, has added a new chapter to the story of honesty between man and man, by making one more “tramp abroad” to pay his debts. He went around the world this time to satisfy his conscience. The great humorist's example has afforded an inspirational example to all debt-ridden countrymen. At first, we simply laughed at Twain's jokes. Then we discovered that they are literature. Next, we learned, against our will, that the humorist is something else, — a serious soul, who does not love the laughter he provokes. At length, the humorist turns out to be one of the most striking examples of the honesty of his country, a quality that the world has tried to deny to all jokers. Here is a man who can exemplify his country's gift of humor and its honor at the same time.
Possibly the greatest test of honesty is found in the rare instances of paying debts long after they have been outlawed. Considerations of policy influence most men to be honest, while conscience pricks some into restoring what has been wrongfully withheld. But where a man has been released from his debts, and then volunteers to pay them, the example is inspiring.
Bolton Hall, an attorney and tax reformer, a son of the celebrated divine. Dr. John Hall, recently paid off one hundred thousand dollars of released debt, impelled solely by honor.
Is not business integrity a valuable asset? Were the thousands of businessmen, who lost every dollar they had in the Chicago fire, enabled to go into business again at once, some into wholesale business, without money? Their record for honesty became their bank account. The commercial agencies said they were square men; that they had always paid one hundred cents on a dollar; that they had paid promptly, and that they were industrious and dealt honorably with all men. They drew on their character. Character was the coin which enabled penniless men to buy thousands of dollars' worth of goods. Their integrity did not burn up with their stores. The best part of them was beyond the roach of fire and could not be burned.
Samuel L. Clemens
(Mark Twain)