THE MORAL LAW
am sure I may take it for granted that no one within reach of my voice, even though that voice be amplified to reach some scores of millions, needs any explanation of the more obvious meaning of the Seventh Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Steal!" In other lands and under a different, civilization, downright theft may have been considered pardonable, or even laudable. Even now, a particularly clever pickpocket, like the one who lifted a watch from a policeman's pocket unobserved, even though the eyes of the policeman, of the judge and of all in the court room were upon him, has a certain renown in the underworld. He would have gladdened the heart of Fagin in Oliver Twist. Also, I suppose, a bank robber who does a job quickly and smoothly and gets away, acquires a certain standing in his own set. They say there is, honor among thieves. I doubt it. But I am sure there is fame among thieves. Jesse James was considered a genius in his line, though under our more exacting contemporary standards he might be called a "piker." In Chicago, or Cicero, or wherever it is that famous racketeers are buried under $25,000 worth of roses, it would seem there are those who consider an assassinated thief a greater hero than Lincoln or Garfield or McKinley.
But putting aside these more or less picturesque perversions of moral opinion, the. sneak-thief, the porch-climber, the robber (train robber, bank robber, highway robber), the thug, the racketeer, the hijacker and all the other members of the hierarchy of thieves are disapproved of by all good citizens. And so we are free to drop all discussion of the cruder forms of theft and to consider some of the subtle and surreptitious violations of the Command, "Thou Shalt Not Steal."
And first a word about transactions on the stock market. I confess that I have no expert knowledge of the tricks of bulls and bears, though I have heard of late a great deal of the wailing and bleating of lambs. Recognizing my limitations, therefore, I shall not attempt to discuss the question as to what is speculation or gambling. The Stock Market is of course a necessity of modern business. When properly conducted, Stock Market operations are as legitimate as those on the cotton or grain or produce exchange, or any other business. But there is a specific danger concerning stocks which I may perhaps be permitted to describe in the words of a recognized authority in ethics, Rev. Thomas Slater, S. J., who writes in a volume entitled "Questions in Moral Theology," as follows:
"When large gains or losses depend on future market prices, there is a very great temptation for all whose fortunes are at stake to take means to influence the market in their own favor. Great financiers,...or combinations of smaller moneyed men have means at their disposal by which they can raise or lower the market price of a commodity to suit their own interest. This process has been reduced to a fine art, and by this art dealers in futures strive to influence the future event in their own favor. This is against the rules whose observance is necessary if betting is to be an honest transaction. It is like backing my horse against yours in a race, and then bribing your jockey to hold your horse, or to drug him when the race becomes due. It is a dishonest trick and against the fundamental laws of the game."
Consequently the men, be they few or many, who operate dishonestly in the stock market, are thieves quite as truly as the pickpocket, the burglar or the bandit.
Recently, as all the world knows, in the crash, or series of successive crashes, in the Stock Market, a vast number of poor people suffered tragically. I shall not venture to enumerate and discuss the varied causes of that catastrophe. But if amongst those causes there was dishonest manipulation of the market by certain powerful and unscrupulous operators, it seems to me that they have committed one of the sins which according to the Scriptures calls to heaven for vengeance, "depriving the laborer of his wages." Those poor people were to all intents laborers and what they lost was their wages.
But I must hurry on. I allow myself, however, one more word for the benefit of simple, honest people. I would like to pass on to them a warning which I first received from an intimate friend who was, so to speak, brought up in Wall Street, being the son of a prominent operator, and for several years himself a stock broker. He used to say with great force, "Don't let poor people speculate. Warn them against gambling. If they cannot go into the street without succumbing to the temptation to speculate, keep them out of Wall Street entirely." I have preached that doctrine to thousands in the past twenty years. I hope now it reaches hundreds of thousands.
So we drop the stock market and come to the business world. I should not be surprised if some one should declare irritably that modern business as a whole is not one bit more honest than stock market speculation. But I have not said that all stock market transactions are dishonest. Nor is all business dishonest. It would be absurd to say so, David the Psalmist said: "All men are liars." But if you read the preceding clause in that psalm you find, "I said in my excess---my anger." So if one says "all men are crooked," I add, "Says you,---in your anger." But we must not be angry when we are trying to solve delicate ethical problems.
Doubtless there is a great deal of dishonesty in business. It is justified by those who indulge in it, with some sweeping phrase such as "Business is business," or "I am not in business for my health," or "Everybody's doing it," just as ten thousand wicked things in warfare were justified with the easy phrase, spoken with a raising of the eyebrows and a shrug of the shoulders, French fashion, "C'est la guerre," which means the same thing as our own English phrase, "All's fair in love and war." Of course that phrase is untrue, and likewise if the phrase, "Business is business," bears with it the connotation that "all's fair in business," it is equally untrue.
There are rules to every game, even in the bloody game of war (though I hope no one will challenge me to say which one of the rules of the game of warfare was observed during the World War) and if business be a game, one must play the game.
Business lies, for example, are immoral and not only immoral but sometimes also unjust. One who tells a business lie simply to persuade the customer to buy, but gives him fair value for his money is a liar indeed, but not a thief. He is bound to repent of his lie and amend his methods, but he is not bound to restitution. But if he lies and at the same time cheats, he commits two sins and is bound to restitution. Now the old simple way of telling a business lie was to buttonhole the customer and hoodwink him with a fairy tale about the value of the goods. The modern way is to reiterate a deceptive slogan in the advertising pages of a newspaper or magazine, or to flash a dubious statement on an electric sign intermittently, until it gets into a man's subconscious self. But a lie is a lie whether it comes out of the mouth, or off the page, or flash from an illuminated sign. A lie is a lie whether it concerns a $4.79 overcoat in a second-hand store in the ghetto, or a $15,000 fur coat in a frightfully swank Fifth Avenue shop. And if to the lie is added fraud, restitution, must be made. Otherwise in the Catholic system, absolution for the sin cannot be obtained.
Again; dishonest business may consist of substitution. A salesman shows a certain grade of goods, gets an order and delivers a cheaper grade; a contractor specifies in his contract a certain weight of pipe for plumbing fixtures, or a certain grade of window glass or wood flooring, or cement, or brick, or stone trimming, or what not, and supplies a lower grade, collecting the price of the grade promised but not provided. I have been told that such substitutions are so common that contractors have been known to stop work rather than be watched, and one owner who had been something of a builder himself, told me that a contractor with whom he had dealings would substitute cheaper grades of building material, as he said, "Under your very eyes with the skill of a Houdini."
These slippery dodges are said to have been particularly prevalent during the war. In the rush and excitement of manufacturing all sorts of material, from blankets and tooth-brushes to gas bombs, tractors, airplanes and sixteen-inch guns, there was fraud such as never could have been in times of peace and in the ordinary dealings of one business man with another.
Here is a particularly wicked kind of dishonesty, and yet one which seems to cause the least compunction---defrauding the Government. There is many a citizen who boasts loudly of his patriotism (by the way, watch closely and judge shrewdly the loud-mouthed patriot) who would presumably blush with shame at the very thought of picking a man's pocket in a crowd, but who picks Uncle Sam's pocket whenever he gets a chance. Please notice that important word "presumably."' "Presumably" he would be ashamed to pick a man's pocket, but I cannot deny myself the suspicion that a man who robs the Government would rob you or me. As a matter of fact, if he robs the Government he does rob you and me.
Now as far as Catholic moral theology is concerned, or for that matter, according to any reputable ethics, a man who steals from the Government commits a sin and is bound to restitution just as surely as if he stole from an individual. Thieving is thieving whether it be from the United States Government, the Standard Oil Company, General Motors, the Pennsylvania Railroad or from John Doe or Richard Roe. Of course, it is a bigger sin to steal five dollars from a poor man who has only five dollars, than to steal five dollars from a multi-millionaire. Nevertheless it will not do to say, "I stole money from a huge corporation that couldn't possibly miss it, and that cannot even know that it is gone." I repeat, sin is sin, theft is theft and where there has been theft, restitution must be made.
And now a hurried word about that specific form of dishonesty called "graft." We may, say of grafting schemes what the devils cast out of the demoniac swine running into the sea said of themselves---"Our name is legion." The forms and ramifications of graft are infinite, and if any one could come and cast out that legion of devils from American life, he would be a Savior indeed.
In public life---political life, particularly---graft is enormously prevalent. But not only public officials,---such persons as policemen (of high rank and low) and politicians (federal, state and municipal) but men in private business, buyers and sellers, builders and contractors and architects, chauffeurs, cooks, club stewards, tradesmen, all manner of agents in all sorts of business receive what is called a "rake-off": not an honest commission, but a secret and illicit compensation. In old-fashioned days it was called bribery, or plain thieving, or dishonorable business. But now that comfortable word, that not-too-evil-sounding word "graft," used sometimes with the adjective "honest," covers a multitude of sins.
But since no man can number the forms of graft any more than he can count the sands of the seashore, let me make the simple outright statement: there is no honest graft. All graft is dishonest. The man who gives or takes graft and soothes his conscience by calling it honest may have recourse to one test to prove his honesty. If he is a politician, let him get up in a public gathering and tell his fellow-citizens the nature of his transactions, or if he is a business man, let him write a letter to the papers signing his name and explaining how he gets his money. Does he answer, "Nonsense! Absurd ! Impossible!" Then he is very probably a thief. The acid test that discloses the difference between the gold of honesty and the base metal of graft is publicity. The hallmark of graft is secrecy. If your fellow-citizens do not know and would not be permitted to know what you make on the side apart from your salary or your recognized income, then you have reason for concealment. If you have reason for concealment you have no right to an easy conscience. You may delude yourself with that dubious reflex principle, "Everybody's doing it," or that other equally dishonest and equally indefensible principle, "If I don't take it, some one else will." But it remains true that graft is theft.
I conclude this part of my talk with a vigorous protest against that particularly wicked lie "Everybody's taking it." That convenient cowardly excuse is an insult on the great majority of American citizens. The majority of men and women are honest. If such a declaration is equivalent to an act of faith in humanity, then let it stand as my act of faith. I am sure it is true, because if all men were graters, business could not be done, and the Government could not stand. The graters take refuge behind a formula which is cruel and unjust because it indicts a whole people. The use of the formula proves nothing except that the thief is also a liar. In that he is like the reprobate who defends himself with the lie that "all men are alike." It is bad enough to be a thief, a grater, a bribe-taker without being a representative of a whole nation and of the human race.