The universal venality of public trust: When ethical missions are appraised by the market

“ TRADE Trade, for which Money is the Economic medium and Money-terms the Economic language, consists superficially in interchanges of tangible commodities, but essentially in interchanges of human service. ”

“ The currency.—The last essential in perfect freedom of exchange is a satisfactory means of transferring completely and quickly all property right in any article of trade. Exchange of commodity for commodity or service for service is possible to a very limited extent, since the man who wants my horse may have nothing which I want in return, or if he has, the values may be unequal, and one or the other must remain in debt, which means that one of the articles belongs in part to both. ”

“ Yet all commodities—whether in the Wealth class, as a house or food; or the Land class, as a natural building-site, or an ore deposit, or soil fertility, or the sun to the degree that its light and heat are owned through ownership of Land—have Utility, Value and Price. The last of the three is expressed in terms of Money.
Money is the common medium of Trade. Where and when Money is in use, he who wishes to trade a hat for shoes need not hunt for somebody who has shoes but wants a hat instead; all he need do is first to find some one who has shoes and wants Money. ”

“ Mankind cannot live upon Money. It is neither eatable nor wearable. Nor is it shelter. Likewise of Money terms. Money is a secondary Economic factor—a representative of value, whereby the relative desirability16 of commodities is measured and expressed in trade. It is therefore the comprehensive surface-fact of Economics beneath which the basic facts must be sought.
In other phrasing, Money is that secondary category in Economics which comprehends every kind and form of medium for trading commodities in the world-wide process that we descriptively characterize as “mankind making a living.” ”

“ Indeed, by the universal consent of mankind, silver and gold is become the medium of all commerce; and every state, as well as private man, is rich and powerful in proportion as he possesses or can command more or less of this universal commodity, which procures all the rest: All other things are riches only hic & nunc ”

“ By division of Labor and Trade the single individual becomes a vital part of a comprehensive human organism, of a greater man, of the Social or Economic Man—a Man of almost infinite Economic powers.
Those two kinds of Economic energy, making and trading, permeate the multitudinous phenomena of that Productive Process in the course of which Man draws forth Artificial Objects from and upon Natural Resources, for the satisfaction of human desires; or,63 to use the technical Economic terms, in the course of which Labor produces Wealth from and upon Land. ”

“ It is the time in which even the things which until then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought—virtue, love, opinion, science, conscience, &c.—where all at last enter into commerce. It is the period of general corruption; of universal venality, or, to speak in the terms of political economy, the time when everything moral or physical having become a saleable commodity, is conveyed to the market to be appraised at its proper value. ”

“ Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable. The circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out again as a gold-crystal. Not even are the bones of saints, and still less are more delicate res sacrosanctæ extra commercium hominum able to withstand this alchemy. [42] ”

“ In the process, then, of making a living, mankind trades commodities in terms of Money rather than in12 its forms, doing so principally through financial accounts. Peering into the details of those accounts (as professional accountants and other business specialists must often do when examining the particulars of their respective specialties) , however useful this may be within the limits of the specialization, is always futile and often confusing or misleading for purposes of Economic study or investigation as a whole. ”

“ Beneath that surface we first find Trade, for which Money is the medium or the means of expressing relative values and adjusting balances. Trade consists essentially in interchanges of commodities, inclusive of natural resources and of human service. It is not an arbitrary custom or set of customs, but a phenomenon of natural law through which artificial objects are produced to completion and final delivery. But Trade, though lying beneath the Money surface of Economics, is not a basic fact of that science. ”

“ But making money is only a surface fact in Economics. It is but a means to the end. By no possibility8 can it be rationally regarded as the ultimate object. The ultimate object of Economics is earning the living that money will buy. Both the object and the method lie below the surface of money-making. To Economics, making money is somewhat as book-keeping is to a commercial business. It is the surface expression of all underlying Economic phenomena. ”

“ In business accounts, for example, whatever will bring a price to the owner is accounted Wealth, or Capital as a sub-classification of Wealth, whether the object of the price be a building, a domesticated animal, a slave, a vacant building-lot, an unused agricultural area, or an improved and cultivated farm. Some of those items of “wealth” or “capital” do belong, Economically, in the Wealth category, buildings and domesticated animals being among them; but many fall wholly or in part into one or the other of the two other categories, Labor and Land. ”

“ For in our neo-feudalistic era, Land values are intricately confused with Wealth values in corporation stocks and bonds. To the extent that Land values and Wealth values are thus mingled, it is quite impossible to account for many Economic upheavals without more distinctive inventories of property in Trade and more accurate Economic classifications than in business circles or among advanced students of Economics have as yet been reached. ”

“ Since all trade is in reality barter, money being a mere instrument for exchanging things against one another, we will, for simplicity, begin by supposing the international trade to be in form, what it is in reality, an actual trucking of one commodity against another. ”

“ Now, if we consider the result of C—M—C, it comes down to mere interchange of matter, C—C. A commodity has been exchanged for a commodity, a use-value for a use-value, and the transformation of the commodity into money, or the commodity in its form of money, serves merely as a means of effecting this interchange of matter. Money thus appears merely as a medium of exchange of commodities; not as a medium of exchange in general, but as a means of exchange in the sphere of circulation, i. ”

“ In fact the different forms which money assumes in the process of circulation are but crystallized changes of form of the commodities themselves, which in their turn are but concrete expressions of the changing social relations in which commodity owners carry on the interchange of matter with one another. ”

“ Banking is an improvement upon Money pieces in Trade, very much as Money pieces are an improvement upon crude barter. It lifts the Money-piece customs of Trade to book-keeping levels. If everybody were a bank depositor, and every bank were connected with every other by a perfected clearinghouse system, all necessity for Money pieces, except for “pocket cash,” would vanish. ”

“ Money appears then no less as an object than as a source of the passion forPg 177 riches.96 The underlying fact of the matter is that exchange value as such and with it its increase become the final aim. Greed holds the hoard fast by not allowing the money to become a medium of circulation, but the thirst for gold saves the money soul of the hoard by keeping up the lasting affinity of gold for circulation. ”

“ If a hammer will exchange for a chisel in the processes of Trade, they are of equal value—not price, but value. If the Money price of one is two dollars and that of the other is also two25 dollars, they are of equal price as well as equal value. And except as Money may vary in purchasing power through lack of stabilization, or commodities may vary in relative desirability or industrial cost, the price level and the value level tend to rise and fall together. ”

“ And, first, I premise that labour is, as I have already intimated, a commodity, and, as such, an article of trade. If I am right in this notion, then labour must be subject to all the laws and principles of trade, and not to regulation foreign to them, and that may be totally inconsistent with those principles and those laws. When any commodity is carried to market, it is not the necessity of the vender, but the necessity of the purchaser, that raises the price. ”

“ It is determining a question which is connected with our finances, with the circulating medium of the country, and with our agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing interests; and, as such, it cannot but be interesting to every class of our citizens.
The interests and prosperity of the United States are not only intimately, but inseparably, connected with trade. The market of the far [Pg 339] mer depends greatly upon the merchant and the shipper. And the price and demand of every article of produce are in a great degree regulated by the difficulties or facilities of payment. ”

“ These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. ”

“ And thus we are confronted with a new difficulty, that on the one hand commodities must enter the process of exchange as embodiments of universal labor-time, while, on the other hand, this embodiment of the labor-time of individuals as social labor-time is itself a result of the process of exchange.
Every commodity becomes an exchange value by divesting itself of its use-value, or of its original nature. The commodity must therefore assume a double capacity in the process of exchange. ”

“ On the other hand, if you are conscious that you are selling shams, that you are merely trying [135] to get a person to buy that which you know will not be of much value to him, you are immediately shorn of power. The conviction that you are not doing your fellow-man a good turn, that, on the contrary, you are trying to deceive him, trying to palm off on him an article which you would not buy yourself, will make you contemptible in your own eyes and also in the eyes of the man who is shrewd enough to see through you. ”

“ Talk quality. A high-class salesman tries to convert his prospect from a lower to a higher grade, for there is not only greater [258] satisfaction but also larger profit both for seller and buyer in the high grade article.
Did you ever realize that when you are working for another you are really selling yourself to him, that your ability, your education, your personality, your influence, your atmosphere—everything about you is sold for a price? Every time you sell goods you are selling part of yourself, your character, your reputation, what you stand for—it is all included in the sale. ”

“ Don’t ignore questions about competitors, and don’t fail to banish from the customer’s mind all doubts and prejudices, but it is a serious mistake to spend a lot of time talking about competitors’ goods, when you ought to be sticking to the merits of your own. Answer quickly all questions, and then switch back to the excellence of what you are selling. Be so enthusiastic about your own selling points that rivalry will be forgotten. ”

“ Every person who tries to buy an article for less than its proper value, or who [Pg 116] tries to sell it at more than its proper value—every consumer who keeps a tradesman waiting for his money, and every tradesman who bribes a consumer to extravagance by credit, is helping forward, according to his own measure of power, a system of baseless and dishonourable commerce, and forcing his country down into poverty and shame. ”

“ and the civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the community. As knowledge is more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and more general. Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams. ”

“ There was new interest in Tim’s eyes and he drank in Dan Watkins’ words.
“You’re luckier than you know,” added the head copy reader, “for you have behind you a great newspaper organization. Someday, and someday soon, the News will need an aviation editor. Someone who knows the air from A to Z, someone with nerves and brains and foresight, and there isn’t a reason in the world why you shouldn’t fill that editorial chair when the time comes. ”

“ The importance of the post office and post roads on a plan sufficiently liberal and comprehensive, as they respect the expedition, safety, and facility of communication, is increased by their instrumentality in diffusing a knowledge of the laws and proceedings of the Government, which, while it contributes to the security of the people, serves also to guard them against the effects of misrepresentation and misconception. The establishment of additional cross posts, especially to some of the important points in the Western and Northern parts of the Union, can not fail to be of material utility. ”

“ The political leader whose official power depends upon popular confidence may betray the trust. The corporation employing thousands of men and supplying millions of people with some necessary service or commodity may reduce the cost of production only for its own profit. ”

“ It is the easiest thing in the world, as all editors know, to pervert the meaning and give a one-sided impression of a whole speech by simply giving isolated passages from the speech itself, without any qualifying connections. It would hardly be imagined from anything that has appeared here that I had said one word in that lecture in honor of Washington, and yet the lecture itself, as a whole, was decidedly in the interest of the national capital. I am not such a fool as to decry a city in which I have invested my money and made my permanent residence. ”

“ With his regular work and his studies, Tim found the task of gathering and writing the material for the column a real drain on his physical energies.
“Better take things a little easier,” cautioned Dan, but Tim was too much interested in his work and studies to give up anything and he was too conscientious to slight either.
When Tim’s health started to suffer under the burden, Dan took the matter in his own hands and went to the managing editor.
“Tim’s working too hard,” he told Carson. “The boy is too ambitious for his own good and unless you do something he’ll work himself to death. ”

“ It is thus that a trade comes to regard itself as something detached from the community; that a man also views his peculiar trading interest as a first principle, to which everything else must give way. It might, indeed, be easily shewn, that whatever is good for the whole community, must be in the long-run beneficial to each member. He either cannot look far enough for that, or he feels himself unable to dispense with the immediate benefit from that which is bad for the public. ”

“ We are in the age of commerce and the mechanical arts. Material appliances, creature comforts,—stimulants to the senses—now form the great moving power of society. Gain is every where sought after with the utmost avidity; but it is sought not for any lofty object, but on account of the substantial physical comforts with which the possession of riches is attended. Sensuality, disguised under the veil of elegance, refinement, and accomplishment, is making rapid strides amongst us. It does so in all old, wealthy, and long-established communities ”

“ And because the production or obtaining of any commodity involves necessarily the agency of many lives and hands, the merchant becomes in the course of his business the master and governor of large masses of men in a more direct, though less confessed way, than a military officer or pastor ”

“ Take the instinct of industry and ardor of commerce, which are meant to be the support and mutual maintenance of man; let the Devil touch them with avarice, and you shall see the avenues of the exchange choked with corpses that have died of famine.
58. Now observe—I leave you to call this deceiving spirit what you like—or to theorize about it as you like. All that I desire you to recognize is the fact of its being here, and the need of its being fought with. ”

“ In our time, thanks to steam and electricity, the increase of population, and continued peace, the whole world has become one trading community, representing now more, now less abundant opportunities for the investment of money, and the conversion of it into other lucrative commodities. ”

“ Since labor-time is the common measure of gold and commodities, and since gold figures as the measure of value only in so far as all commodities are measured by it, the idea that money makes commodities commensurable, is therefore a mere fiction of the process of circulation.39 It is rather the commensurability of comPg 79modities as incorporated labor-time, that turns gold into money. ”

“ Thus, in the above instance, economists have never perceived that disposition to buy is a wholly moral element in demand: that is to say, when you give a man half-a-crown, it depends on his disposition whether he is rich or poor with it -- whether he will buy disease, ruin, and hatred, or buy health, advancement, and domestic love. And thus the agreeableness or exchange value of every offered commodity depends on production, not merely of the commodity, but of buyers of it ”

“ In an era defined by the rapid flow of commerce and information, it is our free market tradition, our openness, fortified by our commitment to basic security for our citizens, that offers the best chance of prosperity that is both strong and shared. ”

“ Belief, custom, law, patriotism, particularly a network of legal relationships growing out of contracts expressed in terms of the money in question, the policy of the state as to receiving the money for public dues, the influence of a set of customary or legally prescribed prices, which tie the value of [Pg 137] money to a certain extent to the values of goods—factors of this character can add to the value of money, and can, conceivably, even sustain it when the original source of value is gone. Social economic value does not rest on marginal utility. ”

“ Men are in public life as in private, some good, some evil. The elevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the first objects of all true policy. But that form of government, which, neither in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has contrived to throw its affairs into the most trustworthy hands, but has left its whole executory system to be disposed of agreeably to the uncontrolled pleasure of any one man, however excellent or virtuous, is a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but consequentially erroneous in every part of it. ”

“ In the new objects we recognize the old game, the habit of fronting the fact, and not dealing with it at second hand, through the perceptions of somebody else. Nature seems to authorize trade, as soon as you see the natural merchant, who appears not so much a private agent, as her factor and Minister of Commerce. His natural probity combines with his insight into the fabric of society, to put him above tricks, and he communicates to all his own faith, that contracts are of no private interpretation. ”

“ If we have arrived at that stage of progress when every man can be depended upon to perform his whole duty by respecting the rights of others, keeping his contracts and doing only those things which will benefit society, and if the Trust can be depended upon to charge reasonable prices, pay just wages and in all things respect the rights of others, then the word compulsion may be stricken from the political dictionary. ”