OCCUPATIONAL TYPES 331
tion may be thoroughly solid and reliable, honest to the core, when so much could not be said of the personal character and conduct of the several share-holders. Obviously this can hardly be the case before the business has been thor oughly differentiated from the personality of the business man. The moral character of the owner of an individual business is necessarily reflected in large measure in the moral character of the business.
But it is also true and this is of far greater signifi cance that the business may be conducted according to ethical principles far lower than those which control the private and personal life of the business man. Hence we may frequently observe the anomaly of a corporation com posed of upright and benevolent individuals coolly adopting and ruthlessly prosecuting a business policy which overrides all righteousness as well as benevolence. And the business man does not seem to realize that he is living according to wholly inconsistent standards of conduct. The notion seems to have grown up that business has a code of its own, dif ferent from the ethics of personal relations ; and the notion has developed in clearness with the growth of corporate as distinguished from individual enterprise. Out of these con ditions arise some of the most serious ethical and social problems of our time. " Business is business " this verb ally self-evident but morally questionable proposition is only a euphemistic form in which business asserts its independ ence of the accepted standards of personal ethics. This is not the place to attempt the solution of the problem but it is far-reaching in its moral import, and most emphatically challenges the attention of the minister.
In his personal disposition and action the business man is usually kindly and generous. In former days, after the business class had attained to a position of thorough respect ability but before the rise of the capitalistic economy, the standards that regulated personal conduct were recognized as obligatory in business also, though it is doubtful if kindness and consideration for others were so much em-
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