coal trade bulletin - Clpdigital.org

known a State, or even a neighborhood, where
the newspapers were not really friendly to its
industries nor one where there was a disposition
to be unfair if they were treated with the courtesy
and consideration common between men of character
and standing.
While the newspaper is an important factor in
recording public sentiment about industry, other
elements are still more vital to its making or
creation. Its sources lie in the men engaged in
the organization ancl conduct of business in all
its ramifications. If they realize they
HAVE OTHER DUTIES
than the mining and the selling of coal; or Unbuilding
and the running of railroads; or the
cutting of lumber; or the management of factories;
or the growing of crops; then they will
so form and modify among themselves the feeling
about industry that the resulting sentiment must
be friendly. If they are sure that they understand
each other and the motives and principles
that move them there is not likely to be much
question of opposition to what they do or want.
Morally, they are guided by precepts and examples
which have created precedents from
which there is no escape because without these
they could not long remain in business at all,
but it is as desirable as it is necessary that the
rigidity of these principles shall be constantly
enforced.
Another thing both desirable and necessary in
the creation and maintenance of a wholesome
public sentiment, based upon knowledge, is that
the men of a given area, engaged in various
undertakings of importance to all should inform
themselves upon the other callings or branches of
business carried on within the scope of their
influence. In reality, the most vital feature in
the formation of an instructed public sentiment
is that men engaged in the varied industries of
the world shall get an adequate idea of what
ancl how those in other occupations may be
thinking about the large questions that are of interest
or important to all. The
SCENES SO SHIFT
that, in due course, something like a general
understanding about many things may result and
thus cure prejudice and narrowness.
If the farmers of your State could really know
the other commanding industries around them
upon which their own prosperity depends, different
as they are, in all respects from their own,
and thus supplement the study of each by all,
it would be impossible that serious misconceptions
should arise or that the men engaged in one
industry should permit themselves to do an injustice
to those engaged in another. It would
then be possible to resist strike legislation or
THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN. 39
proposed systems and methods of taxation or assessment
known to be unjust, or the measures
proposed in the interest of a class, because it
would be clearly understood by all concerned that
the cost which one was asked to pay would, in
the end, have to be met by all. Such knowledge
would promote a more careful study of the incidence
of laws and show how difficult it is, even
to impossibility, to lay upon one industry a burden
which is not finally distributed over all.
I was interested, recently, in the course of my
reading, to come across an expression in a letter
of Florence Nightingale to Sir William Wilson
Hunter in which she said:
"We should always place on record what we
expect to accomplish by our acts of Parliament
so that every measure should not be an experiment
but an experience."
How fortunate we should be, as a people, if,
in all the relations which
OUSINESS HOI.US TO THE LAW
and its administration, we could command the
results of experience rather than be subjected to
the peril to which every ignorant agitator or
legislator invites us when he proposes some experiment—many
times one already tried with
disaster as its only visible result.
It must not be forgotten that the punishment
incident to economic fallacies and blunders fall
ultimately upon industry. It cannot escape payment
of the bills when they are finally made up.
If a President gets into a rage and indulges
himself as a madman; if a Cabinet officer looks
out for himself, leaving the country to suffer for
his ignorance or indifference to its interests; if
now one party and then another attaches itself
to discredited doctrines—in every ease industry
suffers and pays. One of the most interesting questions
that we can ask ourselves—and as partisans
none of us can be exempt from responsibility—is
when shall we tire of thetask we have so often
set for ourselves, of rewarding and honoring men
for the mischief they have done or that we know
they will do? If, as the natural effect of such
confidence, there conies a great business catastrophe
in which thousands of men are thrown
out of employment, industry must bear the burden
and it seldom falls upon the men who have
made or precipitated the crisis.
Nor can we throw the blame upon some undefined
class or type of foreign voters or upon those
sometimes called anarchists or socialists. I am
sometimes inclined to fear that our principal
STOCK IN TRADE,
when it comes to these serious matters, is cowardice
and that we seek to throw off our responsibilties
upon imaginary persons or classes,