Page:The Ethics of the Professions and of Business, with a supplement - Modern China and Her Present Day Problems.djvu/12

viii ness associations to suppress bribery and to secure better ethical standards in business. (See page 221.) The Rotarians, under the poignant leadership of Mr. Guy Gundaker, have set for themselves the gigantic yet inspiring task of creating a code of ethics in every craft and business group throughout the country. (See page 229.) And even the editors of newspapers have assumed responsibility for a public profession as to their standards of conduct. (See pp. 170 to 179.)

As business groups and crafts struggle to put into words the ideals that shall guide their members when meeting the business temptations peculiar to each craft or industry, they, too, must turn away from mere negations to the ideal. And this ideal, as with the professions, must be the public good. These business groups, however, will not find at hand the same means for enforcing high standards of conduct that the professions have. There will usually be no selective training for the work performed, though the demand for such training is increasing. (See page 205.) But, on the other hand, business groups will have the powerful controlling agency of the organized market.

The business world is now so complex that reliance must be its first watchword. And this can never be until the ideal of service controls the crafty impulse for profits. Confidence can never be established merely by preventing the illegal. Laws must by their very nature be the expression of accepted standards of conduct. Unless those standards are generally accepted, laws can be of no avail. For laws enforce the obedience of minorities only. The professions of law and of medicine will never entice the public confidence if the members of those professions organize solely to punish the lawbreaker. The physician, to be worthy of his profession, must do more than refuse to do the illegal act. He must do his share to prevent disease, even though by so doing he shall decrease the need for physicians. The unethical and the illegal are not synonymous. The ethical points to the goal. The illegal leads only to the jail. The unethical is the path in the mud. The ethical is the paved road to public service. Ethics like all paved roads are the result of conscious, persistent, human effort.

One danger to the general good lurks in group codes, and that is that the code may degenerate into the creed of a "make-work" union. We have heard much of late about wage earners making work for each other and not pushing their own jobs to a finish. We have been prone to forget that the same disease has long been chronic among some members of the legal profession. We have scolded the wage earners for standing together when many physicians have long practised all the arts of mutual protection. Unless the ancient self-seeking by individuals is to become, under the modern necessity for organization, mere self-seeking by groups, codes of ethics must keep clearly in mind at all times the good of all. If chambers of commerce may dominate the legislature of Pennsylvania, why may not the farmers dominate the national Congress? If lawyers are to make work for each other, how are we to say that laborers shall not soldier on their jobs? Self-determination by groups there should be; but self-determination in the light of the good of all.

One aspect of group consciousness of late is the belief of each of the professions that it alone should inherit the earth. Engineers have recently claimed that engineering is the one all-inclusive industrial profession. The farmers have long known that the farm is the beginning and the end of all industry. Ministers have solemnly assured their