Loading ...PRESIDENT OF THE CANADIAN BANK OP COMMERCE,
DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK STATE BANKERS’ ASSOCIATION
AT BUFFALO, N.Y., JUNE, 1912.
We are daily reminded that we live in a time of rapid and often precipitate change. The sixty or seventy centuries of recorded history show countless evidences of man’s desire for social improvement, but they seem to be only a long-drawn-out prelude to the nineteenth century, when for the first time the great basis of society, Inter-communication, was, by steamships and railways, by telegraphy and the post, perfected to a degree which warrants the belief that during the twentieth century the world will become practically one large society. It is not useful just now to express pleasure or regret regarding these terrific forces which are rapidly bringing to an end the local colour and the various idiosyncrasies of the world of yesterday, but it may serve our purpose to consider how the enhanced power of communication is rapidly causing the nations of the world to think alike on many subjects. The conversion of China to a republic, the establishment of old age pensions, workmen’s insurance and a minimum wage in Great Britain, the growing strength of the Social- Democrats in Germany, the Initiative, Referendum and Recall, and still later the proposed “recall of decisions” and “recall of judges” in theUnited States all in half a decade are striking evidences of what a world harnessed by steam and electricity for the purposes of communication is likely to essay. The spirit of unrest evident in many countries besides those referred to is, as we know, working at the roots of established institutions wherever they exist and whether public, semi-public or private.
Unfortunately the result of communication is not necessarily to make men wiser, it mainly tends to make them more alike to spread abroad ideas both of wisdom and of folly. One must be blind not to see that much of the unrest is due to the unfair advantage possessed by the strong over the weak, and we must be equally blind not to see that much of it arises simply from the hatred of ability and success by the thriftless and incapable. The just man is troubled because it is clear that in the main the legislator is not so much concerned to equalize opportunities of success for men’s efforts as to please the majority of the voters. Whatever we may think of the system of government which makes it possible for the least capable to rule, it is the condition under which we live at the moment. One of the active shapes in which the present unrest shows itself in the United States is by attacks upon corporations which by methods, mainly quite legal, have acquired a position which gives or seems to give them that unfair advantage of the strong over the weak to which I have referred. In pursuing these so-called trusts an indiscriminate hatred of corporations seems to have arisen and naturally the banks have not entirely escaped. Mere dislike of consolidated wealth, as such, is of course as old as the history of banks and other industrial corporations, but the desire to regulate the activities of privately established corporations in the supposed interest of the public, while not new in theory, has not been an element of disturbance in the conduct of corporations in the United States until recently.
It is clear that the industrial work of the world will continue to be done by the aid of capital invested through corporations. Socialists may have in mind different machinery for the same purpose, but as bankers we are not likely to disagree as to the function in society of the joint- stock corporation. It is true, however, that proper relationsbetween such corporations and the public need to be established. The basis of such relations should be arrived at by the exercise of good nature and common sense and especially by the determination on both sides to insist on fair-dealing. No matter what may be the rights under its charter of any corporation performing a public service or dealing in an article of wide consumption, its true interest and final profit will be found in dealing fairly with the people; and no matter how great the profit exacted in the past or how complete the monopoly established,the people will only do well by themselves, and secure justice when they confine themselves to punishing acts which are criminal and not when they legislate so as to destroy property legally created and in innocent hands.
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