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Title: Morals of Economic Internationalism

Author: John A. Hobson

Release Date: September 1, 2009 [EBook #29881]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE MORALS OF
ECONOMIC
INTERNATIONALISM

By

J. A. HOBSON

AUTHOR OF "THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM," "THE EVOLUTION
OF MODERN CAPITALISM," "WORK AND WEALTH," ETC.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE REGENTS OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

BARBARA WEINSTOCK
LECTURES ON THE MORALS
OF TRADE

This series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of
affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing
on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the
University of California on the Weinstock foundation.

THE MORALS OF
ECONOMIC
INTERNATIONALISM

It ought not to be the case that there is one standard of morality for
individuals in their relations with one another, a different and a
slighter standard for corporations, and a third and still slighter
standard for nations. For, after all, what are corporations but
groupings of individuals for ends which in the last resort are personal
ends? And what are nations but wider, closer, and more lasting unions
of persons for the attainment of the end they have in common, i.e., the
commonwealth. Yet we are well aware that the accepted and operative
standards of morality differ widely in the three spheres of conduct. If
a soul is imputed at all to a corporation, it is a leather soul, not
easily penetrable to the probings of pity or compunction, and emitting
much less of the milk of human kindness than do the separate souls of
its directors and stockholders in their ordinary human relations. There
is a sharp recognition of this inferior moral make-u