ngly of their competitors, and we have
grown accustomed to say that you can judge a man by the way he speaks of
his rivals. This has limits, however, and in some instances a mistaken
idea of loyalty to one's calling has led to the glossing over of certain
evils which could have been cured much earlier if they had been made
public. It is all very well to be generous and courteous toward one's
competitors but the finest courtesy in any business consists of doing
whatever tends to elevate the standard of that business.

Every man likes his business to be well thought of, and most businesses
have organized for the promotion of a high standard of ethics as well as
for the development of more efficient methods. Notable among these, to
mention one of the most recent ones, is the Advertisers' Association.
There was a time when the whole profession was menaced by the swindlers
who were exploiting fraudulent schemes by means of advertising in
magazines and newspapers, but to-day no reputable periodical will
accept an advertisement without investigating its source and most of
them will back up the guarantee of the advertiser that his goods are
what he represents them to be with a guarantee of their own. No
publication which intends to keep alive can afford a reputation of
dishonesty, and the efforts of the publishers toward cleaning up have
been seconded by the association to such an extent that any person or
corporation that issues a deceptive advertisement, whether or not there
was intent to deceive, will be prosecuted and punished.

There was a time when a man could do almost anything within the law in a
commercial transaction and excuse himself by saying "business is
business." Happily this is no longer true. Business men have not grown
perfect but they have raised their standards of business morality as
high as their standards of personal morality. They have learned that
business and life are one, that our lives cannot--and this has a number
of disadvantages--be separated into compartments like so many tightly
corked bottles on a shelf. We have only one vessel and whatever goes
into it colors what is already there. And it is significant to remember
that muddy water poured into clean water will make it muddy, but that
clean water poured into muddy water will not make it clean. It takes
very little ink in a pail of milk to color the whole of it, but it takes
an enormous amount of milk to have any effect on a bottle of ink.

B