dence and on keeping faith with the
people.

They not only tried lying, like all young children, but they tried
stealing. For years the big corporations could be seen going around from
one big innocent city in this country to another, and standing by
quietly and without saying a word, putting the streets in their pockets.

But no big corporation of the first class to-day would begin its
connection with a city in this fashion. Beginning a permanent business
relation with a customer by making him sorry afterward he has had any
dealings with you, has gone by as a method of getting business in
England and America.

One of our big American magazines not long ago, which had gained
especially high rates from its advertisers because they believed in it,
lied about its circulation. The man who was responsible was not
precisely sure, gave nominal figures in round numbers, and did what
magazines very commonly did under the circumstances; but when the
magazine owner looked up details afterward and learned precisely what
the circulation was for the particular issue concerned, he sent out
announcements to every firm in the country that had anything in the
columns of that issue, saying that the firm had lied, and enclosing a
check for the difference in value represented. Of course it was a good
stroke of business, eating national humble pie so, and it was a cheap
stroke of business too, doing some one, sudden, striking thing that no
one would forget. Not an advertisement could be inserted and paid for in
the magazine for years without having that action, and the prestige of
that action, back of it. Every shred of virtue there was in the action
could have been set one side, and was set one side by many people,
because it paid so well. Every one saw suddenly, and with a faint breath
of astonishment, how honesty worked. But the main point about the
magazine in distinction from its competitors seems to have been that it
not merely saw how honesty worked, but it saw it first and it had the
originality, the moral shrewdness and courage, to put up money on it. It
believed in honesty so hard that suddenly one morning, before all the
world, it risked its entire fortune on it. Now that it has been done
once, the new level or standard of candour may be said to have been
established which others will have to follow. But it does not seem to me
that the kind of man who has the moral originality to dare do a thing
like this first need ever have a