In writing as I have done concerning the lives of the common people, I do not wish to be understood as thinking that the life of the average business man is a very desirable one. I know it is not; the men who conduct large or small businesses often endure all “the torments of the damned” in their anxiety and worry to keep things straight. The more good-hearted they are and the more honest they strive to be, the more difficult and stormy their path through life becomes. There is very little mercy in business, and precious little consideration for other people; and this because men are fearful of to-morrow. We all forget the beautiful saying of Jesus: “Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin, yet I say unto you Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Or that other great saying: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” Those who have risen from the ranks of the workers are most fearful. For them life is usually one long determined fight against any chance of falling back into the ranks of labour, and an effort to save their children from ever becoming mere wage-earners. Consequently business has become a sort of accentuated class war, or, rather, a fight between warring sections of the same class, each striving to supplant the other. The shop-keepers of almost every class lead the narrowest kind of lives. All their waking hours are spent in an endeavour to find new means by which they can induce people to buy things (often things which the buyers do not really want), and in a great effort, not only to retain their position, but to improve it. The mania for advertising, the craze for new methods of boosting wares, gives rise to what amounts to wholesale lying by means of specious advertising. I once dined with a well-known social worker who spent a huge fortune investigating social and industrial conditions. After dinner we discussed at some length the question of commercial morality. I rather hotly contended that all modern business necessitated lying in one form or another until the business became a first-class monopoly, when, because of the power which monopoly gives, it became unnecessary to do more than just fling the goods on the market. The lady of the house was much distressed, and asked her husband if it was true that lying was a necessary part of business. He hesitated, but at last replied that when business was conducted men did not tell all the truth, but that, as all business men knew this, it was not really lying in the ordinary sense. I could not answer except by saying that the fact that we all tolerated such an unreal and deceptive condition of affairs was, in my opinion, the greatest condemnation of our present commercial methods. And so it is, for it stamps us all as deceivers, and makes of business just a battle of wits in which cupidity stands the best chance of success.