p. 354The Business Man

If you will cry out upon idleness, I am not disposed to dispute about words. It is certain that labor was not in the middle ages considered the end and sole business of life. It was thought that man, even earthly man, liveth not by bread alone, and that he requires other enjoyments than those of the body. Labor was regarded as the penalty of sin, and, as such, man desired to endure as little of it as possible. But things are now greatly changed, and do not say for the worse. God, who in the chastisements of this world provides for the good of man, permits that when nations lose sight of Heaven, avidity should impel them to “hard labor” in the strict judicial sense of the word, to which human justice forces dangerous criminals. So while passions are unchained in men’s hearts, self-interest forges fetters for them, and leisure decreases in proportion to the increase of evil desires. This is the case with nations as it is with individuals; and it is providential as well as severe.¹1Reverend Father Cahier, Vitraux peints de Saint Etienne de Bourges, imperial folio, Paris, 1842–44.

In the modern world,—at least where there is nothing like nobility of birth,—men will seek to rise, in proportion as they are free to rise, by steady application to business. Thus, they will first rise to wealth, and through wealth to social distinction. Even in democratic communities the learned professions lead of themselves to social position and to political power. But the power which wealth of itself bestows on its owner, is entirely independent of political party and distinct from the influence attached to what is known as social position or respectability.

Of this power, or—as we shall call it—extensive ability of doing good, we shall speak presently when treating of the manufacturer and the merchant prince. For the moment, we shall speak of the qualities and virtues that make the man of business.

We shall say little, however, of mere industry, of steady application to one’s pursuit, and of that indomitable perseverance without which the most feverish activity would be like the waters of Niagara, a mighty power wasted in noise and display. Besides, in our introductory chapter we have insisted at length and repeatedly on the absolute necessity of having a definite purpose in life, of setting one’s heart wholly on carrying out that purpose, and of never ceasing to pursue it to the end.

This is to be, in your own chosen sphere, “the active doer.” But you have, besides, to be in every sphere, no matter how high or how lowly, “the noble liver;” and it is this nobility of life in the business man of every class that we must now urge upon the reader’s consideration.

The first requisite toward this nobleness is to make sure that you work for Him to whom belong both the day and the night, and whom all things are bound to serve. You,—whoever you are, or what path soever you follow in this rushing world of activity,—are by baptism the son of the Great King, living in His house, subsisting on His bread, aiming in all things to please that most loving Parent and most magnificent Master. Whatever your occupation, then, whatever you have to do or to suffer, seek only to please Him. This constant tending in all our aims, sentiments, actions, sufferings, to do solely the most righteous will of the Most High God,—is what is called “a right or pure intention.” Without this you cannot please God or serve Him or have any claim to reward from Him.

This is the meaning of the pregnant passage in Christ’s earliest recorded teaching: “Where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also. The light [lamp] of thy body is thy eye. If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be lightsome. But if thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be darksome.”²2St. Matthew, vi. 21, 22. Make God and His eternal possession your chief treasure: set your heart upon never losing that, whatever else in life you may lose or you may gain. Look ever up to Him in the beginning of all your ways, and let your heart go with your eye: thereby His will shall be like an unquenchable lamp shedding its light upon your road through life,—or, if you prefer to view this fundamental truth otherwise, the love of Him within your heart will be like an unfailing light which you bear ever with you, making every path you walk in lightsome,—full of pleasantness, and peace, full of the unalterable joy of a conscience at rest, to which self-seeking, deceit, or dishonesty, are things unknown and impossible.

This is the fundamental principle of active Christian piety,—the very first letter of the alphabet of practical holiness so familiar to our forefathers, so universally familiar still among their faithful descendants. The following passage of the great St. Bonaventure expressed this perpetual yearning of the heart of the Christian man for God and His eternity:

“The first stage of our journey toward eternity is the right intention of eternal things. The soul of man through this aspiration toward what is everlasting, is borne upward, urged onward, and given strength to proceed on its early journey. It aims, first, at possessing the One Eternal Reality, fixing its attention upon it, reaching forward to it, persisting in its quest of it, making of it the chief motive of its life,—because that one eternal thing is the one thing necessary, which consummates by possession all the soul’s desires, and fixes them on the One treasure, which shall not be taken from it forever. Our reason tells us that we must fix our aim on this, before directing our views to aught else: for our highest and most honorable achievements must prove unavailing, when the eye of the heart is turned aside from its Eternal Object.”³3Sanctus Bonaventura, De Septem Itineribus.

Yes, surely, this is the lamp of right intention, of living active faith by which all Christian men of business must direct their steps every day they rise. And one cannot but perceive, on the simple enunciation of this most rational and most beautiful doctrine,—that fidelity to this practice of purity of intention must make life a success, while the forgetfulness of God and eternity leads to utter failure, ruin, and despair.

In looking at the many and most melancholy wrecks that daily strew the shores of the great stream of active life,—how many a man can say, as he sits and meditates over the causes of his own ruin,—just what the poet says of his own misapplied gifts and wasted life?

The mere human sentiments,—without a thought of God or of one’s accountability to Him,—which are expressed in this long wail of Vanity foiled and finding itself face to face with Self, ruined and dishonored, are pitiful enough, and all the more so that the suffering spirit had never sought God, and in its agony, has no thought of seeking Him.

Let us learn wisdom betimes, and trim the lamp of conscience by the light of these lurid fires of Despair. We have uttered the word “Conscience:” it is or should be for the busy man of the world,—the merchant, the banker, the broker, the manufacturer,—what a mighty spell-word was ever conceived to be among the Eastern nations, all powerful to guard from ill, to release from difficulty and danger, and to obtain in need the most precious boons from a supernatural power.

The reality of conscience is more than all that for you, if you can only apprehend its meaning aright, and be guided by its teachings.

Conscience is God’s own light and voice in our inmost soul telling us, at every step of our journey through life,—and telling us, with unmistakable clearness and unerring certainty,—that we must be true to the Light within us and walk according to its guidance; true to our own soul’s convictions, spiritual aspirations, and tendencies; true to our fellow-men, whoever or whatever they may be,—true to them in our words and actions, as if God were immediately to judge us after each action and each word; true to God Himself,—honoring Him, our acknowledged Master and Parent, by never allowing stain or suspicion of stain to fall on our personal honor, on our truthfulness, our honesty, our integrity, our faithfulness to given word or plighted promise;—so true to God and to ourselves as His sons, that to us falsehood, deception, betrayal of trust, dishonest deed or thought or aim, must be an utter impossibility.

Have they not banished conscience, in our days, from many walks of the business world? Have they not quenched the divine lamp in the soul’s sanctuary, and derided (for they cannot silence) the incorruptible voice within them? And with conscience have not trustfulness, and good faith, and security, and uprightness, and immaculate honor disappeared from all the great marts and centers of commercial life?

Will you help to bring back the Divine Presence, the ever-burning Light, and the Voice that cannot be bought or silenced,—to the counting-house, the exchange, the factory? Let the writer point out the way, as he has learned it, not only from the experiences of modern times, but from the teachings of by-gone generations. He will hold up the mirror, and you will find those whom to copy and to follow.

You will hear around you daily voices saying: “Catholicism is pernicious; it is best not to meddle with it. It makes a man a coward; he cannot sin but it accuseth him; he cannot swear but it checks him; he cannot sophisticate but it detects him. ’Tis a spirit that mutinies in a man’s bosom; it fills one full of obstacles; it is turned out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every man that means to live as he pleaseth, endeavors to trust to himself and live without it? They are right. The confessional, the advice, or even implied judgment of holy persons, who with the firmness of their souls by reasons guide us, may, and will, form a hinderance to many undertakings. The Marquis of Tabara, being engaged in an arduous affair, applied to Marina de Escobar, begging her to commend it to God. He seemed already on the point of succeeding in it, when the venerable Marina told him that it was not expedient, and sent Father Luis de Ponte to announce to him the result of her prayers. Though it required a hard sacrifice, the Marquis received her counsel as from God, and relinquished the pursuit of his project. He acted like the pilot in a storm, who being directed by the young St. Catherine of Sienna to turn his vessel to the wind, obeyed her, and in consequence came to the desired port in safety.

“Catholicity beholds in many things familiar on the road of human industry, the tree of prohibition, and forbids the sweetness, though it promise that knowledge which made Eve address the apple in the words,

Modern industry, modern business, like Eve, when the forbidden fruit has been plucked and tasted, finds that the sweet savor lasts but a moment, leaving behind the bitterness of death. Even before the poison has wrought its worst on heart and brain, the sinner discovers that conscience, not gain is the “best guide,” and would give worlds to recall his past “ignorance,” and forget the pangs and terrors of the guilty knowledge he has acquired.

As we pen these lines, in the last days of August,⁶61878. the great daily papers are filled with lists of men, “business men” all of them, who rush to the courts to profit by the expiring bankrupt law, and no one offers the pretense that these same bankrupts are acting in good faith: No, the whole public of this great commercial metropolis acknowledges without a pang of remorse or a blush of shame,—that the expiring law favored fraud and dishonesty, and that these rushing crowds who throng all the avenues of the courts of law, are acting fraudulently, dishonorably,—robbing their creditors and perjuring themselves in the very oath they dare to take!

Are matters carried on more honestly, more conscientiously on the Stock Exchange, in our numerous Savings Banks, by our great railroad corporations in city and country, by the great merchants who are not ashamed to defraud the revenue whenever they can purchase impunity, by our manufacturers who set aside all the laws of natural equity and—too often, alas,—of humanity itself in their dealings with the laboring millions? And shall we go out, like our scientific exploring expeditions, with sounding-rod and drag-net, and measure these depths of iniquity and shame one after the other? or shall we draw up to the light of day from the slime of their native beds the dark mysteries, and the dishonored names that it were better to leave buried there forever?

“It may be indeed an unworthy consideration,” says Digby, “but the fact is, that the mere desire of promoting their own success in their respective employments can direct practical men to desire an extension of the influence of the Catholic faith, which affords the best securities against the calamities, disgrace, and ruin to which they are exposed by the dishonesty of others, of their rivals, of their assistants, and perhaps even of their own children. For the effects of such instruction, if unimpeded, would be a deep sense of responsibility, and a delicacy of conscience on the least as well as on the greatest occasions!”

We might take the most Catholic of the great continental nations at the very period when Western Christendom was not broken asunder, and Spain was at the very height of her industrial and military greatness,—and show what unbending integrity and inviolable honor presided over every industrial enterprise and commercial transaction. Take this “photograph” of one city of Northern Spain,—as a sample of every other city throughout the Peninsula and including the then glorious and thrifty Portugal,—and judge of the tree of Catholic conscience by its fruits.

“At Burgos the inhabitants are not idle or strayers abroad; but all, not only men but women, seek to gain their bread by the labor of their hands, exercising virtuously all kinds of liberal and mechanical arts. The merchants who enrich the city are full of faith and liberality. The priests are most studious of the divine worship and diligent in application to learning as well as to their sacred offices. The magistrates regard the public welfare with prudence and integrity. In fine, men of all orders and professions are exact in the performance of their respective duties; so that the city daily increases in prosperity and fame.”⁷7Marinæi Siculi, De Rebus Hispanicis, lib. iii.

You have, we presume, traveled in Italy, as well as through the countries of Northern Europe. You are therefore not unacquainted with the style in which Christian Europe, before the middle of the sixteenth century, decorated the places of public business,—the Town Hall, the Exchange or Merchants’ Hall, and the Guild Hall. Passing over the magnificent municipal and civic edifices of the Low Countries, France, Germany, and Northern Italy,—we shall mention one easily accessible to the religious pilgrim or the pleasure-seeker on his way through Etruria to Rome. Stop at Perugia for a day,—and visit the Exchange (Sala del Cambio), to admire the immortal creations of Perugino, the beautiful city’s noblest son. The whole place is filled with divine and graceful forms in keeping with the lovely country and with the pious spirit of its people. One feels even now on entering the place,—desecrated though everything has been by a spirit far from Christian,—as if one entered a sanctuary of religion, instead of the hall where Perugia’s men of business met in times when conscience reigned supreme, and honor was the soul of commercial activity. Indeed, the contemporaries of Pietro Perugino did want to make of their Exchange a sort of sanctuary blessed by religion, where every glorious figure on walls and ceiling should recall to them their accountability to the God who is infinitely just and infinitely faithful and true.

The painting of this superb monument of commercial honor was done at the expense of the Guild of Woollen Drapers. Are we suggesting? No, indeed. Nor are we preaching. We deposit a few germs of deep and salutary thoughts in generous hearts, and pass on.

We exhorted the business man, at the beginning of each day,—to trim his lamp at God’s own altar; and then to be guided by conscience during the varied labors that awaited him.

What is more important still, is that you should in the steady and truthful light of your conscience, examine the transactions of the last twenty-four hours.

Examine, O merchant, how you have dealt with your associates, with your debtors and with your creditors. God has prospered you, and increased your substance tenfold and a hundredfold. All the fruits of industry have increased and multiplied in your hands. Have you grown more conscientious,—more scrupulous about truth, about your plighted faith, about even the minutest detail of your business, according as you grew in wealth? Has prosperity bound your heart more lovingly, gratefully, firmly to Him from whom every blessing comes down on men and the work of their hands?

But,—above all,—how do you treat your dependants? They are many,—a host in themselves, perhaps. Do you treat them, every one of them, justly,—as man is strictly bound to treat the veriest savage, who labors for him or who exchanges his furs or his simple wares for their lawful and fair equivalent in money? Do you treat them generously,—as brother should treat brother for whose life-blood and soul he is to account to their common Father and Judge? Or do you exact from those beneath you the very utmost their strength at its greatest pitch of exertion can produce for a stipend that barely suffices to keep body and soul together? And if so, how do you expect to fare at that dread Judgment Seat, whither not one minutest fraction of your wealth will follow you, but where a kind word to the sinking heart of your poor toilers, or a merciful alleviation of their intolerable load of labor, or a timely addition to the pittance of the over-worked mother, or daughter, or sister, or of the father borne down by the care of the dear ones he can neither feed, nor clothe, nor warm—would plead for your soul more powerfully than the hundreds of thousands you have squandered in ostentatious charity,—the very worst form of heartless vanity?

Charity? Ah, we go often far away from our own door to seek objects of so-called charity,—while those who look up to us for the bread of to-day or for the brotherly sympathy often more needful than bread to the famished heart,—are allowed to go the whole night and day, and weary week after week, unpitied, uncared for, unthought of!

Look well into your conscience, O brother! God has given you much: from our heart we pray Him to give you still more. But bethink you, while it is yet time, that your responsibility is in precise proportion to the unbounded liberality of Providence in your regard.

To manufacturers of every class,—these great princes of our industry,—of whom their country is so justly proud,—what shall we say, in addition to this adjuration? Shall we add our voice to the many warring voices that now resound throughout both hemispheres stirring up Labor against Capital, or steeling capitalists to the sad needs of those dependent on them? God forbid! The ministry of the priest to-day must be what it has always been, one of mediation and conciliation between brothers at variance,—trusting himself to both in his efforts at pacification, and trusted by both as true love and true charity ever is.

We see, however, the mighty tide of popular discontent rising higher day by day, and lashed into greater fury by the breath of passions that are not of Heaven, and of an eloquence that is not fired by true love of the brotherhood.

We all remember how a great English chancellor, nearly half a century ago, pleaded the cause of timely reform before the House of Peers. In his prophetic dread of the evils which were sure to arise from acknowledged wrongs, left so long unremedied, and from inveterate abuses crying out for reform, he cast himself on his knees before the lordly assembly and besought them with tears to have pity on their country, and to spare their order and themselves the fearful consequences of popular revenge. He was heard, and the reforms were granted.

We could kneel to you, O you on whose generosity and intelligence depends so much of the welfare of your country, and beseech you with a voice that would borrow its tones from no venal interest or unworthy passion,—to consider how much you can do to better the condition of millions of working men and women within the land.

But were it given us to be in spirit or in the body by your side, when, at the end of your day’s manifold cares, and before you commit yourself to that sleep which is the image of the eternal repose,—we should lovingly whisper in your ear to open the book of your conscience there, beneath the eye of the all-seeing God, and to examine yourselves as to how you stand,—in strict justice, in brotherly charity, in the claims of common humanity,—toward each one of the families who toil for you, who labor to build up your fortune and your fame.

You stand for them in the place of God,—representing His fatherly care, His tenderness, His justice, His generosity,—the wise love that cares for the souls and bodies, for the health, the hearts, the homes of the many who look up to you to make life bearable, health robust and flourishing, hearts grateful and happy, homes bright and blessed by all the sanctities of Christian and family life. Is this your care? Assuredly, it is your interest; most assuredly it is your duty; and your duty is to your GOD!

Read the following anecdote carefully, and we then leave you to the inspiration of that Mercy who is the great Healer of all our wounds in this life, and the advocate in the great Judgment of all who have been merciful.

“Gregorius Tilianus, a most learned youth, being found in sickness lying on a poor bed, which he had chosen expressly for its wretchedness, the visitor said, ‘I am ashamed to see you lying like a needy beggar.’ ‘Say, rather, like a king or emperor,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘Do they not in time of war lie as roughly?’”

“In his last hour he ordered the poor to be convoked and admitted. These were already in the vestibule, and so eager to enter, it was difficult to keep them back. ‘Let them enter,’ he says, ‘and not suffer Christ to wait before the door; and distribute my alms to them in my presence, and say to each not to return thanks, as it is in payment of what I owe to them, and not a gift. Then dismiss them, and invite them to return to supper.’”

“It was a touching sight to observe the grief of the poor as they pressed in to their friend. The blind, the lame, orphans, widows, the aged, epileptics, and lepers, and those suffering from all sorts of maladies and calamities,—all wept but Gregory, who had a smiling countenance as he spoke to console them, adding, ‘Not alone to the poor does God show mercy, but also to those who do good to the poor?’”

“In disposing of his property he ordered that even his books should be sold and the price given to the poor. ‘Sell it,’ he says, ‘either in whole or in parts, and spare not the nobility of books. For there is nothing on earth so noble and precious that it ought not to be employed to the glory of Christ.... I wish we had the gold of Arabia, that we might distribute it with the books!’”⁸8De Richebourcq, Ultima Verba Factaque.