Criminal Responsibility and Social Constraint.  H. Ellis, The Criminal.  A. H. Currier, The Present- Day Problem of Crime.  P. A. Parsons, Responsibility for Crime.  E. Ferri, The Positive School of Criminology.  W. Tallack, Penological and Preventive Principles.  E. Carpenter, Prisons, Police, and Punishment.  Outlook, vol. 94, p. 252; vol. 97, p. 403.  World’s Work, vol. 21, p. 14254.  North American Review, vol. 138, p. 254.  International Journal of Ethics, vol. 20, p. 281.

CHAPTER XXVI

INDUSTRIAL WRONGS

We have been discussing the treatment of recognized crime.  But beyond the boundaries of conduct universally labeled as criminal, there is a whole realm of anti-social action to which the public conscience is only beginning to be sensitive, although it is often far more harmful to the general welfare than that for which men are imprisoned.  Especially is this true of the wrongs connected with modern industry.  As Professor Ross puts it, [Footnote:  Sin and Society, p. 97.] “the master iniquities of our time are connected with money-making”; and so our “moral pace-setters,” who are, for the most part, confining their attacks to the time-worn and familiar sins, “do not get into the big fight at all.”  The root of the trouble is that great power over the lives and happiness of others has been acquired by a small class of irresponsible men, many of whom fail to recognize their privileged position as a public trust and care only for enriching themselves.  As we noted in chapter in, the complexification of our industrial life is making possible a whole new range of what must be branded as crimes; endless opportunities have been opened up of money-making at the cost of others’ suffering.  Often that suffering, or loss, is so remote from the path of the greedy business man that he does not see himself, and others fail to see him, as the predatory money-grabber that he is.  The many who have been ruined by unscrupulous competitors are often embittered, the repressed capitalism; but the public as a whole has not been aroused to rebuke this “newer unrighteousness.”  We must proceed to note its commonest contemporary forms.  In our present organization of industry, what are the duties of businessmen: 

I. To the public?

(1) The first duty of businessmen is to supply honest goods, in honest measure.  Underweight, undermeasure, double- bottomed berry-boxes, bottles so shaped as to appear to contain more than their actual contents, are obviously cheating.  Misbranding of goods is now regulated, so far as interstate trade goes, by the Federal Pure Food and Drugs Act; and most States have similar legislation.  Misrepresentation in advertisement should be severely punished; the selling of cold storage for fresh products, of part-cotton for all-wool clothing, of less for more expensive woods, and the thousand other ways of panning inferior goods upon an inexpert public for high-grade articles.