THE MORALS OF
ECONOMIC
INTERNATIONALISM
By
J. A. HOBSON
AUTHOR OF "THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM," "THE EVOLUTION
OF MODERN CAPITALISM," "WORK AND WEALTH," ETC.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE REGENTS OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
BARBARA WEINSTOCK
LECTURES ON THE MORALS
OF TRADE
This series will contain essays by representative scholars and men ofaffairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearingon business life under the new economic order, first delivered at theUniversity of California on the Weinstock foundation.
THE MORALS OF
ECONOMIC
INTERNATIONALISM
It ought not to be the case that there is one standard of morality forindividuals in their relations with one another, a different and aslighter standard for corporations, and a third and still slighterstandard for nations. For, after all, what are corporations butgroupings of individuals for ends which in the last resort are personalends? And what are nations but wider, closer, and more lasting unionsof persons for the attainment of the end they have in common, i.e., thecommonwealth. Yet we are well aware that the accepted and operativestandards of morality differ widely in the three spheres of conduct. Ifa soul is imputed at all to a corporation, it is a leather soul, noteasily penetrable to the probings of pity or compunction, and emittingmuch less of the milk of human kindness than do the separate souls ofits directors and stockholders in their ordinary human relations. Thereis a sharp recognition of this inferior moral make-up of a corporationin the attitude of ordinary men and women, who, scrupulously honest intheir dealings with one another, slide almost unconsciously to analtogether lower level in dealing with a railroad or insurance company.This attitude is due, no doubt, partly to a resentment of theoppressive power which great corporations are believed to exercise,evoking a desire "to get a bit of your own back"; partly to a feelingthat any slight injury to, or even fraud perpetrated on, a corporationwill be so distributed as to inflict no appreciable harm on anyindividual stockholder. But largely it is the result of a failure toenvisage a corporation as a moral being at all, to whom one owesobligations. Corporations are in a sense moral monsters; we say theybehave as such and we are disposed to treat them as such.
The standard of international morality, particularly in matters ofcommercial intercourse, is on a still lower level. If, indeed, one wereto press the theoretic issue, whether a state or a nation is a morallyindependent being, or whether it is in some sense or degree a member ofwhat may be called an incipient society of states or nations, nearlyevery one would sustain the latter view. We should be reminded thatthere was such a thing as international law, however imperfect itssanctions might be, and that treaties, alliances, and other agreementsbetween nations implied the recognition of some moral obligation. Howweak this interstate morality is appears not merely from the fact thatunder strong temptation governments repudiate their most express andsolemn agreements—to that temptation individuals sometimes yield intheir dealings with one another—but also from the nature of thedefence which they make of suc