Property Protected; People Not

On my way home I went through Cambridge. On the corner of a street was a group of people.

It was necessary to slow up my automobile, owing to the congestion. I inquired the cause of the trouble and learned that a poor family was being evicted from its home. The landlord had raised the rent and the family was put upon the street, - a mother with several children and an old grandmother. It was a sad sight. Upon reaching the office, I took up the day's mail. The first letter was from a woman inquiring of me the whereabouts of a certain man who had got her daughter into trouble. The particulars she gave in her letter were very harrowing.

As I sat in my office that evening the theory of the Bolshevist came into my mind. For the first time I momentarily caught his grievance, - that the government is organized to protect property rather than people. No soldiers were in Cambridge to protect that poor family which was being evicted from its home. No armed force was ready to guard that girl and her mother from devastation by a well-known man. Little heed is given to the security of souls. But when banks or stores are threatened, the entire State Guard of 7,000 men is immediately called.

This is not hasty fault finding. I realize the answer to this paradox of property and people is that soldiers fulfil the law. The law has been enacted to protect banks and jewelry stores to a much greater extent than to protect widows and their daughters. We cannot blame the minions of the law. We cannot blame the legislators. They are simply enacting the will of their constituencies. The blame is ours, and ours alone. You and I have set up a code of laws under which property and capital receive greater respect than health and happiness. But unless this is changed there will be a reaction that will wipe out the investments of many of us.

The Scriptures tell us to place important things first. We have not done it. We have placed important things second. I believe that this is the cause of the radical movements of to-day. Only as we rectify this maladjustment can Bolshevism be curbed. In any city where a telephone call from a poor widow's home will receive the same attention as a telephone call from a prominent jewelry store, there will be no growth of Bolshevism. Let us seek to bring about such conditions in our own communities. Let us not destroy or diminish any of the defences of property. Property is simply the stored-up labor of humanity. But let us have equal safeguards for humanity itself. , Let us get behind those who are interested in making human life healthier, happier, and more productive.

What applies to the poor widows and children applies also to the small merchant and business man. Here is another relatively defenceless class that should be protected if our investments are to endure.

Lower The Business Death Rate

The following statement of a Committee of the Governors of the various states of the Union should be hung in the office of every banker, manufacturer, and merchant. This statement does not mean that we should attempt to hold up prices or otherwise interfere with economic laws; but only that we, as communities, should try to prevent business failures. As we have a fire department to prevent fire losses and a health department to prevent sickness, so we should unite to prevent unnecessary losses in business.

"Let every individual do all he can to help and encourage his neighbor. Let there be a complete mobilization of the financial and spiritual assets of every community. Neither God nor the Government ought to be asked to help those who do not first make every effort possible to help themselves.

"There ought, however, to be a united effort in every community to keep any good man and woman from being destroyed because he cannot immediately meet his obligations. Under existing conditions it would be the acme of inhumanity and of unwisdom to force any debtor into bankruptcy if by the most liberal indulgence he would ultimately be able to pay.

"Liberal indulgences and renewals should be granted by the manufacturers to the jobbers, by the jobbers to the merchants, by the merchants to the individuals. It is no time for a creditor to seize his debtor by the throat and savagely say: 'Pay me what thou owest.'"

The same trend of modern business thought is illustrated by an editorial which appeared in the Boston Herald of January 31, 1921, entitled "Is Bankruptcy Finding a Substitute?" It is encouraging to find this new attitude voiced in the press. The editorial is substantially as follows:

Through the federal reserve system, as a means of extending credit, our bankruptcy practices are undergoing an undoubted modification. Just as the conventional lawyer is supposed to be technical, so the conventional business man is supposed to be a believer in "succeed or smash." A cartoon hanging in many offices shows the creditor as a burly blusterer lording it over a pallid, hopeless debtor. It is impossible to imagine friendly cooperation between the two figures in this cartoon. But unless there has been a great deal of such cooperation, the critical period of readjustment would have been a financial smash of no mean order.

The truth is that the conventional idea of the creditor is far from accurate. Satisfying as the crash of bankruptcy may be to the vengeful ear, business men who are long-headed as well as hard-headed realize that in many cases an extension of credit to an honest debtor will do much more toward filling their pocketbooks. Under our old credit system the practical application of this principle in times of stress was very difficult. Now the federal reserve system by giving centralization and much needed elasticity is helping forward a great change. Largely through its aid banks and creditors' committees are able quietly to carry along dozens of distressed business concerns, although they know that it may take months or even years to get debtors on their feet again.

The tendency toward a modification in the practice of bankruptcy will disappear, We shall always have ventures so unwise or unfortunate that the potter's field is their best resting place. Neither can we expect to abolish the over-impatient creditor or the over-recalcitrant debtor. But business is waking up to the fact that where there is something worth salvaging a "private failure" is immensely more economical than the ostentation and expense of a court funeral. More important still, the realization is growing that it is sheer economic murder to thro\ into bankruptcy a useful concern which may be privately revivified.

It is with business in the class last referred to that we are particularly concerned. It is impossible to prove how many such failures are now being kept out of the bankruptcy court. Examination of the confidential files of half a dozen banks would tell an interesting story. But publicity is no feature of the new practice. Creditors who are pulling a "private failure" out of a hole rarely desire to hurt their debtor's reputation by advertising what they have done. Yet, even if figures are lacking, a talk with almost any banker will afford evidence of the general desire to grant reasonable cooperation in the liquidation of indebtedness. This attitude has enabled us to weather the troubles of the past. A continuation of the attitude during the future will be of the greatest value, not only to individual commercial concerns, but to the whole structure of business.