and
right under every possible condition of things. The man who is honest
from motives of policy will be dishonest when policy beckons in that
direction. The men who have illumined the annals of trade are those who
have bought the truth and sold it not, who held it only to dispense it
for the welfare of others.

We cannot too highly honor the temper of that generation of business men
who half a century ago sternly refused to compromise with any form of
deceit in the details of traffic, visiting with the severest penalties
those who at all impinged upon the well-accepted morals of trade. The
story is told of a young merchant who, beginning business some fifty
years ago, overheard one day a clerk misrepresenting the quality of some
merchandise. He was instantly reprimanded and the article was unsold.
The clerk resigned his position at once, and told his employer that the
man who did business that way could not last long. But the merchant did
last, and but lately died the possessor of the largest wealth ever
gathered in a single lifetime.

Permit me another incident and this not from New York, but Philadelphia.
One of the Copes had but just written his check for $50 for some local
charity, when a messenger announced the wreck of an East Indiaman
belonging to the firm, and that the ship and cargo were a total loss.
Another check for $500 was substituted at once, and given to the agent
of the hospital with the remark: "What I have God gave me, and before it
all goes, I had better put some of it where it can never be lost."
[Applause.]

Such illustrations as these are not infrequent in the biographies of
those noble men who in days gone by as well as in our own times, have
never divorced truth from trade, but have always reverenced the sacred
relations. I dare venture the remark that the prosperity of a nation is
more largely dependent upon the probity of its merchants than upon any
other one class of men. [Applause.] This because of their numbers, their
influence over so many who are subject to them in business, and their
close relation to, and important control over, the financial interests
of the country.

What a wide area of opportunity is afforded in the counting-room, where
so many students of trade are preparing for the uncertain future!
Accept, I beseech you, the responsibility of moulding the characters of
your young men and so prepare a generation of merchants who shall know
of nothing but honesty and honor, a