BRIBERY IN BUSINESS.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—By a curious coincidence " A Military Officer," in referring to my letter which appeared in the Spectator of April 9th, lands a Co-operative Society established by some enterprising junior officers in the Army as a means of preventing bribery in business. Now, Sir, it was a certain Co-operative Society which I had in my own mind in referring to a £5 note surreptitiously offered to a servant by being placed under an inkstand. A Co-operative Society, whether for the benefit of Tommy Atkins or that of the public generally, must, I take it, have officials in one way or another, and if travellers can only "get at them" by artifices such as that I have indicated, the officials will, it may be taken for granted, be equally liable to yield to temptation. Co-operative Societies, however well managed, will never abolish secret discounts or hush-money, and as for a Co-operative Society in the Army, supplies being bought in the open market, it would not, and could not, do away entirely with opportunities for indulging every now and then in a little bribery in busi- ness. It is surely not wholesale men nor yet retailers who are to be distrusted, but mainly the sharks who infest society, seeking in the commercial world to push trade by offering bribes or secret commissions, and defending the practice as absolutely necessary if trade is to be done. " My wife and. family cannot starve " said a man in rags when he had smashed a baker's window and carried off a loaf of bread. But the police showed him that he was wrong in his deduc- tions, and the traveller who tells the world that he cannot live without orders must be shown that business transacted' on lines of dishonesty is a snare and a curse, and cannot be tolerated for a single moment.—I am, Sir, &c.,
W. H. BRADLEY.
Leeds and County Conservative Club, Leeds, April 18th.
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