BRIBERY IN BUSINESS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR "1 $IUI—As a soldier I have read your correspondence on "Bribery in Business" in the Spectator of April 9th with great interest, for, strange to say, there is no class of the Queen's subjects who have realised the all-pervading corrup- tion now existing in certain business relations, more fully than the officers of the Army. So fully indeed has the reality and the danger of the situation forced itself on their atten- tion, that some of the more enterprising junior officers, on their own initiative, have founded an organisation which is practically a combination of regiments co-operating to bay their supplies in the open market, instead of obtaining them through the wholesale tradesmen, of whom experience has taught them to have an insurmountable distrust.
This organisation, founded, as it has been, to combat the system of secret discounts or hush-money given by con- tractors to those subordinates who receive and pass the regimental supplies, a system the evils of which, in the surreptitious introduction of inferior qualities and short weights, fall wholly on Private Tommy Atkins, has been rapidly taken up in all branches of the service, and receives support now to the extent of a trade turn-over exceeding £100,000 a year.
The management of this Co-operative Society is controlled by an unpaid committee of officers representing the affiliated regiments ; a self-denying ordinance limits the return to shareholders to a maximum dividend of 5 per cent. per annum ; the rules provide that the surplus profits shall be returned pro ratd to the regiments who deal with the Society, —in other words, the profits go back into Tommy Atkins's pocket. No officer connected with this undertaking has made a penny by it ; on the contrary, it has been launched and made a success at a sacrifice of both time and money. These facts I send you thinking they may be of interest to your readers as a demonstration of the way in which the reality of the evil of bribery in business has forced itself on the atten- tion of a certain section of our body politic, and as showing what has been done in a practical way to combat the evil.—I
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