Article August 1, 1901 Issue

Christian Science in Business

New England Grocer

Thousands of earnest, sincere, intelligent men and women are believers in Christian Science; other thousands, equally earnest, sincere, and intelligent, believe it is a fad, delusion, or craze. It is not our purpose to enter into a discussion of this question—one of those topics where one "convinced against his will is of the same opinion still"—but to refer to a statement made at a big meeting of believers in Boston last week—a meeting at which Christian Science sped "blithely into the fields of business." At this meeting Mr. Shields of Warsaw, Ind., brought Christian Science into the field of competitive endeavor. He was modest enough to ascribe none of his success to personal good management. He had applied the Science to his clothing store. "Perhaps you don't know what that means," said the speaker. All Mr. Shields' clerks had been instructed to call cotton, cotton, and wool, wool, and the clothing business has boomed ever since. His former advertising methods he characterized as "band wagon fashion." These had been abandoned when he became converted to Christian Science, and now Mr. Shields pointed to the fact that he was advertising twenty-three firms besides his own, and negotiating with forty others.

That's the kind of Christian Science we can all believe in. If that Science, which is simply the science of telling the truth at all times and under all conditions, obtained, there would be no need of laws to prevent false and misleading representation in the sale of goods, no necessity for attempting to enact laws to kill off the fake advertising methods now in vogue. Unfortunately, all do not practise this system—do not subscribe to this doctrine of absolute honesty; they prefer to prepare and publish announcements that are not Scientific and certainly are not Christian. May the tribe of those who "call cotton, cotton, and wool, wool," increase until it shall fill the whole business world. It would make unnecessary pure food laws—it would hasten the coming of the trade millennium.

New England Grocer.

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