SELF-INTEREST PARAMOUNT
A senator was talking about the war. “Each side,” he said, “is declaring hotly now that it will never receive the foe within its hospitable borders again, and that after the war there will be no trading with the enemy forevermore.
“When we hear talk like that, let us smile skeptically, remembering the vain campaign of Wilberforce.
“When Wilberforce was fighting against slavery in London a shopkeeper put up a sign: ‘No goods made with slave-grown cotton sold here.’ But the man’s rival then put up another sign: ‘All our goods are made from cheap, slave-grown cotton.’
“This latter sign got all the trade, of course. If the first one hadn’t been taken down at once it would have driven its author into bankruptcy.”