The Reputation of a Quaker Businessman

THE REPUTATION OF A QUAKER BUSINESSMAN By Robert Davison* Quaker writing of the early centuries, as most Friends of today are aware, shows a consistent tendency to single out one occupational group—the merchants—for special warning against conduct not in strict accord with the good order prevailing among Friends. Among the acceptable forms of employment, no other vocation, certainly not that of farmer, artisan, doctor, scientist, or common laborer, merited the unusual amount of worry that was lavished on that of businessman. Early in the Society's history George Fox became fearful lest the worldly wealth of the merchants endanger their spiritual life. Ambrose Rigge's Brief and Serious Warning to Such as Are Concerned in Commerce and Trading deplored in 1678 the dangers in this worldly calling, because, in some cases, the merchant "brings a great reproach upon the blessed TRUTH he professeth, which is worse than all; and this hath already been manifested in a great measure."1 William Penn's warnings "On an Immoderate Pursuit of the World" or on "luxury" are generally familiar. Similar views to these appeared from time to time in Yearly Meeting epistles and minutes. Friends were advised in 1675, "That none trade beyond their abilities, nor stretch beyond their compass."2 A 1692 extract noted, "It is advised and earnestly desired, that the payment of just debts be not delayed by any professing truth."3 Similar advice reappeared in 1727: "Dear Friends, it hath long been the great concern of this meeting, that all Friends carefully walk in the Divine Light; that they may be preserved from the two * Robert Davison, Assistant Professor of History at Hofstra College wrote his doctoral dissertation at New York University on the business career of Isaac Hicks. 1 Ambrose Rigge, A Brief and Serious Warning to Such as are Concerned in Commerce and Trading (1678). Reprinted together with the Advices of several Yearly-Meetings of like tendency: by order of the Yearly-Meeting in London (Stanford, 1805), p. 9. 2 Ibid., p. 13. 3 Ibid., p. 14. 73 74Bulletin of Friends Historical Association extremes of covetousness on the one hand and extravagancy on the other; the latter of which, has been the occasion of the failings of some among us, in the non-payment of their just debts."4 "With sorrow we observe," ran a Yearly Meeting comment in 1732, "that contrary to . . . example, and the repeated advices formerly given by this meeting . . . against an inordinate pursuit after riches, too many have launched into trades and business above their stocks and capacities ... to the great reproach of our holy profession."5 Thus the early advices ran.6 Merchants were semi-suspect. Perhaps fewer persons appreciate the other side of the coin: the high regard in which some Quaker merchants were held by conscientious parents and guardians who sought to safeguard the religious purity of their sons by apprenticing them to an upright Quaker establishment. Thus far from being suspect in some Quaker circles, the businessman might find himself a person valued for his influence upon youthful minds and morals. 4 Ibid., p. 15. 5 Ibid., p. 17. 6 This particular skeptical emphasis in early Quaker writing, real though it was, must not be mistaken for a complete statement of the relationship between the early Quakers and the merchants. Indeed, the extreme worry about the merchant's conduct suggests the actual ambivalence in the Quaker attitude. Viewing the subject from a broader historical perspective, one recognizes that the Calvinisti and Quakers provided for the businessman a religious rationalization hitherto denied by the medieval church. Both of these new religions sanctified a special earthly calling for the true believer. The nature and extent of the connection— if any—between a developing capitalism and Protestant Christianity has been furiously debated since the appearance of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (originally published in German in 1904-05). R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1929), Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (1931), and Benjamin N. Nelson, The Idea of Usury (1949) are significant works. A recent lively discussion of the general question is Robert L. Heilbroner, The Quest for...