THE SAMURAI
character. It is felt that to buy simply in order to sell again brings out many unsocial human qualities; it makes a man seek to enhance profits and falsify values, and so the samurai are forbidden to buy to sell on their own account or for any employer save the State, unless some process of manufacture changes the nature of the commodity (a mere change in bulk or packing does not suffice), and they are forbidden salesmanship and all its arts. Consequently they cannot be hotel-keepers, or hotel proprietors, or hotel shareholders, and a doctor—all practising doctors must be samurai—cannot sell drugs except as a public servant of the municipality or the State."
"That, of course, runs counter to all our current terrestrial ideas," I said. "We are obsessed by the power of money. These rules will work out as a vow of moderate poverty, and if your samurai are an order of poor men———"
"They need not be. Samurai who have invented, organised, and developed new industries have become rich men, and many men who have grown rich by brilliant and original trading have subsequently become samurai."
"But these are exceptional cases. The bulk of your money-making business must be confined to men who are not samurai. You must have a class of rich, powerful outsiders———"
"Have we?"
"I don't see the evidences of them."
"As a matter of fact, we have such people! There are rich traders, men who have made discoveries in the economy of distribution, or who have called atten-
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