1 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



Ill 



By Professor CHARLES F. EMERICK 



SMITH COLLEGE 



Politics and Business 



A common objection to political agitation is that it disturbs business, 

 and either diminishes or renders uncertain the incomes of the laboring 

 and property-owning classes. As an argument against agitation that is 

 purely destructive, this objection is undoubtedly sound. To unsettle 

 business without the prospect or possibility of sooner or later bettering 

 working and living conditions is to render the existing situation worse 

 and is therefore unjustifiable. But as an argument against agitation 

 that is constructive the objection is footless. To urge people to submit 

 tamely to things as they are is to argue that existing conditions are 

 either as they ought to be or that they are incapable of being righted. 

 Neither of these positions can be accepted. Moreover, to inculcate a 

 fatalistic spirit would in the long run be bad for business itself. For the 

 element in human nature that protests against injustice and contrives 

 ways and means to overcome it is closely allied to the element that dis- 

 covers defects in and improves the technique of industry. The fact that 

 our age is not only highly inventive but also much given to social 

 amelioration is more than a mere coincidence. Whatever lessens the 

 latter is apt to deaden the former. 



I 



A favorite argument in certain quarters is that if the business world 

 were let alone it would reform itself without suffering the disadvantages 

 which political agitation entails. This position is untenable. In the 

 first place, the business world can not if it would leave politics alone. 

 Business enterprise dependent upon franchises and corporate privileges 

 inevitably drifts into politics. Wherever matters of public as well as of 

 private concern are involved, the state is necessarily a party to the 

 transaction. This is notorious in the case of the liquor traffic. So long 

 as business men embark in enterprises dependent upon a protective 

 tariff, they can not well complain if they become the victims of political 

 agitation. Those whose interests are opposed to protection quite as much 

 as those who profit by it are entitled to a hearing. Many of the ques- 

 tions which arise in connection with money, banking, railways, trusts 

 and the relations between capital and labor can only be settled by 

 political action. In foreign relations the state is the handmaid of 

 business. Business and politics simply can not be divorced. 



