32 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



do better than the Socialists, who ou a contribution of twenty-tive 

 cents per month each carry on a constant jjropaganda. Nor need 

 there be any fear but that able and disinterested men would be found 

 to give their services as far as would be necessai-y. Such a man as 

 J. Pierpont Morgan, were he living, would feel honored by the presi- 

 dency of a national association of business men, and would take 

 pride in guiding its policies and in contributing his valuable advice 

 and moral support. And although he is no more there are in the 

 business world of the United States thousands of capable and dis- 

 interested men who would gladly give their services to the business 

 public if required, though their dignity and modesty are such that 

 they will never be found among the ranks of office seekers or pub 

 licity hunters. 



It may be said that there is no need of such an organization as I 

 propose; that the intelligent vote of the nation is sufficient for the 

 protection of business. But what is the intelligent vote? The news- 

 papers, of course, say it is the reading vote, the vote of those who 

 read books and newspapers. As far as newspapers go that would be 

 true if it were a matter of retailing gossip about crimes, elopements 

 and other scandals; or, were it a question of passing examination for 

 a teacher, college preparation or book study would be the thing. But 

 the vote in a business community, such as that where most of us live, 

 requijes some actual knowledge of business affairs. The proposal 

 to be voted on may relate to a tax upon a special industry, or a 

 public loan or system of banking, the building of a state canal, or 

 encouraging railroads or other public works, or the chartering of 

 .great corjiorations. The intelligent vote is that of the man who 

 understands such questions as these and has experience to guide him; 

 who has something at stake to quicken his judgment and is accus- 

 tomed to think on the line proposed. In a word, a business man or 

 one of the class of such sensible jieople as take counsel of their 

 business friends, for every \vell informed man knows that when 

 business is prosperous the farmer, doctor, laborer and all are pros- 

 perous and that the main object of government is to promote the 

 public welfare, as our constitution says, and not to promote the 

 distribution of offices among humbugs, nor to amuse fools with the 

 ballot. 



This is no trilling nuittei'. It is not as serious here as it was in 

 France in 1793, when the government was handed over to theorists, 

 petty politicians, demagogues and adventurers. It was by such men 

 that the guillotine was created. Robespierre was a country lawyer; 

 the rest of that gang were without business training; and so in that 

 ghastly time the laws of business were ruthlessly swept aside; govern- 

 ment undertook to make prices, and to fix wages with a minimum' 

 and maximum; summary proceedings in the courts took the place of 

 trials, and the horrors that resulted have never been adequately de- 

 scribed. The situation here is not as serious as it is today in 

 Mexico, which I visited a few months ago, and whore the miseries 

 that are being daily suffered and the hopeless condition of the whole 

 couutry are to be ascribed to a system of universal suffrage whicli 

 jiractically deprives business men of all share in the government 

 of the country. This is tlie true cause of the deplorable 

 Mexican situation, though you would never learn so from the news- 

 papers, that are enjoying their usual dense ignorance upon the sub- 

 ject. But though Uncle Sam is not so ill now as Joiinny Crapaud 

 was or our Mexican brother is today he has a light attack of the same 

 disease and needs treatment. 



It may be suggested that tlic majority of our legislators and office 

 holders are lawyers, and that lawyers are better adapted to the mak- 

 ing of laws than business men. But those alleged lawyers are usually 

 not real lawyers, but politicians who have been admitted to prac- 

 tice as lawyers at the early age of, say, twenty-one, and shortly 

 thereafter have turned their attention to small local politics. Thence- 

 forth they are neither good lawyers nor good politicians. By those 

 wlio fill the high offices of the nation no doubt law should be studied, 

 and so should political economy and other topics connected with 

 government. For legislative purposes there should be a board of hired 

 legal counsel to examine every proposed statute and compare it with 

 prcvi6us enactments and see that it js in good legal shape. Cood 

 legal assistance can always be obtained if necessary. But the founda- 



tion should be a good practical business training; nothing can take 

 its place. 



The business man brings to every problem the human element 

 which nothing but actual experience in dealing with men and the 

 troubles of men can provide. Bismarck once said, ' ' Put Germany in 

 the saddle and you will see that she can ride"; I say put business 

 in the saddle and you will see that it can ride. See what it has done 

 already for this country. Is it not true that the growth of this 

 country and its jirosperity are due almost entirely to the work of 

 business men in jiractically applying inventions and discoveries to 

 everyday life, and the enterprises in railroad building, manufactures 

 and commerce, which they have inaugurated and carried on? Bank- 

 ers and other business men furnished the money which paid and fed 

 the soldiers in the war for the Union. Business men have brought 

 the stone from the quarry, the wood from the forest, and worked them 

 into dwellings, churches, theaters, halls, hospitals, libraries and col- 

 leges, that are the centers of our daily life, and into the furniture 

 and equipment tnal make them habitable, in the great cities they 

 pay our teachers, jirof^sors, clergy and scientists. They bring 

 from all parts of the earth varieties of food that go to nourish and 

 create the body, blood and brain of man. and develop him from bar- 

 barism to civilization; they enable us to travel in comfort and luxury 

 all over the world, and clothe us so that we can live in any climate; 

 they light our abodes and warm our hearths. Business has endowed 

 our great institutions of learning and benevolence, and finally has 

 given us all that makes life enjoyable, it does this all by an organ- 

 ization, financial and commercial, which is the growth of centuries; 

 which by a study and adai)tation of nature, human and otherwise, 

 has created its own customes and laws, :iud the financial system, 

 whereby the work of each is advantageous to all, whereby the benefit 

 of the toil of the laborer or a lawyer in Calcutta is made available 

 in America; whereby a debt due in San Francisco can be paid in 

 London ; whereby the savings of one man can be used by another, 

 and those of a thousand men can be pooled and made available for 

 any useful project or work of bene\olence; whereby the beat of a 

 sym]>athetic heart in Kansas City can be made to relieve a sufferer iu 

 Poithind, Me., and the whole nation is bound together in ties of 

 mutual aid and general prosperity. Our era of civilization is the 

 child of business enterprise. It has created the commercial machine 

 which converts the raw and cheap products of remote nations into the 

 refined and precious food or adornment of millions who never saw or 

 imagined the scene of its production. And all this by means of a 

 system of banks and banking, clearing houses, exchanges, credits, dis- 

 counts, iiremiums, advances, de|iosits, drafts, syndicates, underwrit- 

 ings and other financial machinery so vast, intricate and complicated 

 that the ordinary handshaking statesman of the Bowery, the capital 

 or the prairies has no more conception of it than a Hhukfoot liniiaii 

 has of a power house electrical equipment. 



L.\BOR'S REAL RELATION TO BUSINESS 



The labor leaders and socialists tell us that manual labor pro- 

 duces the wealth of this country. That is a mistake. Labor is the 

 hand; business the head. Labor alone may jiroduce the cheap raw- 

 product, enough merely to sustain the existence of the primitive man, 

 but only as the servant of business, and under its direction is it able 

 to turn that cheap product into mercliantile wealth. It is the direct- 

 ing mind and oversight of business enterprise which finally multiplies 

 it a thousand fold, distributes it all over the world, places it in every 

 house, and even changes it from a destroyer into a benefactor, as when 

 it takes the destructive ice masses from the frozen North and breaks 

 them into fragments to cool the drink of the fevered patient in the 

 tropics. In a word, business enterprise creates and maintains the civ- 

 ilization of the world. Labor alone can not support itself according 

 to the civilized standards of today; it lives off the offerings of the 

 business world. For every cup of coffee the laborer swallows and for 

 every ]iiece of meat he eats in this city, or in any city of the United 

 States today, he is indebted to business enterprise and business or 

 ganization. And what do we not all owe to movable capital, that 

 wonderful and indis[)ensable instrument of civilization and progress, 

 which scarcely existed a few- centuries ago, which has been created, 

 nurtured and conserved by business men, and whereby all the accu- 



