158 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
Some Phrases of the Government in Business 
Part of the Address of Sevretary of Cotnnierce Herbert Hoover, at the Annual Meeting of the United States 
Chanilfer of Conuneree, Cleveland, Ohio, Evening of Mag 7, 1924, Deservitig Close Sludg Bg Those 
Guiding the Polieg of the Anieriean Assoeiation of Nursergmen 
Your chamber has recently submitted to its members a num- 
l)er of recommendations upon Principles of Business Conduct 
in the form of a report of your Committee on Business Bthiep. 
The very fact of issuing such a report is of interest. I wish 
to discuss the whole subject in its wider sense and in the rela¬ 
tion of Government to business. 
The advancement of science and our increasing population 
require constantly new standards of conduct and breed an in¬ 
creasing multitude of new rules and regulations. The basic 
principles laid down in the Ten Commandments and the Ser¬ 
mon on the Mount are as applicable today as when they were 
declared, but they require a host of subsidiary clauses. The 
ten ways to evil in the time of Moses have increased to ten 
thousand now. 
A whole host of rules and regulations are necessary to main¬ 
tain human rights with this amazing transformation into an 
industrial era. Ten people in a whole county, with a plow a 
piece, did not elbow each other very much. But when we put 
seven million people in a county with the tools of electricity, 
steam, 30-floor buildings, telephones, miscellaneous noises, street 
cars, railways, motors, stock exchanges, and what not, then we 
do jostle each other in a multitude of directors. Thereupon 
our law makers supifly the demand by the ceaseless piling up 
of statutes in attempts to keep the traffic open; to assure fair 
dealing in the economic world; to eliminate its waste; to pre¬ 
vent some kind of abuse or some kind of domination. More¬ 
over, with increasing education our senses become more of¬ 
fended and our moral discriminations increase; for all of which 
we discover new things to remedy. In one of our States over, 
1.000 laws and ordinances have been added in the last eight 
months. It is also true that a large part of them will sleep 
peacefully in the statute book. 
The question we need to consider is whether these rules and 
regulations are to be developed solely by Government or 
whether they can not be in some large part developed out of 
voluntary forces in the nation. In other words can the abuses 
which give rise to Government in business be eliminated by 
the systematic and voluntary action of commerce and industry 
itself? This is indeed the thought behind the whole gamut 
of recent slogans “Less Government in Business,” “Less Gov¬ 
ernment Regulation,” “A Square Deal,” “The Elimination of 
Waste,” “Better Business Ethics,” and a dozen others. 
National character can not be built by law. It is the sum of 
the moral fibre of its individuals. When abuses which rise from 
our growing system are cured by live individual conscience, by 
initiative in the creation of voluntary standards, then is the 
growth of moral perceptions fertilized in every individual 
character. 
No one disputes the necessity for constantly new standards 
of conduct in relation to all these tools and inventions. Eveni 
our latest great invention—radio—has brought a host of new 
questions. No one disputes that much of these subsidiary ad¬ 
ditions to the Ten Commandments must be made by legislation. 
Our public utilities are wasteful and costly unless we give them 
a privilege more or less monopolistic. At once when we have 
business affected with monopoly we must have regulation by 
law. Much of even this phase might have been unnecessary 
had there been a higher degree of responsibility to the public, 
higher standards of business practice among those who domi¬ 
nated these agencies in years gone by. 
There has been, however, a great extension of Government 
regulation and control beyond the field of public utilities into 
the field of production and distribution of commodities 
-credit. legislation nenf'trates the business world 
it is because there is abuse somewhere. A great deal of this 
legislation is due rather to the inability of business hitherdo 
to so organize as to correct abuses than to any lack of desire 
to have it done. Some times the abuses are more apparent than 
real, hurt anything is a handle for demagoguery. In the main, 
however, the public acts only when it has lost confidence in 
the ability or willingness of business to correct its own abuses. 
Legislative action is always clumsy—it is incapable of adust- 
ment to shifting needs. It often enough produces new econom¬ 
ic currents more abusive than those intended to be cured. Gov¬ 
ernment too often becomes the persecutor instead of the 
regulator. 
The vast tide of these regulations that is sweeping onward. 
can be stopped if it is possible to devise, out of the conscience^ 
and organization of business i.tself, those restraints which will 
cure abuse; that will eliminate waste; that will prevent un¬ 
necessary hardship m the working of our economic system; 
that will march without laiger social understanding. Indeed, 
it is vitally necessary that we stem this tide if we w'ould pre¬ 
serve that initiative in men which builds up the character, in¬ 
telligence, and progress in our people. 
I am one of those who believe in the substratum of inherent 
honesty, the fine vein of service and kindliness in our citizen¬ 
ship. The vast volume of goods and services that daily flow^ 
through the land w'ould cease instantly were it not for the in¬ 
stinctive dependence of our people upon moral responsibility 
of the men who labor in the shops and farms and the men who 
direct our production and distribution. 
In these times of muddled thought it is sometimes worth 
repeating a truism. Industry and commerce are not based upon 
taking advantage of other persons. Their foundations lie inj 
the division of labor and exchange of products. For through' 
specialization we increase the total and variety of production 
and secure its diffusion into consumption. By some false anal¬ 
ogy to the “survival of the fittest” many have conceiveef tlie 
whole business world to be a sort of economic “dog eat dog.” 
We often lay too much emphasis upon its competitive features, 
too little upon the fact that it is in essence a great cooperative 
effort. And our homemade Bolshevist-minded critics to the con¬ 
trary, the whole economic structure of our nation and the sur¬ 
vival of our high general levels of comfort are dependent upon 
the maintenance and development of leadership in the w'orld 
of industry and commerce. Any contribution to larger produc¬ 
tion, to wider diffusion of things consumable and enjoyable, is' 
a service to the community and the men who honestly accom¬ 
plish it deserve high public esteem. 
The thing we all need to searchingly consider is the practical 
question of the method by which the business world can develop 
and enforce its own standards and thus stem the tide of Gov¬ 
ernmental regulation. The cure does not lie in mere opposition. 
It lies in the correction of abuse. It lies in an adaptability to 
changing human outlook. 
The problem of business ethics, as a prevention of abuse is 
of two categories: those where the standard must be one of in¬ 
dividual moral perceptions, and those where we must have a 
determination of standards of conduct for a whole group in order 
that there may be a basis for ethics. 
The standards of honesty, of a sense of mutual obligation and 
of service were determined 2000 years ago. They may require 
at times to be recalled. And the responsibility for them in¬ 
creases infinitely in high places either in business or Govern¬ 
ment, for there rests the high responsibility for leadership 'in 
fineness of moral perception. Their failure is a blow at the 
repute of business and at confidence in Government itself. 
The second field and the one which I am primarily discussing 
is the great area of indirect economic wrong and unethical 
practices that spring up under the pressures of competition and 
habit. There is also the great field of economic waste through 
destructive competition, through strikes, booms and slumps, 
unemployment, through failure of our different industries to 
synchronize and a hundred other causes which directly lower 
our productivity and employment. Waste may be abstractly 
unethical but in any event it can only be remedied by economic 
action. 
If we are to find solution to these collective issues outside 
of Government regulation we must meet two practical problems: 
First, there must be organization in such form as can estab¬ 
lish the standards of conduct in this vast complex of shifting 
invention, production and use. There is no existing basis to 
check the failure of service or the sacrifice of public interest. 
Some one must determine such standards. They must be de¬ 
termined and held flexibly in tune with the intense technology 
Second, there must be some sort of enforcement. There is 
the perpetual difficulty of a small minority who will not play 
the game. They too often bring disrepute upon the vast ma¬ 
jority; they drive many others to adopt unfair competitive meth¬ 
ods which all deplore; their abuses give rise to public indig¬ 
nation and clamor which breed legislative action. 
I believe we now for the first time have the method at 
hand for voluntary organized determination of standards and 
