There is often a wide difference between the methods actually employed
in doing business and when they should be. Good men who are in the
thick of the battle of competition and rivalry with other firms in the
same line of trade, are the quickest to admit this fact. They would
gladly see things managed so that every employee should be satisfied
with his wages and hours of work and every competitor and customer
gratified by the treatment he receives.
Business as a Fight.--"The truth is," says a recent eminent writer on
this subject, "modern business is a fight. At bottom it is a question
of strength and courage." In this fight there are all sorts of men
engaged; men, who are honourable and upright and who fight fairly,
taking no mean advantage, yet nevertheless fighting strongly for
place, power and wealth. Over against this company of men are those
who are fair only when they are compelled to be fair and who contend
with any means, good or bad, for the objects which they seek to
attain. It is this latter class which upsets trade, causes great
commercial and banking houses to fail, and casts suspicion upon all
corporations, by the sale of watered and fraudulent stocks. It is
this idea of business as a struggle which causes working men to strike
sometimes rightly, against great abuses, and sometimes wrongly, over
minor matters which might easily have been adjusted if they had been
taken up in the right way.
Business as a Service.--So long as the ideal of the business world is
that business is a fight, little can be done to improve the present
conditions under which capital and labour work and suffer. There is
nothing which is so costly as war, nothing which is so far-reaching in
its disastrous effects and which leaves such a trail of misery behind
it. Industrial war is no exception to the rule.
But why look upon business as a fight? Already a new ideal is before
the world, that of service. This is what business really is, it
carries things from the place where they are abundant to where they
are not, it seeks to feed, to clothe, to house all mankind and to
facilitate travel and commerce. Upon the earth, and in it, enough of
all things has been provided for all the inhabitants--the table spread
by God has been bountifully furnished--if only there were a proper
distribution no one need want. It is this matter of unwillingness to
unselfishly serve others which slows down commerce to-day. When,
however, men shall cast aside all other ideals save that of being of
the largest service to their fellow men we shall have a new order of
things. Men will no longer seek to accumulate for themselves alone and
the labourer will work with his full strength and a glad enthusiasm.
No man ever did his best work without some great ideal before him
which refreshed and quickened all his energies. If the business man
would save himself from becoming sordid, and the poorest paid working
man from becoming sullen and hardened, they should keep ever before
them this vision of service.