The purpose of this discourse is to set forth some of the social and
public aspects of trade and commerce in our modern life. We have heard
much in these recent times concerning the State in its relation to
trade, industry, and the economic concerns of individuals and groups.
Rapidly changing conditions, however, make it fitting that more should
be said from the opposite standpoint;--that is to say, regarding the
responsibilities of the business community as such toward the State in
particular and toward the whole social organism in general.
Some of the thoughts to which I should like to give expression might
perhaps too readily fall into abstract or philosophical terms. They
might, on the other hand, only too readily clothe themselves in cant
phrases and assume the hortatory tone. I shall try to avoid dialectic
or theory on the one hand, and preaching on the other. I take it that
what I am to say is addressed chiefly to young men, and that it ought
to serve a practical object.
In the universities the spirit of idealism dominates. The academic
point of view is not merely an intellectual one, but it is also ethical
and altruistic. In the business world, on the other hand, we are told
that no success is possible except that which is based upon the motive
of money-getting by any means, however ruthless. We are told that the
standards of business life are in conflict irreconcilable with true
idealistic aims. It is this situation that I wish to analyze and
discuss; for it concerns the student in a very direct way.
Our moralists point out the dangerous prevalence of those low standards
of personal life and conduct summed up in the term "commercialism." We
are warned by some of our foremost teachers and ethical leaders against
commercialism in politics and commercialism in society. So bitterly
reprobated indeed is the influence of commercialism that it might be
inferred that commerce itself is at best a necessary evil and a thing
to be apologized for. But if we are to accept this point of view
without careful discrimination, we may well be alarmed; for we live in
a world given over as never before to the whirl of industry and the
rush and excitement of the market-place.
This, of all ages, is the age of the business man. The heroic times
when warfare was the chief concern of nations, have long since passed
by. So too the ages of faith,--when theology was the mainspring of
action, when whole peoples went on long crusades, and when building
cathedrals and burning heretics were typical of men's efforts and
convictions--have fallen far into the historic background. Further, we
would seem in the main to have left behind us that period of which the
French Revolution is the most conspicuous landmark, when the gaining of
political liberty for the individual seemed the one supreme good, and
the object for which nations and communities were ready to sacrifice
all else.
Through these and other periods characterized by their own especial
aims and ideals, we have come to an age when commercialism is the
all-absorbing thing; and we are told by pessimists that these dominant
conditions are hopelessly incompatible with academic idealism or with
the maintenance of high ethical standards, whether for the guidance of
the individual himself or for the acceptance and control of the
community. It is precisely this state of affairs, then, that I desire
briefly to consider. And I shall keep in mind those bearings of it that
might seem to have some relation to the views and aims of students who
are soon to go out from the sheltered life of the university,--under
the necessity, whether they shrink from it or not, of becoming part and
parcel of this organism of business and trade that has invaded almost
every sphere of modern activity.
I have only recently heard a great and eloquent teacher of morals,
himself an exponent of the highest and finest culture to which we have
attained, speak in terms of the utmost doubt and anxiety regarding the
drift of the times. To his mind, the evils and dangers accompanying the
stupendous developments of our day are such as to set what he called
commercialism in direct antagonism to all that in his mind represented
the higher good, which he termed idealism. The impression that he left
upon his audience was that the forces of our present-day business life
are inherently opposed to the achievement of the best results in
statecraft and in the general life of the community. He could propose
no remedy for the evils he deplored except education, and the saving of
the old ideals through the remnant of the faithful who had not bowed
the knee in the temple of Mammon. But he pointed out no way by which to
protect the tender blossoms of academic idealism, when they meet their
inevitable exposure in due time to the blighting and withering blasts
of the commercialism that to him seemed so little reconcilable with the
good, the true, and the beautiful.
To all this the practical man can only reply, that if, indeed,
commercialism itself cannot be made to furnish a soil and an atmosphere
in which idealism can grow, bud, blossom, and bear glorious
fruit,--then idealism is hopelessly a lost cause. If it be not possible
to promote things ideally good through these very forces of commercial
and industrial life, then the outlook is a gloomy one for the social
moralist and the political purist.
It is not a defensive position that I propose to take. I should not
think it needful at this time even so much as briefly to reflect any of
those timorous and painful arguments _pro_ and _con_ that one finds at
times running through the columns of the press, particularly of the
religious weeklies, on such a question as, for example, whether
nowadays a man can at the same time be a true Christian and a
successful business man; or whether the observance of the principles of
common honesty is at all compatible with a winning effort to make a
decent living.
I am well aware that the thoughtful and intellectual founder of this
lectureship, under which I have been invited to speak, takes no such
narrow view either of morality on the one hand or of the function of
business life on the other. His definition of morality in business
would demand something very different from the mere avoidance of
certain obvious transgressions of the accepted rules of conduct,
particularly of that commandment which says: "Thou shalt not steal."
Nor, on the other hand, would his definition of the functions of
business life be in any manner bounded by the notion that business is a
pursuit having for its sole object the getting of the largest possible
amount of money.
Those people who are content to apply negative moral standards to the
carrying on of business life remind one of the little boy's familiar
definition of salt: "Salt," said he, "is what makes potatoes taste bad
when you don't put any on." According to that sort of definition,
morality in business would be defined as that quality which makes the
grocer good and respectable when he resists temptation and does not put
sand in the sugar. The smug maxim that honesty is the best policy,
while doubtless true enough as a verdict of human experience under
normal conditions, is not fitted to arouse much enthusiasm as a
statement of ultimate ethical aims and ideals.
If it were admitted that the sole or guiding motive in a business
career must needs be the accumulation of money, I should certainly not
think it worth while, in the name of trade morals, to urge young men
who are to enter business life that they play the game according to
safe and well-recognized rules. I would not take the trouble to advise
them to study the penal code and to familiarize themselves with the
legal definitions of grand and petit larceny, of embezzlement, or
fraud, or arson, in order that they might escape certain hazards that
beset a too narrow kind of devotion to business success. It is true,
doubtless, that a business career affords peculiar opportunities, and
is therefore subject to its own characteristic temptations, as respects
the purely private and personal standards of conduct.
The magnitude of our economic movement, the very splendor of the
opportunities that the swift development of a vast young country like
ours affords, must inevitably in some cases upset at once the sober
business judgment of men, and in some cases the standard of personal
honor and good faith, in the temptation to get rich quickly; so that
wrong is done thereby to a man's associates or to those whose interests
are in his hands, while still greater wrong is done to his own
character.
But, even against this dangerous greed for wealth and the
unscrupulousness and ruthlessness which it engenders, it is no part of
my present object to warn any young man. I take it that the negative
standards of private conduct are usually not much affected by a man's
choice of a pursuit in life. If any man's honor could be filched from
him by a merely pecuniary reward, whether greater or less, I should not
think it likely that he would be much safer in the long run if he chose
the clerical profession, for example, than if he went into business.
Sooner or later his character would disclose itself. It is not, then,
of the private and negative standards of conduct that I wish to
speak,--except by way of such allusions as these. And even these
allusions are only for the sake of making more distinct the positive
and active phases of business ethics that I should like to present in
such a way as to fasten them upon the attention.
Many young men, to whom these views are addressed, will doubtless
choose, or have already chosen, what is commonly known as a
professional career. The ministry, law, and medicine are the oldest and
best recognized of the so-called liberal or learned professions. Now
what are the distinctive marks of professional life? Are the men who
practice these professions not also business men? And if so, how are
they different from those business men who are considered laymen, or
non-professional? Obviously the distinctions that are to be drawn, if
any, are in the nature of marked tendencies. We shall not expect to
find any hard and fast lines. Many lawyers, some doctors, and a few
clergymen are clearly enough business men, in the sense that they
attach more importance to the economic bearings of the part they play
in the social organism than to the higher ethical or intellectual
aspects of their work.
I have read and heard many definitions of what really constitutes a
professional man. Whatever else, however, may characterize the nature
of his calling, it seems to me plain that no man can be thought a true
or worthy member of a profession who does not admit, both in theory and
in the rules and practices of his life, that he has a public function
to serve, and that he must frequently be at some discomfort or
disadvantage because of the calls of professional duty. The laborer is
worthy of his hire; and the professional man is entitled to obtain, if
he can, a competence for himself and his family from the useful and
productive service he is rendering to his fellow men. He may even,
through genius or through the great confidence his character and skill
inspire, gain considerable wealth in the practice of his profession.
But if he is a true professional man he does not derive his incentive
to effort solely or chiefly from the pecuniary gains that his
profession brings him. Nor is the amount of his income regarded among
the fellow members of his profession as the true test or measure of his
success.
Thus the lawyer, in the theory of his profession, bears an important
public relation to the dispensing of justice and to the protection of
the innocent and the feeble. He is not a private person, but a part of
the system for supporting the reign of law and of right in the
community. Historically, in this country, the lawyer has also borne a
great part in the making and administering of our institutions of
government. If, as some of us think, the ethical code of that
profession needs to be somewhat revised in view of present-day
conditions, and needs also to be more sternly applied to some of the
members of the profession, it is true, none the less, that there
clearly belongs to this great calling a series of duties of a public
nature, some of them imposed by the laws of the land, and others
inherent in the very nature of the occupation itself.
It is true in an even more marked and undeniable fashion that the
profession of medicine, by virtue of its public and social aspects, is
distinguished in a marked way from a calling in life in which a man
might feel that what he did was strictly his own business, subject to
nobody's scrutiny, or inquiry, or interference. The physician's public
obligation is in part prescribed by the laws of the State which
regulate medical practice, and in very large part by the professional
codes which have been evolved by the profession itself for its own
guidance. It is not the amount of his fee that the overworked doctor is
thinking about when he risks his own health in response to night calls,
or when he devotes himself to some especially painful or difficult
case. Nor is it a mere consideration of his possible earnings that
would deter him from seeking comfort and safety by taking his family to
Europe at a time when an epidemic had broken out in his own
neighborhood.
I need not allude to the unselfish devotion to the good of the
community that in so high a degree marks the lives of most of the
members of the clerical profession, for this is evident to all
observant persons.
On the other hand, it cannot be too clearly perceived that there is
nothing in the disinterestedness, and in the obligation to render
public service characterizing professional life that amounts to
unnatural self-denial or painful renunciation,--unless in some extreme
and individual cases. On the contrary, professional life at its best
offers a great advantage in so far as it permits a man to think first
of the work he is doing and the social service he is rendering, rather
than of pecuniary reward. I have myself on more than one occasion
pointed out to young men the greater prospect for happiness in life
that comes with the choice of a calling in which the work itself
primarily focuses the attention, and in which the pecuniary reward
comes as an incident rather than as the conscious and direct result of
a given effort.
The greatest pleasure in work is that which comes from the trained and
regulated exercise of the faculty of imagination. In the conduct of
every law case this faculty has abundant opportunity, as it also has in
the efforts of the physician to aid nature in the restoration of health
and vigor in the individual, or in the sanitary protection of the
community. I hope I have made clear this point: that pecuniary success,
even in large measure, in the work of a professional man, may be
entirely compatible with disinterested devotion to a kind of work that
makes for the public weal, while it is also worthy of pursuit for its
own sake, and brings content and even happiness in the doing. And it is
clear enough, in the case of a professional man, that he is false to
his profession and to his plain obligations if he shows himself to be
ruled by the anti-social spirit; that is to say, if he considers
himself absolved from any duties towards the community about him;
thinks that the practice of his profession is a private affair for his
own profit and advantage, and holds that he has done his whole duty
when he has escaped liability for malpractice or disbarment.
But the three oldest and best recognized professions no longer stand
alone, in the estimation of our higher educational authorities and of
the intelligent public. In a democracy like ours, with a constantly
advancing conception of what is involved in education for citizenship
and for participation in every individual function of the social and
economic life, the work of the teacher comes to be recognized as
professional in the highest sense. Teaching, indeed, seems destined in
the near future to become the very foremost of all the professions.
This recognition will come when the idea takes full possession of the
public mind that the chief task of each generation is to train the next
one, and to transmit such stores of knowledge and useful experience as
it has received from its predecessors or has evolved for itself.
It is obvious enough that the work of the teacher gives room for the
play of the loftiest ideals, and that its functions are essentially
public and disinterested. But there are other callings, such as those
of the architect and engineer, which have also come to be spoken of as
professional in their nature. Their kinship to the older professions
has been more readily recognized by the men of conservative university
traditions, because much of the preparation for these callings can
advantageously be of an academic sort. Architecture in its historical
aspects is closely associated with the study of classical periods;
while the profession of the engineer relates itself to the immemorial
university devotion to mathematics. And in like manner the man who for
practical purposes becomes a chemist or an electrician would be easily
admitted by President Eliot, for example, to the favored fellowship of
the professional classes for the reason, first, of the disciplinary and
liberalizing nature of the studies that underlie his calling, and, in
the second place, of the public and social aspects of the functions he
fulfils in the pursuit of his vocation.
The architect, the civil or mechanical or electrical engineer, and the
chemist, as well as the professional teacher, the trained librarian, or
the journalist who carries on his work with due sense of its almost
unequaled public duties and responsibilities,--all these are now
admitted by dicta of our foremost authorities to a place equal with the
law, medicine, and the ministry in the list of the professions; that is
to say, in the group of callings which, under my definition, are
distinguished especially by their public character. And in this group,
of course, should be included politicians, legislators, and public
administrators in so far as they serve the public interests reputably
and in a professional spirit. Nor should we forget such special classes
of public servants as the officers of the army and navy; while nobody
will deny public character and professional rank to men of letters,
artists, musicians and actors.
In all these callings it is demanded not merely that men shall be
subject to the private rules of conduct,--that they must not cheat, or
lie, or steal, or bear false witness, or be bad neighbors or
undesirable citizens,--but in addition and in the most important sense
that they shall be subject to positive ethical standards that relate to
the welfare of the whole community, and that require of them the
exercise of a true public spirit.
The man of public spirit is he who is able at a given moment, under
certain conditions, to set the public welfare before his own.
Furthermore, he is a man who is trained and habituated to that point of
view, so that he is not aware of any pangs of martyrdom or even of any
exercise of self-denial when he is concerning himself about the public
good even to his own momentary inconvenience or disadvantage. Public
spirit is that state or habit of mind which leads a man to care greatly
for the general welfare. It is this ethical quality that to my mind
should be the great aim and object of training.
On its best side, what we term the professional spirit is, then, very
closely related to this commendable quality in men of a right
intellectual and moral development that we call public spirit. The
chief difference lies in this: that whereas all professional men may be
public-spirited in a general sense, each professional man should, in
addition, manifest a special and technical sort of public spirit that
pertains to the nature of his calling. The lawyer should have a
particularly keen regard for the equitable administration of justice.
The doctor should truly care for the physical wholesomeness and
well-being of the community. The clergyman should be alive to those
things that concern the rectitude and purity of life. The journalist
should be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the enlightenment
of public opinion; and so on. Without either the general or the
technical manifestations of public spirit, in short, the so-called
professional man is a reproach to his guild and a failure in his
neighborhood.
Now, what has all this to do with the moral standards that belong to
the business career as distinguished from the professional life? My
answer must be very clear and very direct if I am to justify so long an
analysis of the ethical characteristics of the professions themselves.
I have merely used the time-honored method of trying to lead you by way
of familiar, admitted points of view to certain points of view that, if
not wholly new, are at least less familiar and less widely recognized.
The whole thesis that I wish to develop is simply this: that however it
may have been in business life in times past and gone, there has been
such a tremendous change in the organization and methods of the
business world and also in the relative importance of the functions of
the business man in the community, that the distinctions which have
hitherto set apart the professional classes have become obsolete for
all practical purposes in many branches and departments of the business
world.
At least, the work of the responsible leaders is no longer to be
regarded as essentially a thing of private concern and free from public
responsibility. If the business world is not characterized, first, by
public spirit and a sense of public duty in general, and, second, by
the special and technical sense of public obligation that pertains to
particular kinds or departments of business activity, then it is
falling short of its best opportunities and evading its providential
tasks. It is for the modern business world to recognize the conditions
that have in the fulness of time given it so great a power and so
dominant a position; and it must not shirk the responsibilities that
belong to it as fully and truly as they belong to any of the
professions.
I hold, then, that the young man of education and opportunity who
proposes to go into a business career enters it not merely with a low
and unworthy standard if his sole motive and object be to acquire
wealth, but he also enters it in disregard of the ideas that fill the
minds of the best modern business leaders. He shows a pitiable lack of
appreciation of the elements that are to constitute real business
success in the period within which his own career must fall.
Let us consider, briefly, the evolution of our present-day economic or
business life, and then take note of the necessary place that
particular classes of business men must hold in the structure of our
society. I, for my part, look upon this last century of economic
progress,--under the sway of what is often called "capitalism" as a
term of reproach,--as an immeasurable boon to mankind. It began with
the practical utilization of several great inventions, notably that of
steam power, which broke up the old household and village industries,
gave us the modern factory system, and along with the development of
railroads gave us the modern industrial city. This new and
revolutionizing system of industry and business forced its way into a
world of poverty, of disease, of depraved public life, of low morals in
the main pervading the community,--a world for the most part of class
distinctions in which the lot even of the privileged few was not a very
noble or enviable one, while the state of the vast majority was little
better than that of serfs.
Many writers have sought to throw a charm and a glamour over that old
condition of economic life and society that followed the break-up of
feudalism and that preceded the creation of our new political and
industrial institutions. But with some mitigations it was for most
people a period, as I have said, of squalor, disease, and degradation.
The fundamental trouble could be summed up in the one word, _poverty_.
The mission of the new industrial system, for the most part unconscious
and unrecognized, was to transform the world by abolishing the reign of
poverty. Doubtless it would be desirable if the improvement of
conditions, material and spiritual, could make progress with exactly
even pace on some perfectly symmetrical plan. But history shows us that
the forward social movement has proceeded first in one aspect, then in
another, on lines so tangential, often so zigzag, that it is difficult
until one gets distance enough for perspective, to see that any true
progress has been made at all.
Thus, the modern industrial system, which found the conditions of
poverty, disease, and hardship prevalent, seemed for quite a long time,
in its rude breaking up of old relations and its ruthless adherence to
certain newly proclaimed principles, to have brought matters from bad
to worse. The squalor and poverty of the village of hand-loom weavers
seemed only intensified in the new industrial towns to which the
weavers flocked from their deserted hamlets. Manufacturers were doing
business under the fiercest and most unregulated competition.
Economists were demonstrating their "law of supply and demand" and
their "iron law of wages" as capable in themselves of regulating all
the conditions and relations of business life. Epidemics raged and
depravity prevailed in the new factory centers.
But things were not, in reality, going from bad to worse. The
beginnings of a better order had to be based upon two things: first and
foremost, the sheer creation of capital; second, the discipline and
training of workers. In the first phases, the new modern business
period had to be a period of production. There had got to be developed
the instrumentalities for the creation of wealth. Until the industrial
system had raised up its class of efficient workers and had created its
great mass of capital for productive purposes, there could be no supply
of cheap goods; and without an abundant and cheap output there could be
no possible diffusion of economic benefits; in other words, no marked
amelioration of the prevailing poverty.
It required some development of wealth to lift our modern peoples out
of a poverty too grinding and too debasing for intellectual or moral
progress. It is true that the factory towns, created as they have all
been by modern industrial conditions during the past century, brought
their distinctive evils. There was overcrowding in ill-built tenement
houses; and long hours for women and children in the factories. Yet
with these and many other disadvantages, the new industrial system made
for discipline and for intelligence, and above all for a new kind of
solidarity and for a sense of brotherhood among workers.
In due time the worst evils began to be mitigated, largely through the
application of those very methods of organization which had
characterized the new kind of industry itself. Thus for men who had
applied steam power to manufacturing and had begun to build railroads,
it was soon perceived to be a matter not only of sanitary and social
service, but of pecuniary profit, to provide water supplies, public
illumination, and other conveniences to the crowded city dwellers.
Moreover, with the progress of industry and the development of
railroads and steam navigation, production and trade took on an
ever-increasing volume.
Then the world began to be less poor. There had been no rich men in the
modern sense, and of course no such thing as capitalized corporations
for production. The richest man in the United States at the time of his
death, a little more than a hundred years ago, was George Washington,
with his land and his slaves; and so in England and France there were
no rich men in the modern sense--that is to say, no men who controlled
great masses of productive capital. The men of wealth were those who
held landed estates. The chief business of all countries was
agriculture. The capitalistic system in industry and trade existed in
its rudiments and in limited measure; but all its great achievements
were yet to be wrought.
All modern business life, then, is the result of this growth of
productive capital, and its application and constant reapplication to
the production of wealth. It made its way by virtue of an intense
individual initiative and a fierce competitive struggle. But unlovely
as were these things, many of their phases were necessary at a certain
stage. It was this fierce competition that compelled capital to pay the
lowest possible wages in order to market cheap goods. But the same
situation stimulated the use, one after another, of new labor-saving
inventions in order to increase the per capita productivity. This
process was attended by the higher efficiency of the worker and an
increase in his earning capacity. As his position began to improve, the
worker gained some hope and cheer; and he and his fellows began to
organize, with the result that both wages and conditions of labor were
steadily improved, and the workman began to attain approximately his
share of benefits.
All this is a familiar story, although the depth of its significance is
beyond the compass of any living human intelligence. It is easy to say
in a glib sentence that the amount of wealth produced every few years
nowadays is equal to all the accumulated wealth of all the centuries
down to the early part of the nineteenth; but the social meaning of so
great a change baffles all attempt at full comprehension.
The competitive system, which had been essential to the launching of
this modern period of production, and which had given to it so much of
its irresistible momentum, at length brought the economic organization
to a point of development where, in some fields of production, it was
no longer a benefit. The accumulation of capital had become so
large,--and with new inventions the possible output had become so
abundant, that it was well nigh impossible to trust to the blind
working of demand and supply to regulate things in a beneficial way. It
began to dawn on men's minds that a successful period of competitive
economic life might lead to a period largely dominated by
non-competitive and cooperative principles.
The superior possibilities of this newest regime, along with its many
difficulties and perplexities, began to captivate the minds, not merely
of theoretical students and onlookers, but, even more, of great masters
of industry and productive capital. It began to be seen that in place
of blind and fierce competition as a regulator of prices and as an
equalizer of supply and demand, there might come to be gradually
substituted some more consciously scientific methods of business
administration and of the adjustment of production to the needs of the
market.
Furthermore, with the development of business on the great scale,
capital had become relatively abundant and cheap, while, on the other
hand, labor was becoming relatively expensive and exacting. It was
evident that the modern system of industry had passed through its
earlier period to one of comparative maturity; and that the problem of
wealth production was no longer so exclusively the pressing one, but
that the problems of distribution were demanding more attention.
How to organize business life on a basis at once stable and efficient;
how to see that capital was assured of a normal even though a declining
percentage of dividends; while labor should be rewarded according to
its capacity and desert,--were problems which took on public rather
than private aspects. And when the business world began to face these
problems with the consciousness that they were to be met, it had
virtually passed over from the lower plane of moral and social
responsibility to the higher plane where what the directing minds do or
decide is not measured solely by immediate results in money-getting,
but also by the test of larger social and public utilities.
Although these conditions are not novel ones, and are therefore not
difficult to grasp even when stated in general terms, it is still true
that the concrete often helps to make the point appear more pertinent.
Take then the railroad business as it is now shaping itself, in
comparison with its conditions and methods twenty or thirty years ago.
The railroads have always existed by virtue of charters which gave them
a quasi-public character, and have always been theoretically subject to
certain old principles of English common law under which the public or
common carrier, like the innkeeper, performs a function not wholly
private in its nature. Nevertheless, in its earlier stages the railroad
system of this country was in large part constructed and operated by
its projectors with no sense whatever of responsibility for their
performance of public functions, but with the idea that they were
carrying on their own private business in which interference on the
part of the public was to be avoided and resented. They fought the
railroad codes of State legislatures in the federal courts; they made
oppressive rates to give value to new issues of watered stock; they
discriminated in favor of one city and against another; by a system of
secret rebates they made different terms with every shipper, thus
enabling one merchant or manufacturer to destroy his competitor; and
they pursued in general a career at least anti-social in its spirit and
false and short-sighted in its principles.
A profound change--would that it were already complete!--is coming
about in this great field of transportation business. It is perceived
that many of the evils to which I have alluded were incident to the
speculative periods of construction and development in a new country.
The better leaders in the business of railway administration now see
clearly that it is the duty of the railroads to work with and for the
public and not against it. The railroads are gradually passing out of
the hands of the stockjobbers and speculators, into the control of
trained administrators. It is to be remembered that in a country like
ours, the largest single branch of organized administration is that of
the railroads. We have reached a point where their relations to all the
elaborate interests of the community are such that their public
character becomes more and more pronounced and evident. It was only the
other day that a brilliant railway administrator, Mr. Charles S.
Mellen, recently president of the Northern Pacific, and now president
of the New York, New Haven & Hartford system, made some statements in
an address to the business men of Hartford at a Board of Trade meeting.
With much else of the same import, he made the following significant
remarks:
"If corporations are to continue to do their work as they are best
fitted to, those qualities in their representatives that have resulted
in the present prejudice against them must be relegated to the
background.
"They must come out into the open and see and be seen. They must take
the public into their confidence and ask for what they want and no
more, and then be prepared to explain satisfactorily what advantage
will accrue to the public if they are given their desires, for they are
permitted to exist not that they may make money solely, but that they
may effectively serve those from whom they derive their power.
Publicity should rule now. Publicity, and not secrecy, will win
hereafter, and laws will be construed by their intent and not killed by
their letter; otherwise public utilities will be owned and operated by
the public which created them, even though the service be less
efficient and the result less satisfactory from a financial
standpoint."
Mr. Mellen's state of mind is that which ought to prevail among all the
managers of corporations which enjoy public franchises and perform
functions fundamental to the welfare of the community. There will at
times be prejudice and passion on the part of the public, and unfair
demands will be made. We shall not see the attainment of ideal
conditions in the management or the public relations of any great
business corporations in our day. But the time has come when any
intelligent and capable young man who chooses to enter the service of a
railroad or of some other great corporation may rightly feel that he
becomes part of a system whose operation is vital to the public
welfare. He may further feel that there is room in such a calling for
all his intelligence and for the exercise and growth of all the best
sentiments of his moral nature.
In the vast mechanism of modern business the constructive imagination
may find its full play; and the desire to be of service to one's fellow
men in a spirit reasonably disinterested may find opportunity to
satisfy itself every day. Under these circumstances there is no reason
why railway administration should not take on the same ethical
standards as belong rightly to governmental administration, to
educational administration, or to the best professional life.
The same thing is clearly true when one considers nowadays the delicate
and important functions of the world of banking and finance. The
old-fashioned money-changer and the usurer of earlier periods were
regarded as the very antithesis of men engaged in honorable mercantile
life, and especially of those who possess a social spirit and the
desire to be useful members of the community. But in these days the
banks are not merely private money-making institutions, but have public
functions that admittedly affect the whole social organism, from the
government itself down to the humblest laborer. They must concern
themselves about the soundness and the sufficiency of the monetary
circulation; they must protect the credit and foster the welfare of
honest merchants and manufacturers; they must cooperate in critical
times to help one another, and thus to sustain the public and private
credit and avert commercial disaster; they must at all hazards protect
the savings of the poor. Thus the banks, like the railroads and many
other corporate enterprises, are quasi-public affairs, in the conduct
of which the public obligation grows ever clearer and stronger.
We are not at heart--in this splendid country of ours--engaged in a mad
struggle and race for wealth. We are engaged rather in the greatest
effort ever made in the world for the upbuilding of a higher
civilization. To avow that this civilization must rest upon a physical
and material basis,--that is to say, upon a high development of our
productive capacity and upon a constant improvement in our processes of
distribution and exchange,--is not, on the other hand, to confess that
our civilization is materialistic in its nature or in its aims. I was
very glad, the other day, to read the wholesome and understanding words
of a distinguished Boston clergyman who is just now coming to New York
to take charge of an important parish. He declared that this nation was
founded on an ideal, and that the most powerful influences in its life
today are working toward noble ideals. The moral and spiritual tone of
the country, he asserted, is higher than ever, in spite of the
accidents of wealth and poverty. He declared that the great host of men
and women who cherish our ideals will continue to stamp idealism upon
the minds and hearts of our youth, and that they in turn "will convert
wealth to the service of ideals."
Such views are not merely the expressions of a comfortable optimist.
They are true to the facts of our current progress. There are vast
portions of this country today in which the enterprising business man
who can succeed in selling to the farmers an honest and effective
commercial fertilizer is the best possible missionary of idealism,--is,
in fact, a veritable angel for the spread of sweetness and light. There
are regions where the capitalist or the company that will build a
cotton mill or some other kind of factory is rescuing whole communities
from degradation. It is poverty that has kept the South so backward,
and it is poverty alone that explains the illiteracy and the
lawlessness not merely of the Kentucky mountains, but of great areas in
other States as well. Good schools cannot be supported in regions like
those, for the palpable reason that the taxable wealth of an entire
school district cannot yield enough to pay the salary of a teacher. But
when modern business invades those uplands, utilizes the water-power
now wasted, opens the mines, builds cotton factories or foundries, the
situation changes almost as if by magic.
There will, indeed, ensue a brief period of disturbance due to changed
social conditions,--to women and children in factories, and other
things of incidental or serious disadvantage. But, as against a
survival of the sort of life that was widely prevalent a century or two
ago, all the phenomena of our modern industrial life make their
appearance, in full development. The one-room cabin gives place to the
little house of several rooms. There is rapid diffusion of those minor
comforts and agencies which make for self-respect and personal and
family advancement. The advent of capital, that is to say, of taxable
property, is speedily followed by the good schoolhouse and the good
teacher.
It is instructive to note the transformation that is thus taking place
in one county after another of the Carolinas, or Georgia, or others of
the Southern States, because the conditions make it possible to witness
within a single decade the triumph of those business forces which,
while they have even more truly and completely transformed the
prosperous parts of America and Europe, have operated more gradually
through longer periods, and therefore in a less easily perceived and
dramatic fashion.
Our modern ideals have required, not the refinement and the culture of
the select few, but the uplifting and progress of the multitude. This
could only be possible through a general development of wealth, so vast
in comparison with what had previously existed as to constitute the
most highly revolutionary fact in the history of human civilization and
progress. The man, therefore, who has a clear perception of those laws
of mind and of society under which modern economic forces have been set
at work, cannot for a moment think that the end and outcome of this
modern business system is a new kind of human bondage, "the rich
growing richer and the poor growing poorer"; or that it can mean any
such thing as the elevation of property at the expense of manhood.
Even if it were a part of my subject to discuss the growth of vast
individual fortunes as an incident of this modern development of
wealth, which it is not, there would be no time for more than a passing
allusion. And in making such an allusion, I might be content to call
attention to my earlier dictum, that progress is not upon direct lines,
but tangential or zigzag. When the factory appears on the Piedmont
slopes of the Appalachian country, it may indeed make a fortune for the
missionary of civilization who planted it there. But meanwhile it has
given the whole neighborhood its first chance to relate itself to the
civilized world. I am content for the present to leave that
neighborhood in possession of its opportunities, serenely confident
that it will in due time work out its own completer destiny.
When the capitalist has retired from the scene of his exploitation,
will the day arrive when the regenerated neighborhood will own that
factory, and others, too, for itself? Very likely. In any case, the
neighborhood has been emancipated from its worst disadvantages.
In short, I have little doubt but that the further progress of our
civilization will give effect to certain economic laws and tendencies,
and to certain social rules and principles, that will make for a higher
measure of equality in the distribution of realized wealth. Meanwhile
wherever a practical step can be taken to remedy an evil, let us do
what we can to promote that step. Let us recognize the already great
possibilities for useful participation in the social and public life
that belong to an honorable business career.
From the standpoint of the intellectual interest of the young man going
into business, let it be borne in mind that there are scientific
principles underlying every branch of trade or commerce or industry,
and that there is almost, if not quite, as much room for the delightful
play of the faculty of imagination in the successful conduct of a soap
business as in writing poetry or in making statuary groups for world's
fairs. The cultivation of public spirit in the broad sense, and the
determination to be an all-round good and efficient citizen and member
of the community, will often help a man amazingly to discern the
opportunities for usefulness that lie in the direct line of his
business work. The more thoroughly he studies underlying
principles--whether of a technical sort as related to his own trade, or
of a general sort having to do with the organization and general
methods of commerce--the less likely he will be to take narrow and
anti-social views of business life. The high development of his
intelligence in relation to his own work will show him the value in his
business--as in all else in life--of the standard thing, the genuine
thing, the thing that will bear the test as contrasted with the shoddy,
or the inferior, or the spurious.
Our technological schools, our colleges of mechanic arts, our
institutes of agriculture and their related experiment stations,--these
are all teaching us many valuable object-lessons regarding the way in
which the wealth of the individual and that of the community can both,
at the same time, be advanced by scientific methods. Thus it is coming
about that business life is ever more ready to welcome the most highly
trained kinds of intelligence, inasmuch as it is perceived that
specialized knowledge is henceforth to be the most valuable commodity
that a man can possess.
I have already said that the delicate problems of distribution must be
faced ever more frankly and liberally by the modern business world.
Thus, those who control capital, or administer capitalized enterprises,
cannot afford any longer to be without a knowledge of the history and
significance of the labor movement. We should not have had the
desperate struggle between anthracite coal corporations and the miners
in Pennsylvania, a year or so ago, if there had been a full
understanding on the part of the capitalists of the honorable and
valuable nature of trade agreements, and particularly of the history of
the relations of capital and labor in the bituminous coal districts of
the United States. I am speaking now from the standpoint of the
business man. There is much to be said, doubtless, in respect to the
shortcomings and the sometimes fatuous and even suicidal methods of the
labor organizations. But for the modern business man who cares to take
his place influentially in commerce, in social life, and as a man among
men in his city or his commonwealth, it is no longer justifiable to be
unfamiliar with the labor question in its economics and its history.
Herein lies one great service that the university can perform (and our
best colleges and universities are today performing it with marked
intelligence and ability), the service, namely, of providing very
liberal courses for young men who expect to go into business, in the
general science of economics, in the history of modern economic
progress, in the development of the wage system, in the history and
methods of organized labor, and in very much else that helps to place
the life of a practical man of business affairs upon a broad and
liberal basis. In the early days of our history it was the especial
function of the college to train young men for the ministry. In a
somewhat later period it was notably true of institutions like Yale and
Princeton that their training seemed to fit many men for the law and
for statecraft. We had, you see, passed from that theocratic phase of
colonial New England life to the political constructive period of our
young republic.
But we have been passing on until we have emerged in a great and
transcendent period of commercial expansion and scientific discovery
and application. It is a hopeful sign, therefore, that our universities
are finding out and admitting the demand that present-day conditions
impose, and are training many men in the pursuit of modern science,
while they are training many others in the understanding of the
application of social and economic principles to modern life. All this
they are doing and can well do without ignoring the value of the older
forms of scholarship and culture.
But I have a few remarks to make also upon the ethical relations of the
business world of today toward the political world; that is to say,
toward organized government, whether in its sovereign or in its
subordinate forms. We cannot take too high a ground in proclaiming the
value, for the present, at least, of the political organization of
society. I should like to dwell upon this point, but I must merely
state it. If the State: _i.e._, the political form of social
organization, is valuable,--it stands to reason that it must be
respected and maintained at its best. It is also obvious that it will
have a higher or a lower character and efficiency, according to the
attitude toward it taken by one or another of the dominant factors that
make up the complex body politic.
Thus, for example, it is the feeling of men in control of the political
organization in France today that the Church, as a great factor in the
social structure of the nation, is essentially hostile to the spirit
and purposes of a liberal republic. Hence a great disturbance of
various relationships. I do not cite that instance to express even the
shade of an opinion. My point is that if the political organization of
society is desirable and to be maintained, it is a fortunate thing when
one finds the dominant forces of society rendering loyal and faithful
support to the laws and institutions of government and recognizing
without reserve the sovereignty of the State. Yet in our own country
there is a widespread feeling that many of the most potent forces and
agencies in our business life are not wholly patriotic, in that they
are not willing in practice to recognize the necessity of the
domination of government and of law. I do not believe that this is
permanently and generally true. It would constitute a great danger if
it were a fixed or a growing tendency.
As matters stand, however, every one must admit that there is an
element of danger that lies in the very fact that as a nation we are in
a condition of peace, content, and prosperity, and do not find our
political institutions irksome. The danger consists in this: that under
such circumstances the rewards of business and professional life are
for the most part so much more certain and satisfactory than those
which come from the precarious pursuit of politics, that public
interests have a tendency to suffer from being in weak hands, while
private interests have a tendency to assert themselves unduly, from
being in the hands of men of superior force. Thus it happens that it is
often difficult for the State to maintain that dignity, that mastery,
that high position, as the impartial arbiter and dispenser of justice,
which it is now even more necessary than ever that it should maintain,
in order that the whole social organization should keep a true harmony
and a safe balance.
At present, the State is largely concerned with the maintenance of
conditions under which the economic and business life may operate
equally and prosperously. The State in one sense is the master of the
people. In another sense it is merely their creature and their agent
for such purposes as they choose to assign it. Is the State, then, to
absorb the industrial functions, and are we to develop into a
socialistic commonwealth? Or, shall the political democracy and the
cooperative organization of business life go on side by side, related
at many points but in the main distinct from each other? Whatever the
relation of the State to industry may be destined to become in the
distant future, we may be sure that there will be no rash upheavals, no
harmful socialistic experiments, if the potent business world clearly
sees how necessary to its own salvation it is that the State shall be
maintained upon a high plane of dignity and honor, and that the
official dispensation of justice, as well as the official
administration of the laws, shall be prompt, just and impartial.
There is no higher duty, therefore, incumbent upon the business man of
today than to bear his part in promoting and maintaining the purity of
political life. The modern business man should regard good government
as one of the vital conditions of the best economic progress. Yet
scores of instances are at hand that show to what a painful extent
certain business interests again and again, for purposes of immediate
advantage,--to secure a franchise, to escape a tax, or to procure some
improper favor or advantage at the hands of those in political
authority,--have employed corrupt methods and thus stained the fair
escutcheon of American business honor, while breaking down the one most
indispensable condition of general business progress,--namely, honest
and efficient free government.
I will not dwell upon these things. It is enough to say that they are
things the modern business man must have upon his conscience. For, if
such offenses come by way of the business world, their remedies must
also come, and indeed can only come, by that same path. In our
municipal life, for example, it is the aroused interest and zeal of the
best business community for better government and better conditions
that can alone produce important results. Happily, all over the country
we find chambers of commerce, boards of trade, merchants' associations,
and other bodies of men of practical business affairs, taking their
stand for the transaction of public business upon high standards of
character and efficiency. I have no doubt or fears as to what the
result will be. All of our large cities are themselves purely the
creations of modern industrial, commercial, and transportation
conditions. And I hold that these very forces of industrial and
commercial life that have created the problems by bringing together
great masses of people in crowded communities, must and can in turn
solve the problems by the application to municipal government of the
scientific and intelligent principles which belong to the best phases
of business life.
All of this relates to my subject; but I must pass it by with a mere
statement or two. It belongs to the developed constructive imagination
and to the trained ethical sense of the modern business man to perfect
the transit systems, to improve the housing conditions, to assure cheap
sanitary water supplies, cheap illumination, and, above all, due
provision for universal education, parks, museums, and opportunities
for recreation,--in short, all possible improvements of environment
that can make life in our cities not merely endurable but beneficial
for the people. Here, then, is furnished a great field for the definite
and conscious aspirations of the successful man of business. Here lies
a great many-sided work for social and moral as well as physical and
material progress which the business man, in the quality of good
citizen and man of public spirit, is fitted better than any one else to
accomplish.
The intelligent young man who holds before himself ideals of usefulness
that extend to such projects as these, may be sure that the modern
conditions of life will bring him great opportunities, and he may feel
that he is thus lifting his business career up to the plane of idealism
that has, in the past, been reserved for a few exclusive professions.
Partly through his own endeavors,--largely through association in
commercial or other organizations with his neighbors,--he may help to
accomplish for the benefit of all his fellow men of a great community
one step after another in the direction of public works that will meet
the needs of a high civilization.
Some of the most useful men, as well as the most unselfish and devoted,
with whom I come in contact are successful business men of large
affairs. They are modest and unassuming; simple and direct in their
methods; wide as the world in their sympathies; lofty as the stars in
their aspirations for human progress; sagacious beyond other classes of
men, and respected to the point of veneration by those who know them
well, because they are men of deeds rather than of words, who make good
their professions from day to day. Business has not so narrowed them,
nor has devotion to philanthropic ends or public reforms so distorted
their mental visions, that they are not able to enjoy what is good in
life, whether books, music, pictures, the companionship of friends, or
the restful contact with nature in field or forest.
The lives of such men are dominated by certain fixed ethical standards.
Given such moral landmarks, the remarkable conditions and unequaled
opportunities of modern business life will promote the frequent
development of men of this kind, with their breadth of view and
strength of mind and character. It is the positive and aggressive
attitude toward life, the ethics of action, rather than the ethics of
negation, that must control the modern business world, and that may
make our modern business man the most potent factor for good in this,
his own, industrial period.