So this, then, is an essay on the American Philosophy. The American
Philosophy is founded on the Science of Economics. ¶ Just here, in order
that we may speak a common language, a few definitions are in order.
Economics is the Science of the production, distribution and use of
wealth. Science is accurate, organized knowledge founded on fact—or, as
Herbert Spencer expressed it, “Science is the classified knowledge of the
common people.” All that which is simply assumed, believed, conjectured,
taken on dogmatic statement, or mayhap read out of printed books, is
unscientific, no matter how plausible ❦ All practical businessmen are
scientists. ¶ Business is a vocation. Philosophy is—or should be—an
avocation. To make a business of philosophy is to institutionalize and
dilute it, just as to institutionalize love and religion is to degrade
and lose them. Religion is philosophy touched with emotion ❦ Philosophy
is your highest conception of life, its duties and its destiny. A
religious organization is a different thing from religion. A religious
organization is built on a feeling made static, or fear frozen stiff.
It then becomes a superstition, and is employed as a police system, and
is taxed all the traffic will bear. ¶ Science is definite, accurate,
organized knowledge concerning the things that make up our environment.
Modern philosophy is the distilled essence of wisdom that eventually
flows from science. Or, if you please, philosophy is the explanation
of science—a projection from science ❦ Transportation, manufacturing,
distribution, advertising and salesmanship are all variants of
business. Each and all are scientific, that is, capable of analyzation
and demonstration. Weight, size, color, number, qualities and time are
all elements of science. ¶ Theology is antique and obsolete philosophy.
It never is nor ever was scientific, not being derived from knowledge.
Faith is the first item in its formula. Theology comes to us from
dogmatic statements gotten from books or the hearsay words of men long
dead. Theology is voodooism; in matters of importance it is in the same
class as alchemy, astrology, palmistry, mantology and augury ❦ Science
is understood, while theology is believed. Psychology is the science
of human minds and their relationship one to another ❦ Superstition is
scrambled science, or a religious omelet flavored with fear. ¶ Organized
religion being founded on superstition is, perforce, not scientific ❦
And all that is not scientific—that is, truthful—must be bolstered by
force, fear and falsehood. Thus we always find slavery and organized
religion going hand in hand. ¶ Business, to be successful, must be
based on science, for demand and supply are matters of mathematics,
not guesswork. Civilization turns on organization. And organization,
in order to be of any value, must be scientific. ¶ Economics is a new
science. History does not show a single instance of its existence in
the days of Greece and Rome ❦ They had simple mathematics, but not
complex. Fractions, percentages, statistics, averages, were beyond
them. The blueprint, even for humorists, was unguessed ❦ Philosophy was
speculation; business was barter. Since then, up to within a few years
ago, the problem of how man could save his soul has been uppermost.
This world has been neglected in the endeavor to gain another. When the
Science of Economics is finally formulated it will be expressed first
in America ❦ In America all nations meet and blend. Here the factors,
elements and categories of Economics are to be found. Here we have one
language, and no more, and this is necessary for the expression of a
new science ❦ The first endeavor to found Economics as a science was
the work of Adam Smith. ¶ And when Thomas Henry Buckle said that Adam
Smith’s _Wealth of Nations_ had influenced the world for good more than
any other book ever written, save none, he stated truth. ¶ Economics
changes man’s activities. As you change a man’s activities you change
his way of living, and as you change his environment you change his
state of mind. Precept and injunction do not perceptibly affect men; but
food, water, air, clothing, shelter, pictures, books, music, will and
do. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, all wrote on Economics,
but none was an Economist. Each based his logic largely on presumption,
assumption and hypothesis. If this happens, then that will occur. They
were Political Economists—they pursued Economics as a policy, not as
truth. They loved love, not the lady. They were students of Economics,
and their work was not grounded in Science. Since the days of Smith, Mill
and Marx we have had many students of Economics ❦ But the world has not
yet produced an Economist. To be an Economist, a man must be a Scientist.
He must be both a man of action, and one who knows why he acts. He must
work and he must contemplate his work. He must act and he must think. ¶ A
Scientist is the man who has done the thing—who has seen and knows. Then
from his positive knowledge springs his Philosophy. And the Philosophy
of a businessman, analyzed, explained and formulated, would constitute
a Science of Economics. ¶ The American Philosophy will be formulated
by Scientists—by Businessmen who have succeeded. Thackeray’s lawyer in
the Debtors’ Prison, who was working out a new financial policy for the
Nation, was not a Scientist ❦ His knowledge was academic and his scheme
conjectural. Science was outside of his orbit. He lacked experience. He
had feelings, but not facts ❦ He did not have enough cosmic mortar to
construct an arch. Emotionalism, charity, altruism, optimism, are not
science, and they may be hysteria. ¶ When I speak of success I do not
mean it in the sordid sense. A successful man is one who has tried, not
cried; who has worked, not dodged; who has shouldered responsibility,
not evaded it; who has gotten under the burden, not merely stood off,
looking on, giving advice and philosophizing on the situation. In fact,
the result of a man’s work is not the measure of success. To go down with
the ship in storm and tempest is better than to paddle away to Paradise
in an Orthodox canoe. To have worked is to have succeeded—we leave the
results to time. Life is too short to gather the Harvest—we can only
sow. ¶ Up to the year Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six the business world
was tainted by trickery in trade ❦ The methods of booth and bazaar were
everywhere practised. Business was barter, and he who could cheat and not
get caught was accounted clever. On the customs of the time there was no
copyright. They were a take-over from monarchical days ❦ But a new ethic
has arrived. Within ten years’ time the thought has gone through the
entire business fabric that to cheat and not get caught is really a worse
calamity than to get caught. To be caught means that some one has applied
the brake and you are given pause. Not to get caught means that you are
headed for the precipice on the high clutch and down grade. To cheat
another is to cheat yourself. Theology did not teach us this, for precept
and preaching never touch our lives. We shed them. We are moved in only
one way, and that is by self-interest ❦ Cut off our food-supply and we
are no longer apathetic. And self-interest is a form of selfishness;
it is the desire for life ❦ It is the instinct of self-preservation in
action. It was all a matter of mental growth, evolution. ¶ The discovery
of truth as our most valuable business asset is the one great achievement
of the age in which we live ❦ For truth there is no substitute, and
this discovery was made by businessmen. Honesty as a working policy was
first put forth by Benjamin Franklin; and his remark was regarded as a
mere pleasantry until yesterday. The clergy have not yet adopted it;
the doctors are considering it, and the lawyers haven’t heard of it.
However, all these will finally adopt it, as a last resort, as a means of
self-preservation. ¶ Economics based on falsehood leads to dissolution.
Falsehood is a polite form of conquest. The lie is exploitation. The
preacher has diverted us while the lawyer picked our pocket; the doctor
gives you ether and accomplishes the same result ❦ Egypt, Rome and
Greece lived on their slaves and outlying colonies. ¶ Slave labor is
the most expensive kind. In time the land is exhausted, and the slaves
die. But before this happened to the capitals that were, the aristocrats
who wasted, destroyed and consumed had gotten nervous debility, and
were impotent, also impudent. Then they died and the barbarian overran
the land ❦ A wise Economist—and America has many—could have figured out
exactly how long Babylon and Nineveh would have lasted ❦ None of these
ancient civilizations produced economists. They had soothsayers, priests,
lawyers, poets, artists, clowns, dramatists, orators, rhetoricians,
singers, philosophers. And most of all they had guzzlers and gormands.
But they had no scientists, and their philosophy, being based on augury,
dreams, theology and fear, was futile and fallacious. A philosophy that
is not founded on science is false in theory and base in practise. ¶
Modern business betters human environment. ¶ It means gardens, flowers,
fruits, vegetables; it means quick, safe and cheap transportation of
people, commodities and messages; it means books, maps, furniture,
pictures, playgrounds, pure water, perfect sewerage, fresh air,
sunshine, health, happiness, hope, light and love—because business gives
opportunities for all to work, earn, grow and become. Business consists
in the production, transportation and distribution of the things that are
necessary to human life. Through this exercise of our faculties we educe
the best that is in us; in other words, we get an education. ¶ Inasmuch
as business supplies the necessities of life, it is impossible to have
a highly evolved and noble race except where there is a science of
business. Business is human service. Therefore, business is essentially
a divine calling. ¶ Once men believed religion to be the chief concern
of mortals here below. Other men have thought that killing is the chief
concern of mortals here below. Gladstone once said, “Only two avenues of
honor are open to young men in England—the army and the church.” This
has been the prevailing opinion of the world for nearly two thousand
years, and is the one reason why the Dark Ages were dark. During those
years of night the fighting man was supreme. It was a long panic, and
human evolution was blocked through fear ❦ The race crawled, crept, hid,
dodged, secreted, lied and nearly died. We now say that the Science of
Economics, or Business, is the chief concern of humanity ❦ Business is
intelligent, useful activity. The word “busy-ness” was coined during the
time of Chaucer by certain soldier-aristocrats, men of the leisure class,
who prided themselves upon the fact that they did no useful thing ❦ Men
of power proved their prowess by holding slaves, and these slaves did
all the work. To be idle showed that one was not a slave. But this word
“business,” first flung in contempt, like Puritan, Methodist and Quaker,
has now become a thing of which to be proud. Idleness is the disgrace,
not busy-ness. ¶ The world can be redeemed only through business; for
business means betterment, and no business can now succeed that does not
add to human happiness. ¶ We believe that only the busy person is happy,
and that systematic, daily, useful work is man’s greatest blessing. We
are a nation of workers, builders, inventors, creators, producers. We
are the richest country, per capita, in the world; and our wealth has
come from the farm, the forest, the factory, the mine, the sea. We have
dug, plowed, pumped smelted, refined, transported and manufactured ❦
We did not inherit our wealth, neither have we laid tribute on other
countries, as did those earlier civilizations. Any individual who uses
the word “commercial” as an epithet, who regards business enterprise as
synonymous with graft and greed, who speaks of certain men as “self-made”
and others as “educated,” who gives more attention to war than to peace,
who seeks to destroy rather than to create and build up, is essentially
un-American ❦ The word “education” sometimes stands for idleness, but the
American Philosophy symbols work, effort, industry. It means intelligent,
thoughtful, reasonable and wise busy-ness—helping yourself by helping
others. ¶ The world’s greatest prizes in the future will go to the
businessman. The businessman is our only scientist, and to him we must
look for a Science of Economics that will eradicate poverty, disease,
superstition—all that dissipates and destroys. The day is dawning!
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