THE BUSINESS CAREER Barbara WeinstockLectures on the Moralsof Trade. This series will contain essays byrepresentative scholars and men ofaffairs dealing with the various phasesof the moral law in its bearing onbusiness life under the new economicorder, first delivered at the Universityof California on the Weinstock foundation. The first volume to appear inthis series is: THE BUSINESS CAREER. ByAlbert Shaw, Ph. D. Paul Elder and CompanySan Francisco THEBUSINESS CAREERIN ITS PUBLIC RELATIONS BY ALBERT SHAW, PH. D. EDITOR OF THEAMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS It is the positive and aggressiveattitude toward life, the ethics ofaction, rather than the ethics ofnegation, that must control themodern business world, and thatmay make our modern businessman the most potent factor for goodin this, his own, industrial period. PAUL ELDER AND COMPANYPUBLISHERS, SAN FRANCISCO Copyright, 1904by PAUL ELDER AND COMPANYSan Francisco The Tomoyé Press The cultivation of public spirit, in the broad sense, and thedetermination to be an all-round good and efficient citizen and memberof the community, will often help a man amazingly to discern theopportunities for usefulness that lie in the direct line of hisbusiness life. THE FOUNDER'S PREFACE Despite all that can still be said against trade practices, against thebusiness lies that are told, the false weights and measures that areused, the trade frauds to which the public is subjected, we are nearera high commercial standard than ever before in the world's history. Man's confidence in man is greater than ever before, the commercialloss through fraud and dishonesty is constantly diminishing andstandards are slowly but surely moving upward. The honest man's chancesfor success in business are better than ever before, and the dishonestman's chances for lasting commercial success are less than ever before. To grow rich by failing in business is no longer regarded as an act ofcleverness. The professional bankrupt finds it more and more difficultto get credit. He soon discovers that even his cash will not win forhim the attention that his poorer neighbor commands simply by hischaracter. Education has done splendid service in raising commercial standards. Asa rule, the high-toned business man is enlightened, and, as a rule, thedishonest, unscrupulous man in business is ignorant. Great aid in thedirection of raising commercial standards may be rendered by thefurther spreading of knowledge and enlightenment. There are still manymisguided men in business who imagine that there can be no successwithout false weights and measures, without lies and deceit. It is theduty of every man in business, who loves the work in which he isengaged, to do whatever he can to correct this mistaken notion, and toarouse the same sense of honor in the circles of commerce that, as arule, is found in professional life. In the decades to come men will take as much pride in being engaged intrade as men always have taken in being members of a liberalprofession. It seemed to me that a step toward hastening such a day might be takenby inviting the best thoughts of some of the country's best minds onthe subject of "The Morals of Trade. " What better platform for the expression of such ideas than thatfurnished by the College of Commerce of the University of California?What better way to spread such thoughts than by means of theirdistribution in printed form? What better way to train to highercommercial standards the minds, not only of the youths who are seekinga university education and who have in view a business career, but alsoof the many already engaged in business who have not had the benefit ofa college training? It seemed to me that such a step might set in motion a commerciallyeducational force which would prove far-reaching in its influence andmost helpful in raising business character. Thoughts such as these prompted the recent establishing of thelectureship on "The Morals of Trade" in connection with the College ofCommerce of the University of California. Let the hope be expressed that this is but the beginning of a movementwhich may be taken up by abler and wealthier men in business andbroadened in many ways. A growing literature on "The Morals of Trade, "representing the best thoughts of our best minds, is likely to live andto do splendid service in elevating commerce and in raising itsstandards. H. WEINSTOCK. The purpose of this discourse is to set forth some of the social andpublic aspects of trade and commerce in our modern life. We have heardmuch in these recent times concerning the State in its relation totrade, industry, and the economic concerns of individuals and groups. Rapidly changing conditions, however, make it fitting that more shouldbe said from the opposite standpoint;--that is to say, regarding theresponsibilities of the business community as such toward the State inparticular and toward the whole social organism in general. Some of the thoughts to which I should like to give expression mightperhaps too readily fall into abstract or philosophical terms. Theymight, on the other hand, only too readily clothe themselves in cantphrases and assume the hortatory tone. I shall try to avoid dialecticor theory on the one hand, and preaching on the other. I take it thatwhat I am to say is addressed chiefly to young men, and that it oughtto serve a practical object. In the universities the spirit of idealism dominates. The academicpoint of view is not merely an intellectual one, but it is also ethicaland altruistic. In the business world, on the other hand, we are toldthat no success is possible except that which is based upon the motiveof money-getting by any means, however ruthless. We are told that thestandards of business life are in conflict irreconcilable with trueidealistic aims. It is this situation that I wish to analyze anddiscuss; for it concerns the student in a very direct way. Our moralists point out the dangerous prevalence of those low standardsof personal life and conduct summed up in the term "commercialism. " Weare warned by some of our foremost teachers and ethical leaders againstcommercialism in politics and commercialism in society. So bitterlyreprobated indeed is the influence of commercialism that it might beinferred that commerce itself is at best a necessary evil and a thingto be apologized for. But if we are to accept this point of viewwithout careful discrimination, we may well be alarmed; for we live ina world given over as never before to the whirl of industry and therush and excitement of the market-place. This, of all ages, is the age of the business man. The heroic timeswhen warfare was the chief concern of nations, have long since passedby. So too the ages of faith, --when theology was the mainspring ofaction, when whole peoples went on long crusades, and when buildingcathedrals and burning heretics were typical of men's efforts andconvictions--have fallen far into the historic background. Further, wewould seem in the main to have left behind us that period of which theFrench Revolution is the most conspicuous landmark, when the gaining ofpolitical liberty for the individual seemed the one supreme good, andthe object for which nations and communities were ready to sacrificeall else. Through these and other periods characterized by their own especialaims and ideals, we have come to an age when commercialism is theall-absorbing thing; and we are told by pessimists that these dominantconditions are hopelessly incompatible with academic idealism or withthe maintenance of high ethical standards, whether for the guidance ofthe individual himself or for the acceptance and control of thecommunity. It is precisely this state of affairs, then, that I desirebriefly to consider. And I shall keep in mind those bearings of it thatmight seem to have some relation to the views and aims of students whoare soon to go out from the sheltered life of the university, --underthe necessity, whether they shrink from it or not, of becoming part andparcel of this organism of business and trade that has invaded almostevery 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 haveattained, speak in terms of the utmost doubt and anxiety regarding thedrift of the times. To his mind, the evils and dangers accompanying thestupendous developments of our day are such as to set what he calledcommercialism in direct antagonism to all that in his mind representedthe higher good, which he termed idealism. The impression that he leftupon his audience was that the forces of our present-day business lifeare inherently opposed to the achievement of the best results instatecraft and in the general life of the community. He could proposeno remedy for the evils he deplored except education, and the saving ofthe old ideals through the remnant of the faithful who had not bowedthe knee in the temple of Mammon. But he pointed out no way by which toprotect the tender blossoms of academic idealism, when they meet theirinevitable exposure in due time to the blighting and withering blastsof the commercialism that to him seemed so little reconcilable with thegood, 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 atmospherein which idealism can grow, bud, blossom, and bear gloriousfruit, --then idealism is hopelessly a lost cause. If it be not possibleto promote things ideally good through these very forces of commercialand industrial life, then the outlook is a gloomy one for the socialmoralist and the political purist. It is not a defensive position that I propose to take. I should notthink it needful at this time even so much as briefly to reflect any ofthose timorous and painful arguments _pro_ and _con_ that one finds attimes running through the columns of the press, particularly of thereligious weeklies, on such a question as, for example, whethernowadays a man can at the same time be a true Christian and asuccessful business man; or whether the observance of the principles ofcommon honesty is at all compatible with a winning effort to make adecent living. I am well aware that the thoughtful and intellectual founder of thislectureship, under which I have been invited to speak, takes no suchnarrow view either of morality on the one hand or of the function ofbusiness life on the other. His definition of morality in businesswould demand something very different from the mere avoidance ofcertain 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 ofbusiness life be in any manner bounded by the notion that business is apursuit having for its sole object the getting of the largest possibleamount of money. Those people who are content to apply negative moral standards to thecarrying on of business life remind one of the little boy's familiardefinition of salt: "Salt, " said he, "is what makes potatoes taste badwhen you don't put any on. " According to that sort of definition, morality in business would be defined as that quality which makes thegrocer good and respectable when he resists temptation and does not putsand in the sugar. The smug maxim that honesty is the best policy, while doubtless true enough as a verdict of human experience undernormal conditions, is not fitted to arouse much enthusiasm as astatement of ultimate ethical aims and ideals. If it were admitted that the sole or guiding motive in a businesscareer must needs be the accumulation of money, I should certainly notthink it worth while, in the name of trade morals, to urge young menwho are to enter business life that they play the game according tosafe and well-recognized rules. I would not take the trouble to advisethem to study the penal code and to familiarize themselves with thelegal definitions of grand and petit larceny, of embezzlement, orfraud, or arson, in order that they might escape certain hazards thatbeset a too narrow kind of devotion to business success. It is true, doubtless, that a business career affords peculiar opportunities, andis therefore subject to its own characteristic temptations, as respectsthe purely private and personal standards of conduct. The magnitude of our economic movement, the very splendor of theopportunities that the swift development of a vast young country likeours affords, must inevitably in some cases upset at once the soberbusiness judgment of men, and in some cases the standard of personalhonor and good faith, in the temptation to get rich quickly; so thatwrong is done thereby to a man's associates or to those whose interestsare in his hands, while still greater wrong is done to his owncharacter. But, even against this dangerous greed for wealth and theunscrupulousness and ruthlessness which it engenders, it is no part ofmy present object to warn any young man. I take it that the negativestandards of private conduct are usually not much affected by a man'schoice of a pursuit in life. If any man's honor could be filched fromhim by a merely pecuniary reward, whether greater or less, I should notthink it likely that he would be much safer in the long run if he chosethe 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 tospeak, --except by way of such allusions as these. And even theseallusions are only for the sake of making more distinct the positiveand active phases of business ethics that I should like to present insuch a way as to fasten them upon the attention. Many young men, to whom these views are addressed, will doubtlesschoose, or have already chosen, what is commonly known as aprofessional career. The ministry, law, and medicine are the oldest andbest recognized of the so-called liberal or learned professions. Nowwhat are the distinctive marks of professional life? Are the men whopractice these professions not also business men? And if so, how arethey different from those business men who are considered laymen, ornon-professional? Obviously the distinctions that are to be drawn, ifany, are in the nature of marked tendencies. We shall not expect tofind any hard and fast lines. Many lawyers, some doctors, and a fewclergymen are clearly enough business men, in the sense that theyattach more importance to the economic bearings of the part they playin the social organism than to the higher ethical or intellectualaspects of their work. I have read and heard many definitions of what really constitutes aprofessional man. Whatever else, however, may characterize the natureof his calling, it seems to me plain that no man can be thought a trueor worthy member of a profession who does not admit, both in theory andin the rules and practices of his life, that he has a public functionto serve, and that he must frequently be at some discomfort ordisadvantage because of the calls of professional duty. The laborer isworthy of his hire; and the professional man is entitled to obtain, ifhe can, a competence for himself and his family from the useful andproductive service he is rendering to his fellow men. He may even, through genius or through the great confidence his character and skillinspire, gain considerable wealth in the practice of his profession. But if he is a true professional man he does not derive his incentiveto effort solely or chiefly from the pecuniary gains that hisprofession brings him. Nor is the amount of his income regarded amongthe fellow members of his profession as the true test or measure of hissuccess. Thus the lawyer, in the theory of his profession, bears an importantpublic relation to the dispensing of justice and to the protection ofthe innocent and the feeble. He is not a private person, but a part ofthe system for supporting the reign of law and of right in thecommunity. Historically, in this country, the lawyer has also borne agreat part in the making and administering of our institutions ofgovernment. If, as some of us think, the ethical code of thatprofession needs to be somewhat revised in view of present-dayconditions, and needs also to be more sternly applied to some of themembers of the profession, it is true, none the less, that thereclearly belongs to this great calling a series of duties of a publicnature, some of them imposed by the laws of the land, and othersinherent in the very nature of the occupation itself. It is true in an even more marked and undeniable fashion that theprofession of medicine, by virtue of its public and social aspects, isdistinguished in a marked way from a calling in life in which a manmight feel that what he did was strictly his own business, subject tonobody's scrutiny, or inquiry, or interference. The physician's publicobligation is in part prescribed by the laws of the State whichregulate medical practice, and in very large part by the professionalcodes which have been evolved by the profession itself for its ownguidance. It is not the amount of his fee that the overworked doctor isthinking about when he risks his own health in response to night calls, or when he devotes himself to some especially painful or difficultcase. Nor is it a mere consideration of his possible earnings thatwould deter him from seeking comfort and safety by taking his family toEurope at a time when an epidemic had broken out in his ownneighborhood. I need not allude to the unselfish devotion to the good of thecommunity that in so high a degree marks the lives of most of themembers of the clerical profession, for this is evident to allobservant persons. On the other hand, it cannot be too clearly perceived that there isnothing in the disinterestedness, and in the obligation to renderpublic service characterizing professional life that amounts tounnatural self-denial or painful renunciation, --unless in some extremeand individual cases. On the contrary, professional life at its bestoffers a great advantage in so far as it permits a man to think firstof the work he is doing and the social service he is rendering, ratherthan of pecuniary reward. I have myself on more than one occasionpointed out to young men the greater prospect for happiness in lifethat comes with the choice of a calling in which the work itselfprimarily focuses the attention, and in which the pecuniary rewardcomes as an incident rather than as the conscious and direct result ofa given effort. The greatest pleasure in work is that which comes from the trained andregulated exercise of the faculty of imagination. In the conduct ofevery law case this faculty has abundant opportunity, as it also has inthe efforts of the physician to aid nature in the restoration of healthand vigor in the individual, or in the sanitary protection of thecommunity. I hope I have made clear this point: that pecuniary success, even in large measure, in the work of a professional man, may beentirely compatible with disinterested devotion to a kind of work thatmakes for the public weal, while it is also worthy of pursuit for itsown sake, and brings content and even happiness in the doing. And it isclear enough, in the case of a professional man, that he is false tohis profession and to his plain obligations if he shows himself to beruled by the anti-social spirit; that is to say, if he considershimself absolved from any duties towards the community about him;thinks that the practice of his profession is a private affair for hisown profit and advantage, and holds that he has done his whole dutywhen he has escaped liability for malpractice or disbarment. But the three oldest and best recognized professions no longer standalone, in the estimation of our higher educational authorities and ofthe intelligent public. In a democracy like ours, with a constantlyadvancing conception of what is involved in education for citizenshipand for participation in every individual function of the social andeconomic life, the work of the teacher comes to be recognized asprofessional in the highest sense. Teaching, indeed, seems destined inthe near future to become the very foremost of all the professions. This recognition will come when the idea takes full possession of thepublic mind that the chief task of each generation is to train the nextone, and to transmit such stores of knowledge and useful experience asit has received from its predecessors or has evolved for itself. It is obvious enough that the work of the teacher gives room for theplay of the loftiest ideals, and that its functions are essentiallypublic and disinterested. But there are other callings, such as thoseof the architect and engineer, which have also come to be spoken of asprofessional in their nature. Their kinship to the older professionshas been more readily recognized by the men of conservative universitytraditions, because much of the preparation for these callings canadvantageously be of an academic sort. Architecture in its historicalaspects is closely associated with the study of classical periods;while the profession of the engineer relates itself to the immemorialuniversity devotion to mathematics. And in like manner the man who forpractical purposes becomes a chemist or an electrician would be easilyadmitted by President Eliot, for example, to the favored fellowship ofthe professional classes for the reason, first, of the disciplinary andliberalizing nature of the studies that underlie his calling, and, inthe second place, of the public and social aspects of the functions hefulfils in the pursuit of his vocation. The architect, the civil or mechanical or electrical engineer, and thechemist, as well as the professional teacher, the trained librarian, orthe journalist who carries on his work with due sense of its almostunequaled public duties and responsibilities, --all these are nowadmitted by dicta of our foremost authorities to a place equal with thelaw, medicine, and the ministry in the list of the professions; that isto say, in the group of callings which, under my definition, aredistinguished especially by their public character. And in this group, of course, should be included politicians, legislators, and publicadministrators in so far as they serve the public interests reputablyand in a professional spirit. Nor should we forget such special classesof public servants as the officers of the army and navy; while nobodywill 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 besubject to the private rules of conduct, --that they must not cheat, orlie, or steal, or bear false witness, or be bad neighbors orundesirable citizens, --but in addition and in the most important sensethat they shall be subject to positive ethical standards that relate tothe welfare of the whole community, and that require of them theexercise of a true public spirit. The man of public spirit is he who is able at a given moment, undercertain conditions, to set the public welfare before his own. Furthermore, he is a man who is trained and habituated to that point ofview, so that he is not aware of any pangs of martyrdom or even of anyexercise of self-denial when he is concerning himself about the publicgood even to his own momentary inconvenience or disadvantage. Publicspirit is that state or habit of mind which leads a man to care greatlyfor the general welfare. It is this ethical quality that to my mindshould be the great aim and object of training. On its best side, what we term the professional spirit is, then, veryclosely related to this commendable quality in men of a rightintellectual and moral development that we call public spirit. Thechief difference lies in this: that whereas all professional men may bepublic-spirited in a general sense, each professional man should, inaddition, manifest a special and technical sort of public spirit thatpertains to the nature of his calling. The lawyer should have aparticularly keen regard for the equitable administration of justice. The doctor should truly care for the physical wholesomeness andwell-being of the community. The clergyman should be alive to thosethings that concern the rectitude and purity of life. The journalistshould be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the enlightenmentof public opinion; and so on. Without either the general or thetechnical manifestations of public spirit, in short, the so-calledprofessional man is a reproach to his guild and a failure in hisneighborhood. Now, what has all this to do with the moral standards that belong tothe business career as distinguished from the professional life? Myanswer must be very clear and very direct if I am to justify so long ananalysis of the ethical characteristics of the professions themselves. I have merely used the time-honored method of trying to lead you by wayof familiar, admitted points of view to certain points of view that, ifnot wholly new, are at least less familiar and less widely recognized. The whole thesis that I wish to develop is simply this: that however itmay have been in business life in times past and gone, there has beensuch a tremendous change in the organization and methods of thebusiness world and also in the relative importance of the functions ofthe business man in the community, that the distinctions which havehitherto set apart the professional classes have become obsolete forall practical purposes in many branches and departments of the businessworld. At least, the work of the responsible leaders is no longer to beregarded as essentially a thing of private concern and free from publicresponsibility. If the business world is not characterized, first, bypublic spirit and a sense of public duty in general, and, second, bythe special and technical sense of public obligation that pertains toparticular kinds or departments of business activity, then it isfalling short of its best opportunities and evading its providentialtasks. It is for the modern business world to recognize the conditionsthat have in the fulness of time given it so great a power and sodominant a position; and it must not shirk the responsibilities thatbelong to it as fully and truly as they belong to any of theprofessions. I hold, then, that the young man of education and opportunity whoproposes to go into a business career enters it not merely with a lowand unworthy standard if his sole motive and object be to acquirewealth, but he also enters it in disregard of the ideas that fill theminds of the best modern business leaders. He shows a pitiable lack ofappreciation of the elements that are to constitute real businesssuccess in the period within which his own career must fall. Let us consider, briefly, the evolution of our present-day economic orbusiness life, and then take note of the necessary place thatparticular classes of business men must hold in the structure of oursociety. I, for my part, look upon this last century of economicprogress, --under the sway of what is often called "capitalism" as aterm of reproach, --as an immeasurable boon to mankind. It began withthe practical utilization of several great inventions, notably that ofsteam power, which broke up the old household and village industries, gave us the modern factory system, and along with the development ofrailroads gave us the modern industrial city. This new andrevolutionizing system of industry and business forced its way into aworld of poverty, of disease, of depraved public life, of low morals inthe main pervading the community, --a world for the most part of classdistinctions in which the lot even of the privileged few was not a verynoble or enviable one, while the state of the vast majority was littlebetter than that of serfs. Many writers have sought to throw a charm and a glamour over that oldcondition of economic life and society that followed the break-up offeudalism and that preceded the creation of our new political andindustrial institutions. But with some mitigations it was for mostpeople 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 unconsciousand unrecognized, was to transform the world by abolishing the reign ofpoverty. Doubtless it would be desirable if the improvement ofconditions, material and spiritual, could make progress with exactlyeven pace on some perfectly symmetrical plan. But history shows us thatthe forward social movement has proceeded first in one aspect, then inanother, on lines so tangential, often so zigzag, that it is difficultuntil one gets distance enough for perspective, to see that any trueprogress has been made at all. Thus, the modern industrial system, which found the conditions ofpoverty, disease, and hardship prevalent, seemed for quite a long time, in its rude breaking up of old relations and its ruthless adherence tocertain newly proclaimed principles, to have brought matters from badto worse. The squalor and poverty of the village of hand-loom weaversseemed only intensified in the new industrial towns to which theweavers flocked from their deserted hamlets. Manufacturers were doingbusiness under the fiercest and most unregulated competition. Economists were demonstrating their "law of supply and demand" andtheir "iron law of wages" as capable in themselves of regulating allthe conditions and relations of business life. Epidemics raged anddepravity prevailed in the new factory centers. But things were not, in reality, going from bad to worse. Thebeginnings of a better order had to be based upon two things: first andforemost, the sheer creation of capital; second, the discipline andtraining of workers. In the first phases, the new modern businessperiod had to be a period of production. There had got to be developedthe instrumentalities for the creation of wealth. Until the industrialsystem had raised up its class of efficient workers and had created itsgreat mass of capital for productive purposes, there could be no supplyof cheap goods; and without an abundant and cheap output there could beno possible diffusion of economic benefits; in other words, no markedamelioration of the prevailing poverty. It required some development of wealth to lift our modern peoples outof a poverty too grinding and too debasing for intellectual or moralprogress. It is true that the factory towns, created as they have allbeen by modern industrial conditions during the past century, broughttheir distinctive evils. There was overcrowding in ill-built tenementhouses; and long hours for women and children in the factories. Yetwith these and many other disadvantages, the new industrial system madefor discipline and for intelligence, and above all for a new kind ofsolidarity and for a sense of brotherhood among workers. In due time the worst evils began to be mitigated, largely through theapplication of those very methods of organization which hadcharacterized the new kind of industry itself. Thus for men who hadapplied steam power to manufacturing and had begun to build railroads, it was soon perceived to be a matter not only of sanitary and socialservice, but of pecuniary profit, to provide water supplies, publicillumination, and other conveniences to the crowded city dwellers. Moreover, with the progress of industry and the development ofrailroads and steam navigation, production and trade took on anever-increasing volume. Then the world began to be less poor. There had been no rich men in themodern sense, and of course no such thing as capitalized corporationsfor production. The richest man in the United States at the time of hisdeath, a little more than a hundred years ago, was George Washington, with his land and his slaves; and so in England and France there wereno rich men in the modern sense--that is to say, no men who controlledgreat masses of productive capital. The men of wealth were those whoheld landed estates. The chief business of all countries wasagriculture. The capitalistic system in industry and trade existed inits rudiments and in limited measure; but all its great achievementswere yet to be wrought. All modern business life, then, is the result of this growth ofproductive capital, and its application and constant reapplication tothe production of wealth. It made its way by virtue of an intenseindividual initiative and a fierce competitive struggle. But unlovelyas were these things, many of their phases were necessary at a certainstage. It was this fierce competition that compelled capital to pay thelowest possible wages in order to market cheap goods. But the samesituation stimulated the use, one after another, of new labor-savinginventions in order to increase the per capita productivity. Thisprocess was attended by the higher efficiency of the worker and anincrease in his earning capacity. As his position began to improve, theworker gained some hope and cheer; and he and his fellows began toorganize, with the result that both wages and conditions of labor weresteadily improved, and the workman began to attain approximately hisshare of benefits. All this is a familiar story, although the depth of its significance isbeyond the compass of any living human intelligence. It is easy to sayin a glib sentence that the amount of wealth produced every few yearsnowadays is equal to all the accumulated wealth of all the centuriesdown to the early part of the nineteenth; but the social meaning of sogreat a change baffles all attempt at full comprehension. The competitive system, which had been essential to the launching ofthis modern period of production, and which had given to it so much ofits irresistible momentum, at length brought the economic organizationto a point of development where, in some fields of production, it wasno longer a benefit. The accumulation of capital had become solarge, --and with new inventions the possible output had become soabundant, that it was well nigh impossible to trust to the blindworking of demand and supply to regulate things in a beneficial way. Itbegan to dawn on men's minds that a successful period of competitiveeconomic life might lead to a period largely dominated bynon-competitive and coöperative principles. The superior possibilities of this newest régime, along with its manydifficulties and perplexities, began to captivate the minds, not merelyof theoretical students and onlookers, but, even more, of great mastersof industry and productive capital. It began to be seen that in placeof blind and fierce competition as a regulator of prices and as anequalizer of supply and demand, there might come to be graduallysubstituted some more consciously scientific methods of businessadministration and of the adjustment of production to the needs of themarket. Furthermore, with the development of business on the great scale, capital had become relatively abundant and cheap, while, on the otherhand, labor was becoming relatively expensive and exacting. It wasevident that the modern system of industry had passed through itsearlier period to one of comparative maturity; and that the problem ofwealth production was no longer so exclusively the pressing one, butthat 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 decliningpercentage of dividends; while labor should be rewarded according toits capacity and desert, --were problems which took on public ratherthan private aspects. And when the business world began to face theseproblems with the consciousness that they were to be met, it hadvirtually passed over from the lower plane of moral and socialresponsibility to the higher plane where what the directing minds do ordecide 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 notdifficult to grasp even when stated in general terms, it is still truethat the concrete often helps to make the point appear more pertinent. Take then the railroad business as it is now shaping itself, incomparison with its conditions and methods twenty or thirty years ago. The railroads have always existed by virtue of charters which gave thema quasi-public character, and have always been theoretically subject tocertain old principles of English common law under which the public orcommon carrier, like the innkeeper, performs a function not whollyprivate in its nature. Nevertheless, in its earlier stages the railroadsystem of this country was in large part constructed and operated byits projectors with no sense whatever of responsibility for theirperformance of public functions, but with the idea that they werecarrying on their own private business in which interference on thepart of the public was to be avoided and resented. They fought therailroad codes of State legislatures in the federal courts; they madeoppressive rates to give value to new issues of watered stock; theydiscriminated in favor of one city and against another; by a system ofsecret rebates they made different terms with every shipper, thusenabling one merchant or manufacturer to destroy his competitor; andthey pursued in general a career at least anti-social in its spirit andfalse and short-sighted in its principles. A profound change--would that it were already complete!--is comingabout in this great field of transportation business. It is perceivedthat many of the evils to which I have alluded were incident to thespeculative periods of construction and development in a new country. The better leaders in the business of railway administration now seeclearly that it is the duty of the railroads to work with and for thepublic and not against it. The railroads are gradually passing out ofthe hands of the stockjobbers and speculators, into the control oftrained administrators. It is to be remembered that in a country likeours, the largest single branch of organized administration is that ofthe railroads. We have reached a point where their relations to all theelaborate interests of the community are such that their publiccharacter becomes more and more pronounced and evident. It was only theother day that a brilliant railway administrator, Mr. Charles S. Mellen, recently president of the Northern Pacific, and now presidentof the New York, New Haven & Hartford system, made some statements inan address to the business men of Hartford at a Board of Trade meeting. With much else of the same import, he made the following significantremarks: "If corporations are to continue to do their work as they are bestfitted to, those qualities in their representatives that have resultedin the present prejudice against them must be relegated to thebackground. "They must come out into the open and see and be seen. They must takethe public into their confidence and ask for what they want and nomore, and then be prepared to explain satisfactorily what advantagewill accrue to the public if they are given their desires, for they arepermitted to exist not that they may make money solely, but that theymay effectively serve those from whom they derive their power. Publicity should rule now. Publicity, and not secrecy, will winhereafter, and laws will be construed by their intent and not killed bytheir letter; otherwise public utilities will be owned and operated bythe public which created them, even though the service be lessefficient and the result less satisfactory from a financialstandpoint. " Mr. Mellen's state of mind is that which ought to prevail among all themanagers of corporations which enjoy public franchises and performfunctions fundamental to the welfare of the community. There will attimes be prejudice and passion on the part of the public, and unfairdemands will be made. We shall not see the attainment of idealconditions in the management or the public relations of any greatbusiness corporations in our day. But the time has come when anyintelligent and capable young man who chooses to enter the service of arailroad or of some other great corporation may rightly feel that hebecomes part of a system whose operation is vital to the publicwelfare. He may further feel that there is room in such a calling forall his intelligence and for the exercise and growth of all the bestsentiments of his moral nature. In the vast mechanism of modern business the constructive imaginationmay find its full play; and the desire to be of service to one's fellowmen in a spirit reasonably disinterested may find opportunity tosatisfy itself every day. Under these circumstances there is no reasonwhy railway administration should not take on the same ethicalstandards as belong rightly to governmental administration, toeducational administration, or to the best professional life. The same thing is clearly true when one considers nowadays the delicateand important functions of the world of banking and finance. Theold-fashioned money-changer and the usurer of earlier periods wereregarded as the very antithesis of men engaged in honorable mercantilelife, and especially of those who possess a social spirit and thedesire to be useful members of the community. But in these days thebanks are not merely private money-making institutions, but have publicfunctions that admittedly affect the whole social organism, from thegovernment itself down to the humblest laborer. They must concernthemselves about the soundness and the sufficiency of the monetarycirculation; they must protect the credit and foster the welfare ofhonest merchants and manufacturers; they must coöperate in criticaltimes to help one another, and thus to sustain the public and privatecredit and avert commercial disaster; they must at all hazards protectthe savings of the poor. Thus the banks, like the railroads and manyother corporate enterprises, are quasi-public affairs, in the conductof which the public obligation grows ever clearer and stronger. We are not at heart--in this splendid country of ours--engaged in a madstruggle and race for wealth. We are engaged rather in the greatesteffort ever made in the world for the upbuilding of a highercivilization. To avow that this civilization must rest upon a physicaland material basis, --that is to say, upon a high development of ourproductive capacity and upon a constant improvement in our processes ofdistribution and exchange, --is not, on the other hand, to confess thatour civilization is materialistic in its nature or in its aims. I wasvery glad, the other day, to read the wholesome and understanding wordsof a distinguished Boston clergyman who is just now coming to New Yorkto take charge of an important parish. He declared that this nation wasfounded on an ideal, and that the most powerful influences in its lifetoday are working toward noble ideals. The moral and spiritual tone ofthe country, he asserted, is higher than ever, in spite of theaccidents of wealth and poverty. He declared that the great host of menand women who cherish our ideals will continue to stamp idealism uponthe minds and hearts of our youth, and that they in turn "will convertwealth 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 vastportions of this country today in which the enterprising business manwho can succeed in selling to the farmers an honest and effectivecommercial fertilizer is the best possible missionary of idealism, --is, in fact, a veritable angel for the spread of sweetness and light. Thereare regions where the capitalist or the company that will build acotton mill or some other kind of factory is rescuing whole communitiesfrom degradation. It is poverty that has kept the South so backward, and it is poverty alone that explains the illiteracy and thelawlessness not merely of the Kentucky mountains, but of great areas inother States as well. Good schools cannot be supported in regions likethose, for the palpable reason that the taxable wealth of an entireschool district cannot yield enough to pay the salary of a teacher. Butwhen modern business invades those uplands, utilizes the water-powernow wasted, opens the mines, builds cotton factories or foundries, thesituation changes almost as if by magic. There will, indeed, ensue a brief period of disturbance due to changedsocial conditions, --to women and children in factories, and otherthings of incidental or serious disadvantage. But, as against asurvival of the sort of life that was widely prevalent a century or twoago, all the phenomena of our modern industrial life make theirappearance, in full development. The one-room cabin gives place to thelittle house of several rooms. There is rapid diffusion of those minorcomforts and agencies which make for self-respect and personal andfamily advancement. The advent of capital, that is to say, of taxableproperty, is speedily followed by the good schoolhouse and the goodteacher. It is instructive to note the transformation that is thus taking placein one county after another of the Carolinas, or Georgia, or others ofthe Southern States, because the conditions make it possible to witnesswithin a single decade the triumph of those business forces which, while they have even more truly and completely transformed theprosperous parts of America and Europe, have operated more graduallythrough longer periods, and therefore in a less easily perceived anddramatic fashion. Our modern ideals have required, not the refinement and the culture ofthe select few, but the uplifting and progress of the multitude. Thiscould only be possible through a general development of wealth, so vastin comparison with what had previously existed as to constitute themost highly revolutionary fact in the history of human civilization andprogress. The man, therefore, who has a clear perception of those lawsof mind and of society under which modern economic forces have been setat work, cannot for a moment think that the end and outcome of thismodern business system is a new kind of human bondage, "the richgrowing richer and the poor growing poorer"; or that it can mean anysuch 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 vastindividual fortunes as an incident of this modern development ofwealth, which it is not, there would be no time for more than a passingallusion. And in making such an allusion, I might be content to callattention to my earlier dictum, that progress is not upon direct lines, but tangential or zigzag. When the factory appears on the Piedmontslopes of the Appalachian country, it may indeed make a fortune for themissionary of civilization who planted it there. But meanwhile it hasgiven the whole neighborhood its first chance to relate itself to thecivilized world. I am content for the present to leave thatneighborhood in possession of its opportunities, serenely confidentthat 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 thatfactory, and others, too, for itself? Very likely. In any case, theneighborhood has been emancipated from its worst disadvantages. In short, I have little doubt but that the further progress of ourcivilization will give effect to certain economic laws and tendencies, and to certain social rules and principles, that will make for a highermeasure of equality in the distribution of realized wealth. Meanwhilewherever a practical step can be taken to remedy an evil, let us dowhat we can to promote that step. Let us recognize the already greatpossibilities for useful participation in the social and public lifethat belong to an honorable business career. From the standpoint of the intellectual interest of the young man goinginto business, let it be borne in mind that there are scientificprinciples underlying every branch of trade or commerce or industry, and that there is almost, if not quite, as much room for the delightfulplay of the faculty of imagination in the successful conduct of a soapbusiness as in writing poetry or in making statuary groups for world'sfairs. The cultivation of public spirit in the broad sense, and thedetermination to be an all-round good and efficient citizen and memberof the community, will often help a man amazingly to discern theopportunities for usefulness that lie in the direct line of hisbusiness work. The more thoroughly he studies underlyingprinciples--whether of a technical sort as related to his own trade, orof a general sort having to do with the organization and generalmethods of commerce--the less likely he will be to take narrow andanti-social views of business life. The high development of hisintelligence in relation to his own work will show him the value in hisbusiness--as in all else in life--of the standard thing, the genuinething, 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, ourinstitutes of agriculture and their related experiment stations, --theseare all teaching us many valuable object-lessons regarding the way inwhich the wealth of the individual and that of the community can both, at the same time, be advanced by scientific methods. Thus it is comingabout that business life is ever more ready to welcome the most highlytrained kinds of intelligence, inasmuch as it is perceived thatspecialized knowledge is henceforth to be the most valuable commoditythat a man can possess. I have already said that the delicate problems of distribution must befaced 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 andsignificance of the labor movement. We should not have had thedesperate struggle between anthracite coal corporations and the minersin Pennsylvania, a year or so ago, if there had been a fullunderstanding on the part of the capitalists of the honorable andvaluable nature of trade agreements, and particularly of the history ofthe relations of capital and labor in the bituminous coal districts ofthe United States. I am speaking now from the standpoint of thebusiness man. There is much to be said, doubtless, in respect to theshortcomings and the sometimes fatuous and even suicidal methods of thelabor organizations. But for the modern business man who cares to takehis place influentially in commerce, in social life, and as a man amongmen in his city or his commonwealth, it is no longer justifiable to beunfamiliar with the labor question in its economics and its history. Herein lies one great service that the university can perform (and ourbest colleges and universities are today performing it with markedintelligence and ability), the service, namely, of providing veryliberal courses for young men who expect to go into business, in thegeneral science of economics, in the history of modern economicprogress, in the development of the wage system, in the history andmethods of organized labor, and in very much else that helps to placethe life of a practical man of business affairs upon a broad andliberal basis. In the early days of our history it was the especialfunction of the college to train young men for the ministry. In asomewhat later period it was notably true of institutions like Yale andPrinceton that their training seemed to fit many men for the law andfor statecraft. We had, you see, passed from that theocratic phase ofcolonial New England life to the political constructive period of ouryoung republic. But we have been passing on until we have emerged in a great andtranscendent period of commercial expansion and scientific discoveryand application. It is a hopeful sign, therefore, that our universitiesare finding out and admitting the demand that present-day conditionsimpose, and are training many men in the pursuit of modern science, while they are training many others in the understanding of theapplication of social and economic principles to modern life. All thisthey are doing and can well do without ignoring the value of the olderforms of scholarship and culture. But I have a few remarks to make also upon the ethical relations of thebusiness world of today toward the political world; that is to say, toward organized government, whether in its sovereign or in itssubordinate forms. We cannot take too high a ground in proclaiming thevalue, for the present, at least, of the political organization ofsociety. I should like to dwell upon this point, but I must merelystate it. If the State: _i. E. _, the political form of socialorganization, is valuable, --it stands to reason that it must berespected and maintained at its best. It is also obvious that it willhave a higher or a lower character and efficiency, according to theattitude toward it taken by one or another of the dominant factors thatmake up the complex body politic. Thus, for example, it is the feeling of men in control of the politicalorganization in France today that the Church, as a great factor in thesocial structure of the nation, is essentially hostile to the spiritand purposes of a liberal republic. Hence a great disturbance ofvarious relationships. I do not cite that instance to express even theshade of an opinion. My point is that if the political organization ofsociety is desirable and to be maintained, it is a fortunate thing whenone finds the dominant forces of society rendering loyal and faithfulsupport to the laws and institutions of government and recognizingwithout reserve the sovereignty of the State. Yet in our own countrythere is a widespread feeling that many of the most potent forces andagencies in our business life are not wholly patriotic, in that theyare not willing in practice to recognize the necessity of thedomination of government and of law. I do not believe that this ispermanently and generally true. It would constitute a great danger ifit were a fixed or a growing tendency. As matters stand, however, every one must admit that there is anelement of danger that lies in the very fact that as a nation we are ina condition of peace, content, and prosperity, and do not find ourpolitical institutions irksome. The danger consists in this: that undersuch circumstances the rewards of business and professional life arefor the most part so much more certain and satisfactory than thosewhich come from the precarious pursuit of politics, that publicinterests have a tendency to suffer from being in weak hands, whileprivate interests have a tendency to assert themselves unduly, frombeing in the hands of men of superior force. Thus it happens that it isoften 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 harmonyand a safe balance. At present, the State is largely concerned with the maintenance ofconditions under which the economic and business life may operateequally and prosperously. The State in one sense is the master of thepeople. In another sense it is merely their creature and their agentfor such purposes as they choose to assign it. Is the State, then, toabsorb the industrial functions, and are we to develop into asocialistic commonwealth? Or, shall the political democracy and thecoöperative organization of business life go on side by side, relatedat many points but in the main distinct from each other? Whatever therelation of the State to industry may be destined to become in thedistant future, we may be sure that there will be no rash upheavals, noharmful socialistic experiments, if the potent business world clearlysees how necessary to its own salvation it is that the State shall bemaintained upon a high plane of dignity and honor, and that theofficial dispensation of justice, as well as the officialadministration of the laws, shall be prompt, just and impartial. There is no higher duty, therefore, incumbent upon the business man oftoday than to bear his part in promoting and maintaining the purity ofpolitical life. The modern business man should regard good governmentas one of the vital conditions of the best economic progress. Yetscores of instances are at hand that show to what a painful extentcertain business interests again and again, for purposes of immediateadvantage, --to secure a franchise, to escape a tax, or to procure someimproper favor or advantage at the hands of those in politicalauthority, --have employed corrupt methods and thus stained the fairescutcheon of American business honor, while breaking down the one mostindispensable condition of general business progress, --namely, honestand efficient free government. I will not dwell upon these things. It is enough to say that they arethings the modern business man must have upon his conscience. For, ifsuch offenses come by way of the business world, their remedies mustalso come, and indeed can only come, by that same path. In ourmunicipal life, for example, it is the aroused interest and zeal of thebest business community for better government and better conditionsthat can alone produce important results. Happily, all over the countrywe find chambers of commerce, boards of trade, merchants' associations, and other bodies of men of practical business affairs, taking theirstand for the transaction of public business upon high standards ofcharacter and efficiency. I have no doubt or fears as to what theresult will be. All of our large cities are themselves purely thecreations of modern industrial, commercial, and transportationconditions. And I hold that these very forces of industrial andcommercial life that have created the problems by bringing togethergreat masses of people in crowded communities, must and can in turnsolve the problems by the application to municipal government of thescientific and intelligent principles which belong to the best phasesof business life. All of this relates to my subject; but I must pass it by with a merestatement or two. It belongs to the developed constructive imaginationand to the trained ethical sense of the modern business man to perfectthe transit systems, to improve the housing conditions, to assure cheapsanitary water supplies, cheap illumination, and, above all, dueprovision for universal education, parks, museums, and opportunitiesfor recreation, --in short, all possible improvements of environmentthat can make life in our cities not merely endurable but beneficialfor the people. Here, then, is furnished a great field for the definiteand conscious aspirations of the successful man of business. Here liesa great many-sided work for social and moral as well as physical andmaterial progress which the business man, in the quality of goodcitizen and man of public spirit, is fitted better than any one else toaccomplish. The intelligent young man who holds before himself ideals of usefulnessthat extend to such projects as these, may be sure that the modernconditions of life will bring him great opportunities, and he may feelthat he is thus lifting his business career up to the plane of idealismthat has, in the past, been reserved for a few exclusive professions. Partly through his own endeavors, --largely through association incommercial or other organizations with his neighbors, --he may help toaccomplish for the benefit of all his fellow men of a great communityone step after another in the direction of public works that will meetthe 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 largeaffairs. They are modest and unassuming; simple and direct in theirmethods; wide as the world in their sympathies; lofty as the stars intheir aspirations for human progress; sagacious beyond other classes ofmen, and respected to the point of veneration by those who know themwell, because they are men of deeds rather than of words, who make goodtheir professions from day to day. Business has not so narrowed them, nor has devotion to philanthropic ends or public reforms so distortedtheir mental visions, that they are not able to enjoy what is good inlife, whether books, music, pictures, the companionship of friends, orthe 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 unequaledopportunities of modern business life will promote the frequentdevelopment of men of this kind, with their breadth of view andstrength of mind and character. It is the positive and aggressiveattitude toward life, the ethics of action, rather than the ethics ofnegation, that must control the modern business world, and that maymake our modern business man the most potent factor for good in this, his own, industrial period.