Big business

“ If the case were not so; if there were, evidently, and to common experience, more favourable chances of pecuniary success in one business than in others, more persons would engage their capital in the business, or would bring up their sons to it; which in fact always happens when a business, like that of an engineer at present, or like any newly established and prosperous manufacture, is seen to be a growing and thriving one. ”

“ His business gradually increased, and then, with his constantly saved means, he was enabled to increase his stock of type, and to undertake larger jobs. Industry always tells, and in the long-run leads to prosperity. ”

“ At all events, we mailed a few letters to customers explaining the matter, and a business on this basis was commenced and quickly grew to large proportions.
This fact made it dangerous, for the larger the business the greater the risk. We had to continually have an interest in the market either on one side or the other, and if the business was large our interest must be in proportion.
For some time the business was most satisfactory. My judgment of the market was correct, our customers were well pleased, and we made good profits. ”

“ I have about so much money I spend every year in buying things. I have proposed to study with my money every firm on which I spend it. I propose to take away my trade from the firm that does the least as it should and give it to the firm that does the most as it should. I will vote with my entire income and with every penny I save for the kind of employers I believe in and that I want, for the kind of employers who can earn and deserve and enjoy and keep the kind of salesmen and saleswomen I choose to do business with. ”

“ Have we not been long ago taught, that in the mercantile world capital goes where it is most wanted—that the business which is at any time attracting capital by unusually high returns, is a business proved by that very fact to be unusually active—that its unusual activity shows society to be making great demands upon it; giving it high profits; wanting its commodities or services more than other commodities or services? ”

“ My friend the business man tells me that for success in business one requires four things: a large capital, industry, insight, and caution—and then it's a toss-up. I am fain to believe this whole system of modern commerce was devised to please the amateurs of the aleatory. ”

“ Now, the trend of movement to-day, through the whole fields of production and distribution, is from business on a small scale to business on a large scale, and the formation of limited companies, rings, trusts, etc. By purchasing raw material in greater quantities an immense saving is effected, and the same occurs in the advertising of goods and in organizing numerous workers instead of a few. ”

“ As the business grew, and markets were obtained at home and abroad, more persons and capital were added to the business, and new corporate agencies were obtained or organized, the object being always the same, to extend our business by furnishing the best and cheapest products. ”

“ The forces which are operating to drive capital to group itself in larger and larger masses, and the consequent growth of the business-unit, require special study in relation to changes effected in the character of competition in the market and the establishment of monopolies. The economies which give to the large business an advantage over the small business may be divided into two classes—economies of productive power, and economies of competitive power. ”

“ Opposed in many of their most essential conditions to the capable men who are of primary importance in the social body, is the great and growing [Pg 98] variety of non-productive but active men who are engaged in more or less necessary operations of organization, promotion, advertisement, and trade. There are the business managers, public and private, the political organizers, brokers, commission agents, the varying grades of financier down to the mere greedy camp followers of finance, the gamblers pure and simple, and the great body of their dependent clerks, typewriters, and assistants. ”

“ So that both the business men whose gains are sought to be enhanced by business politics and the populace by whose means the business gains are secured work together in good faith towards a well-advised business end, - the accumulation of wealth in the hands of those men who are skilled in pecuniary matters. ”

“ The new board he had selected was composed of men of substantial fortune, who were just outside high finance—business men, trained in business methods. But they had been agitated by what they had seen and heard and read of the financiers—of the vast fortunes quickly made, of the huge mysterious profits, of the great enterprises where the financier risked only other people's money, and stood to lose nothing if the venture failed, kept all the profits if it succeeded. ”

“ Of these strictly economic activities that are lucrative without necessarily being serviceable to the community, the greater part are to be classed as "business." Perhaps the largest and most obvious illustration of these legitimate business employments is afforded by the speculators in securities. ”

“ Some, with more enterprise or capital than others, buy by wholesale, and sell to others with less capital. A few, standing on the street corners, have regular customers who pay or not, as the case may be, each night; and as the business men pass, one after another, the papers are handed to them almost as rapidly as tickets at a crowded concert-room. ”

“ Within each one of these industries perfect competition between the different employers will give him the value of the product which, in that business, his capital is able to create. If, however, what in this way he offers to men in one occupation is worth more than what he offers to men in another line,—if capital is worth more to steel makers than it is to cotton spinners,—he will find a market for his capital in the former industry ”

“ Third Case.—The third case shows the firm in a position to demand something more than book values as the basis for admission of the new partner. The presumption is that the old firm is favorably known, has an established trade and patronage, built by fair dealing and judicious advertising, by its favorable location, and the numerous other ways in which a substantial business may be developed. Its standing in the community is a factor of value to the firm because it brings trade to its doors. ”

“ Now the power to dispense wealth has passed into the hands of the people, who buy the goods and services produced, and so decide what goods and services will find a market, and so will enrich their producers. Are we making much better use of it? On the whole, much better; but we still make far too many mistakes. The people to whom nowadays we give big fortunes, though they include a large number of organizers of useful industry, also number within their ranks a crowd of hangers on such as bookmakers, sharepushers, and vendors of patent pills or bad stuff to read. ”

“ In the higher grades of economic society the advantages of the recent changes were more distinct, the disadvantages less so. The rise of capital and business enterprise into greater importance, and the extension of the field of competition, gave greater opportunity to employing farmers, merchants, and manufacturers, as well as to the capitalists pure and simple. ”

“ It not only brought Young America to the front in speculation, commerce and general business, but it imparted an impetus of genuine enterprise to every department of trade and industry, from the good effects of which the country has never since receded. ”

“ A large portion of the economy in advertising, travelling, local agents, and the superiority of display and touting which a large business is able to afford. In most cases by far the greater part of this publicity and self-recommendation is no economy from the standpoint of the trade or the community, but simply represents a gain to one firm compensated by a loss to others. ”

“ The management, for instance, of a bank, a wholesale export business, a large retail establishment, or of a large putting-out enterprise dealing with goods produced in homes, is certainly only possible in the form of a capitalistic enterprise. ”

“ This unreasoning faith in large and difficult combinations has been induced in the modern community by its experience with the large-scale organization of the mechanical industries, and still more particularly by the convincing pecuniary efficiency of large capital, authoritative control, and devious methods, in modern business enterprise ”

“ Those Who Do Not Get
Let us now look a little at another aspect of this process of individualistic competition which is the economic process in America, and which is giving us on its upper side the spenders of Fifth Avenue, the slow accumulators of the Astor type, and the great getters of the giant business organizations, the Trusts and acquisitive finance. ”

“ Or, lastly, instead of [capital] being afforded by persons not in business, the affording it may itself become a business. A portion of the capital employed in trade may be supplied by a class of professional money-lenders. ”

“ It will be noted that this plan promotes steadiness in work, stimulates to industry, and adds a most valuable element of hopefulness to labor. As a business enterprise for the owners it is sound, for it makes every workman an interested party in increasing the profits of the firm—interested not only in production, but in the marketableness of the thing produced. ”

“ Any industrial venture which falls short in meeting the pecuniary exigencies of the market declines and yields ground to others that meet them with better effect. Hence shrewd business management is a requisite to success in any industry that is carried on within the scope of the market. ”

“ We have, from a thorough study of economics, decided to enter upon this business. It has many merits, chief among which may be noted that we can indulge in large and lucrative operations without capital. ”

“ The endeavors in question are beside the point in that they do not fall into the shape of a business proposition. They are, on the whole, not so profitable a line of investment as certain other ventures that are open to modern enterprise. ”

“ Taking the situation by and large, looking to the body of business enterprise as a whole, the advantageous bargaining from which gains accrue and from which, therefore, accumulations of capital are derived, is necessarily, in the last analysis, a bargaining between those who own (or control) industrial wealth and those whose work turns this wealth to account in productive industry. ”

“ A further feature of that precapitalistic business situation is that business, whether handicraft or trade, was customarily managed with a view to earning a livelihood rather than with a view to profits on investment. ”

“ Because of them have resulted the specialization of industries, and the unexampled opportunities offered for the employment of huge amounts of capital, and therefore for the rise in the business world of those master-minds through whom alone it is possible for such vast amounts of capital to be employed with profit. ”

“ And the business men are not only in the most strategic and competent position to find out what the people who buy want, but to find out too, what the people who sell want. They are in the best position to know, and to know intimately, what the salesmen and saleswomen want and what they want to be and what they want to do or not do.
They are in a close and watchful position, too, with regard to the conditions in the factories from which their goods come and with regard to what the employers, stockholders, foremen and workmen in those factories want. ”

“ The phenomenon of a uniform rate of profits determined by competition has fallen into the background and lost something of its matter-of-fact character since competition in the large industry has begun to shift from the position of a stable and continuous equilibration to that of an intermittent, convulsive strain in the service of the larger business men's strategy. The interest of the business community centres upon profits and upon the shifting fortunes of the profit-maker, rather than upon accumulated and capitalized goods. ”

“ All these items are present in varying degree, whatever the size of the business, except where a merchant has capital enough of his own to carry on a small business and can attend to the wants of his customers alone or with the help of his family. The temptation of the merchant is strong to use every possible means to make a success of his business, paying wages as low as possible, in order to cut down expenses, and offering all kinds of inducements to customers in order to sell his goods. ”

“ The normal situation is that the business enterprise is aiming at net profits, having an interest in large sales, heavy transactions and gross profits only so far as these are expected to lead finally to net profits, the real goal. ”

“ From the new business this personal element and these customary scruples have almost entirely vanished, and as the net advantages of large-scale production grow, more and more attention is devoted to the direct work of competition. ”

“ It holds, in a measure, of all modern industry that produces for the market, but it holds true, in an eminent degree, of those lines of industry that are more fully under the guidance of modern business methods. These are most closely in touch with the market and are most consistently guided by considerations of vendibility. ”

“ Looking at the process of economic life as a whole and taking it in its rationalized bearing as a collective endeavor to purvey goods and services for the needs of collective humanity, the office of the money unit - money transactions, exchange, credit, and all the rest that make up the phenomena of business - is perhaps justly rated as something subsidiary, serving to facilitate the distribution of consumable goods to the consumers, the Consumption of goods being the objective point of all this traffic. ”

“ Our business succeeded beyond our expectations; and in order to supply the increasing demands for our products, we found it necessary to employ additional force and capital, build new forges, and otherwise enlarge the sphere of our operations. ”