Business firm

“ There are a million or two of business firms in the country, and five or ten times as many clerks; and consider the handling and rehandling, the accounting and reaccounting, the planning and worrying, the balancing of petty profit and loss. ”

“ On the one hand, the approved methods of corporation finance may in some measure be resorted to by a private firm, Without formal conversion of the concern into the corporate form; and on the other hand, an incorporated company may continue to carry on its business after the manner usual with privately owned concerns. ”

“ The firm owned or controlled ample capital for their enterprises, and employed the laborers. It needs no argument to show that the business was more thoroughly done because these industrial partners were taken from among the laborers ”

“ In industrial enterprise as it was then carried on the prevailing unit of organisation was the private firm, with partnership concerns making up a secondary and less commonplace element in the business community. Ordinarily and typically205 these private firms and partnerships owned a certain material equipment employed in industry, and they took the initiative in industrial enterprise on the ground of this ownership; hiring the workmen, buying materials and supplies, and selling the products of the establishment. ”

“ Of course, with the development of the market the complexity of office management increased. In modern times the business man concerns himself not only with the duties of the merchant and exchanger, but also with the organization of industry and economical procedure. ”

“ As one of many illustrative cases, the Rubber Goods Manufacturing Company may be taken as a typical instance of a corporation organized in a conservative but up-to-date manner for permanent success and stable value. ”

“ You will see those engaged in these companies associate together, confer with each other, lay their plans before each other, investigate them, scan every branch, and every part and particle of their business. ”

“ There are three classes of establishments by which industry is carried on—those that are the property of an individual, those which belong to partnerships or firms of unlimited liability, and those belonging to corporations of limited liability. The usefulness of the individual system is of course limited to small undertakings, where but little capital and credit are necessary; this form of organization still dominates the field in agriculture, in the small retail trade, and in the repairing industries. ”

“ The common run of business concerns are occupied with industrial enterprise of some kind, and with transactions in credit, -- with a running sequence of bargains from which the gains of the concern are to accrue, -- and it is upon these gains that attention and effort centers, and to which the management of the concern constantly looks. ”

“ A corporation which derived its profits from public franchises, or from a business transacted in many different states, found the purchase of a local or state machine well within its means and well according to its interests. ”

“ I mean to get into the promotion of big things—big corporation business. A fellow that finances street railways and industrial plants, controls banks and makes towns grow—a builder; that’s what I mean to be. ”

“ As soon, however, as we approach business from the standpoint of accounting, sales management, employment, executive control, and when we find that lessons in statistics, advertising, moving materials, or executive management, learned in connection with a factory, can be carried over with but slight adaptation to the management of a store, we at once get a manageable body of material on which to work. ”

“ It is in the industrial corporations that this capitalization of good-will is seen to the best advantage - including, under the term "industrial corporations," railway companies, iron and steel concerns, mines, etc., as well as what are known in the stock market specifically as "industrials." The corporation is, of course, not the only form of business concern in the industrial field, but it is the typical, characteristic form of business organization for the management of industry in modern times, and the peculiarities of modern capital are therefore best seen in these modern corporations. ”

“ To gather and compile information concerning, and to investigate from time to time the organization, business, conduct, practices, and management of any corporation engaged in commerce, excepting banks and common carriers subject to the Act to regulate commerce, and its relation to other corporations and to individuals, associations, and partnerships. ”

“ The incorporation of a single individual is not legally possible in this country.
The corporation, because of its peculiar advantages over other forms of business organization, has become the accepted form for most large enterprises. The gathering together of large capital funds, the ease and efficiency of management and control, continuous life, the facility of transfer of ownership, and the limited liability of the stockholders, make the corporate form attractive to the investor and absolutely necessary to the large businesses carried on today. ”

“ Besides the above arrangements you can go into partnership with some moneyed man, or interest, and finally a good plan, where a large amount of capital is required to build a plant and start a business, is to form a company, or corporation as it is called. ”

“ But the business man, or entrepreneur, in our day is the director and initiator of industry. He employs labor, borrows capital, sets the wheels of industry in motion; it is his expectations and fears and hopes which determine primarily whether the investment of capital shall take place in large or small amount, and whether the machinery of production shall move smoothly and effectively, or slowly, hesitatingly, inefficiently. ”

“ Corporate organization. American industry of today is carried on for the most part, therefore, by corporations or companies. An industrial corporation or company is a group of persons, each of whom contributes a portion of the capital needed to carry on the business. These contributors receive shares in the corporation proportionate to the amounts of money which they invest. The man who contributes one hundred dollars becomes the owner of one share; the man who invests a thousand dollars receives ten shares. ”

“ This higher reach of corporation financiering has little if any more of a speculative character than what belongs to the commonplace business management of any industrial enterprise. In all business enterprise that stands in relations with the market and depends on vendibility of its output there is more or less uncertainty as to the outcome. ”

“ The better way for the farmer, the merchant, or the manufacturer, when he feels the years pressing heavily and that he can no longer attend properly to the old demands on him, is to shift by a properly drawn contract the business management of the enterprise to his children, or to those whom he wishes to place in charge. ”

“ Under the caption 'Commerce and Industry' may be grouped studies in the principles of commerce and the geography, materials, customs and usages of commerce and also detailed examination into the structure and processes of the extractive and manufacturing industries. Attention should be called to the at present very meagerly developed study of industrial organization, which has to do with the administrative relations existing within an individual business, especially if it be of large size, and with the methods of utilizing the resources of investors in financing new undertakings. ”

“ The ability and integrity of the men who control the policy of the company and the efficiency of the operating officials are the principal factors [71] in the success of an industrial undertaking. Vacillating policies, weakly executed, will ruin the most promising enterprise. This is particularly true in the case of small companies. Every man of business experience will understand the importance of this factor and be guided by it in the selection of industrial securities. ”

“ Absent substantial additional evidence, [11] furnishing management and other services to corporations for a reward not different from that flowing to an investor in those corporations is not a trade or business under § 23 (k) (4) . ”

“ Every corporation is composed of four parties: the stockholders, who supply the money with which to build the plant, pay the wages, and operate the business; the directors, whose duty it is to select executive [Pg 50] officers carefully and wisely, plan the larger and more important policies, and generally see to it that the company is prudently administered; the officers, who conduct the current operations; and the employees, who contribute their skill and their work. ”

“ THE principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employé.
The words "maximum prosperity" are used, in their broad sense, to mean not only large dividends for the company or owner, but the development of every branch of the business to its highest state of excellence, so that the prosperity may be permanent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence the corporation, under which the manufacturing establishments grew to enormous proportions, employing thousands and tens of thousands of people, and bringing material from the places in which it could be most cheaply obtained, investing money if need be in facilities for transporting and even producing the raw material, and cheapening the cost of production. ”

“ Today intellectuals, as cooperators, are active in many of the following professions or lines of business and the demand for such experts is increasing: Accountancy, publicity, law, research, teaching, organization work, architecture, store management and merchandising, bakery management, restaurant management, laundry management, banking, insurance, dairying, contracting and building, coal distribution. ”

“ In the belief that a demand exists for a library which shall embrace the best practice in all branches of business—from buying to selling, from simple bookkeeping to the administration of the financial affairs of a great corporation—these volumes have been prepared. ”

“ There are many items of great volume and consequence that do not fall within the immediate score of these business principles. The housewife's work, e.g., as well as some appreciable portion of the work on farms and in some handicrafts, can scarcely be classed as business enterprise. ”

“ In current economic theory the business man is spoken of under the name of "entrepreneur" or "undertaker," and his function is held to be the coordinating of industrial processes with a view to economics of production and heightened serviceability. ”

“ It can and should require for itself and for the use of all persons interested in the corporation, the fullest and most detailed information, consistent with practical business methods, as to the details of its organization, the powers and restrictions imposed upon its stockholders and as to the property against which stock is to be or has been issued. ”

“ 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 first step in the organization or systematizing of a business is to determine its natural divisions. What is the nature of the business, and what are its distinguishing characteristics? Be it a manufacturing, jobbing, wholesale, retail, or professional concern, there is some one head on whom rests the final responsibility for the success or failure of the business. He must be surrounded with subordinates, each having certain duties to perform, who will be responsible for the performance of those duties, thereby coöperating to carry out the purposes of the enterprise. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is apparent that the corporation within the limits prescribed by statute has most of the attributes and powers of a person—it can sue and be sued, can hold and pass title to property, real and personal, can carry on business in its own name, is responsible to the extent of its entire property for the payment of its debts, etc.
Growth of the Corporate Form of Organization.—The corporate form of organization is being increasingly utilized for the conduct of business of almost every kind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While industry and business stand in a relation of mutual cause and effect, in this as in other cases, the initiative in such a movement belongs with the business traffic rather than with the industrial processes. ”

“ They offered to their workmen ten per cent of their profits, before any allowance was made for interest on the capital invested, or before any payment was made for the services of the firm as managers. ”