Business interest

“ The efficient conduct of any complicated business, be it manufacturing, transportation, or political, always involves the constant sacrifice of an occasional or a local interest for the benefit of the economic operation of the whole organization. ”

“ First and principally, it requires that the directing mind should be incessantly occupied with the subject; should be continually laying schemes by which greater profit may be obtained, or expense saved. This intensity of interest in the subject it is seldom to be expected that any one should feel, who is conducting a business as the hired servant and for the profit of another. There are experiments in human affairs which are conclusive on the point. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If it is strong and increasing, he will feel sure that the consumers will repay the whole cost of production, interest and capital included, and in addition the legitimate profit attached to the business. ”

“ The contemplated move is manifestly chimerical in any community, such as the modern industrial communities, where public policy is with growing singleness of purpose guided by business interests with a naive view to an increase of profits. ”

“ The great requisite, it should appear then, for the prosperous management of ordinary business, is the want of imagination, or of any ideas but those of custom and interest on the narrowest scale:—and as the affairs of the world are necessarily carried on by the common run of its inhabitants, it seems a wise dispensation of Providence that it should be so. ”

“ True enterprise is constantly on the alert to discover some new want of society, some fertile source of profit or honor, some unexplored field of business, and is ready to supply the one or to take advantage of the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is this theme, coöperation in industry, that I desire to develop.
We must ask ourselves at the outset certain fundamental questions:
First, what is the purpose of industry? Shall we cling to the conception of industry as an institution, primarily of private interest, which enables certain individuals to accumulate wealth, too often irrespective of the well-being, the health, and the happiness of those engaged in its production? Or shall we adopt the modern viewpoint and regard industry as being a form of social service, quite as much as a revenue-producing process? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Only those companies which had been built on some basis of fair service had succeeded, and these had done so in proportion to their real value to others. Whether or not this principle is recognized by those who profit from it, it is the fundamental principle on which business success is built. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What I purpose doing is to carry out my business schemes by such methods as will enable those who work with me and for me to earn their own betterments in life, and then to enlighten and guide them in the spending and investment of their earnings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The general advantages of the commerce, apart from the profits of the agents, are alone the proper concern of the community: as for the mere profits of the agency the only interest of the community is, that they shall be as low as possible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The people are prosperous again; business is reviving; our industries are active; labor finds ready and remunerative employment; the Government enjoys the confidence of the business community in a rare degree, as our financial management has won the confidence of the whole world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You may have laid out an entirely different future for yourself in some other field. But I wanted to let you know that we stand ready to finance liberally any business you would care to engage in, either here or elsewhere. ”

“ While I have always recognized that the object of business is to make money in an [106] honorable manner, I have endeavored to remember that the object of life is to do good. Hence I have been ready to engage in all new enterprises, and, without incurring debt, to risk in their promotion the means which I had acquired, provided they seemed to me calculated to advance the general good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore we should, as we go along, constantly endeavor to correct errors, shortcomings, and abuses, and prune away rotten and unsound timbers in our public and business life, and make the whole machinery of business and activities of all kinds—trade, banking, insurance, manufacturing, legislative, and the various professions and mechanical industries, work as legitimately, honestly, smoothly, and harmoniously as possible. ”

“ They, even at the present time, take the place, frequently, of freedom of competition in retail business, in the book business, and in the determination of lawyers' and doctors' fees, as well as in the distribution of a nation's income among the three great branches of its general economy,671 deciding, instead of competition, how much shall go to each. ”

“ To these worthy pioneers belongs the credit of laying a secure40 foundation for a trade that from humble beginnings has developed into one of the most prominent industries of the country, requiring extensive capital, liberal business capacity, and one that gives employment to a large, intelligent and skillful class of people. ”

“ Your recognition, that is, must depend upon conformity to another set of conditions, imposed in the interest of efficiency and individual economic independence. In this respect you will be treated precisely as large corporations are treated. ”

“ While they have not always recognized it, the problem which they are called upon to solve is really twofold—it concerns the safeguarding of their private fortune and the wise disposition of their business surplus. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The outcome of this management of industrial affairs through pecuniary transactions, therefore, has been to dissociate the interests of those men who exercise the discretion from the interests of the community. ”

“ The independent conduct of industry is the salient characteristic of the business man's work. He assumes the risks of the outcome of industrial operations. * * * This position as residual claimant explains one striking characteristic of business profits—the irregularity of the income. ”

“ Of words in common use, that which comes nearest to exclusively expressing the idea of return for the use of capital, is interest, which, as commonly used, implies the return for the use of capital, exclusive of any labor in its use or management, and exclusive of any risk, except such as may be involved in the security. ”

“ And it is wise management to distribute purchases where good terms are made, as thereby the trade will feel an interest in the library, and a mutuality of interest will secure more opportunities and better bargains. ”

“ This good-will is chiefly a capitalization of the differential advantages possessed by the several concerns as competitors in business, and is for the most part of no use for other than competitive business ends. ”

“ He needs it because the nature of the business requires the keeping of a certain amount of capital on hand, in order that when a customer comes he may be prepared to make the exchange the customer desires. ”

“ The question to which an answer is sought in discussing the present phase of the development is not a question as to what is taking place as respects the institution of business enterprise, but rather a question as to what form should be given to an optimistic policy of fostering business enterprise and turning it to account for the common good. ”