Business leader

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the Number One, the head-centre bull’s-eye boss of the job, is a partner in what I believe is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, contracting firms in the Empire or the world, a firm whose name is a household word, whose activities have spread over all the inhabited and a biggish section of the uninhabited globe, who control capital running well up in the millions and have fingers in all sorts of business pies. ”

“ Our fair client, like many another histrionic genius, had more charm than business ability and was persuaded by an unscrupulous manager to intrust to him a large sum of money for investment in his various enterprises. ”

“ A successful manager of a great enterprise can scarcely be said to have a market price for his services, but will estimate himself in large measure by the profits he might secure as an independent business man. ”

“ In the first place let me say that what we have done in our business any firm can do in theirs. It is not that we have any extraordinary talents along organization lines. We simply have taken the lessons learned in everyday trading, have tabulated and filed them in triplicate. ”

“ The agents of the corporations were the aristocrats, not because of their wealth, but on account of the office they held, which was one of great responsibility, requiring, as it did, not only some knowledge of business, but also a certain tact in managing, or utilizing the great number of operatives so as to secure the best return for their labor. ”

“ This conception has not yet become universal, but when it does—and it undoubtedly will—there will result a general demand for successful business men in the administration of the People’s Corporation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fourth, the management must be entrusted to a chosen few, whose interests are chiefly in the business itself, whose character secures the confidence of all, and whose administrative ability is not too much hampered by rules. ”

“ Our great captains of industry, our multi-millionaires, have, most of them, made their fortunes in commerce. This is an age, perhaps—especially in the United States—which rather makes a hero of the business man. ”

“ The ambition of heads of firms to enrich themselves personally constitutes, in fact, the chief deterrent to permanently successful commercial enterprise. A further step is made in the wrong direction when the founder of a thriving business, having made his fortune and established the reputation of his firm, has his son or successor educated at a public school and university, where he may learn the manners and customs of the leisured classes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Associated with the head of the business, usually selected from active workers who live with the business every day, are a few who are taken into intimate relations with the business policy, and who very materially assist in its development, and in the working out and building up of the system by which the business is carried on. ”

“ The president of this company, who is hands, feet and brains to his mill—also a practical inventor and a lover of machines—has made it possible, by courteous attention to every requirement of the trade, to place upon the market a superior product, and to win and hold the confidence of his business associates. ”

“ To the community at large the work of pecuniary management, it appears, is less serviceable the more there is of it. The heroic role of the captain of industry is that of a deliverer from an excess of business management. It is a casting out of business men by the chief of business men. ”

“ In large businesses, however, where the volume and complexity of the commercial activities make it impossible for the executive, on whom rest the responsibilities for the successful conduct of the business, to have an intimate personal knowledge of all phases of the business, it is very necessary that some means be employed for supplying him with this vital information. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They know he will do what he promises, and finally this man is the one who builds up a good trade and at fifty years of age he has a place of his own, sends salesmen on the road, and his house does a good business because his policy permeates the institution, and the customers have confidence in the house because he is at the head of it, and they are familiar with his methods and practice. ”

“ We ought long ago to have sent the best eyes of the Government out into the world to see where the opportunities and openings of American commerce and American genius were to be found—men who were not sent out as the commercial agents of any particular set of business men in the United States, but who were eyes for the whole business community. ”

“ A manager of a large manufacturing and selling organization made a study of the conditions affecting the prosperity of his organization. From his observations he deduced the principle that for him it is more important to increase the loyalty of the men to the organization than to reduce the apparent labor cost. ”

“ The modern business man, entrepreneur or manager, and all those assisting him in the discharge of his duties, perform functions in two directions: first, in the direction of the market in the establishment of price, in the selling of his goods, and in attending to all matters which flow therefrom, and secondly toward the production plant itself ”

“ 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. ”

“ The organizer or manager of a capitalistic enterprise is as truly a trustee of the interests of others—viz., both stockholders and employes—as is the guardian of an orphan, or the receiver of an insolvent corporation, or the master of a passenger steamship on the Atlantic. The business is created by the union of many men ”

“ The difference between the business world that is passing out and the one that is coming in, is that the masters of the world who have been proud before, to be called the captains of industry, are going to think of themselves and want others to think of them as the fathers of industry. ”

“ But, if necessary, you may even break away somewhat from business. That pays, and you will soon see what a difference there is, even as regards business success, between a cultured merchant and a merely clever manager. ”

“ The very men who have made their personal successes by a rigorous application of the rule that business is business—the very men who in their own careers have exhibited a shrewd and vivid sense of the realities of politics and trade ”

“ So he grows in mental power and the consciousness of it. He commands an increasing influence among business men, and learns how to expend the force that urges him on to larger and better ventures in trade. ”

“ The Entrepreneur's Proper Function not Labor of Management.—In some theoretical discussions the management of a business figures as the principal function of the entrepreneur, and all or nearly all of the reward that comes to him is represented as coming in the shape of a reward for a responsible kind of labor that calls great abilities into requisition. ”

“ There are four things which every employee should constantly bear in mind, if he wishes to advance,—skill, business opportunity, loyalty, and control. Until a man has mastered what he has to do, he cannot be expected to be accounted a serious factor in the economic world. The moment he achieves skill in what he has to do—and this is a question of thoroughness, accuracy, and speed—he has achieved power, a possibility of dictation in the matter of hours and wages.
The next point is business opportunity. Two men, of exactly the same opportunities and endowments, take up the same task. ”

“ One very remarkable organization, which has at its head an astonishingly buoyant and optimistic—and, it is hardly necessary to add, successful—man, teaches that character is nine-tenths of success in salesmanship and technique is only one-tenth. ”

“ What every live, progressive business organization is looking for today is the man capable of measuring-up to the big jobs—not simply the man who has been with the concern for a long while, but rather the man who has shown himself broad enough to shoulder and to carry authority. ”

“ Secondly, to lay down the principles which must be observed to insure success, and what must be avoided to escape failure. Thirdly, to give the mode of management in certain prominent pursuits adopted by the most successful, from which men in all kinds of business may derive profitable hints. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the trade guilds of old wielded their vast power for common ends, so all the workers gave the best at their command to make their articles of merchandise the most perfect that human skill and care could produce. Men of business whose executive skill determines the destinies of thousands in their employ, are growing more and more to an appreciation of the trusteeship that is theirs. ”

“ Did you ever think of the responsibility you are carrying as a manager of your company? Do you know that every move, every letter you write, every position you take means that you are portraying your company to someone?
In business a new king arises in the land every day. There’s a new retail grocer—a new jobber—or jobber’s buyer on a thousand corners. They know not Joseph—regardless of how good your product is, or how long you’ve been on the territory, IT TAKES ADVERTISING TO PUT YOU ACROSS IN A BIG WAY.
I’m going to bed, Red, hoping I haven’t bored you. ”

“ In the larger organization this knowledge or skill is often supplied by a manager who has ``come up through the ranks'' and has not forgotten his journeyman's dexterity on the way or neglected to keep in touch with improved methods.
Frequently the advantage of a small industry or trading venture over its larger rivals depends on the owner's mastery of all the processes or conditions involved and his ability to deal with his employees on a personal plane in fixing wages or in establishing the standard day's work. ”

“ The men who take the lead of affairs, whatever they lack, are sure to have a most minute and entire knowledge of their branch of business; such a knowledge as can be got only by taking hold and doing every part of it. ”

“ So the chief safeguard for every kind [pg 225] of business is the honest character of all business men, and such influences as establish good character and sound judgment will be fostered on the simplest business principles. ”

“ Management, instead of being regarded as the servant of Capital exclusively, ought to be in a position to regard itself, as in fact it is, one of the necessary parties to industry, and as such entitled to a voice in matters which pertain to its administrative functions ”

“ The world has progressed, or retrogressed, as the most powerful interests at any time adjusted the institutions and customs governing wealth production to their own advantage. As the controlling interests in our present scheme are the business interests, it is the business man, not the workman, who directs industry and determines its policy as well as the general policy of the nation in which it operates. ”

“ Certain lines would be managed more efficiently than others and might make more money, just as certain departments of a big business might, because of peculiarly able management, earn an unusually large contribution to the total profits ”