Business relationship

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, the means by which this balance is kept is business transactions, and the men in whose keeping it lies are the business men. The channel by which disturbances are transmitted from member to member of the comprehensive industrial system is the business relations between the several members of the system; and, under the modern conditions of ownership, disturbances, favorable or unfavorable, in the field of industry are transmitted by nothing but these business relations. ”

“ Turning to the moral relations of the subject, we are constantly exhorted to do something to improve the relations of employer and employee. I submit that the relation in life which has the least bad feeling or personal bitterness in it is the pure business relation, the relation of contract, because it is a relation of bargain and consent and equivalence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The employers surely know their own business.”
“They claim to know the men’s, too. That’s what they’re always saying; they will manage their own affairs in their own way. But no man, or company, that does business on a large scale has any affairs that are not partly other folks’ affairs, too. All the saying in the world won’t make it different.” ”

“ Nothing is to be gained, either from a scientific or a business point of view, by estimating indiscriminately, profit sharing, gain sharing, indeterminate bonus, labor insurance, stock holding by employés, percentage on sales, product sharing and similar forms. ”

“ And somewhat in the same measure as the several modern industrial peoples are bound together by the business ties of the world market, do these peoples also share in common any wave of prosperity or depression which may initially fall upon any one member of this business community of nations. ”

“ There are several large employers who have endeavoured to combine the principle of co-operation with the business of manufacturing; and to furnish to the men who have contributed to their past prosperity the opportunity of sharing in their future profits. ”

“ The laws of our forefathers, based on this commercial view, were administered, with a strict eye to business, on the joint-stock or co-operative principle. To kill a man was mere waste, if money could be screwed out of him or out of those who could be made responsible for him. “Business is Business.” ”

“ The history of all associations of manufacturers formed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining just and fair business relations between their employees and themselves, proves beyond doubt that better results can be obtained in this way than in any other. ”

“ Such a policy represents one of the finer products of the process of systematically developing all the factors in modern business—the stamping of a strong individuality upon all of the correspondence of a large organization. ”

“ The reason for this is a general rule of public policy that in a partnership the corporation would be bound by the acts of persons who are not its duly appointed agents and officers. There may be any number of members in a firm, such matters being left to the choice and wisdom of those operating the business. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Third, there is a claim to promised advantages, to promised performances of pecuniary value by others, since in a complex economic organization with minute division of labor and enterprises extending over long periods, credit more and [Pg 192] more replaces corporeal wealth as the medium of exchange and agency of commercial activity. Fourth, there is a claim to be secured against interference by outsiders with economically advantageous relations with others, whether contractual, social, business, official or domestic. ”

“ Their merchants, whose enterprise was proverbial, were familiar with some of the ingenious expedients that, in our day, among civilized nations, so facilitate and simplify important business transactions. ”

“ Whenever an employer had really deserved the confidence of his work-people, all the most industrious amongst them might have grown bound up as commandite partners with the interests of the establishment, having no longer for their object the raising of their own wages, but the prosperity of that business in the profits of which they would have a share—able on the one hand, as receivers of wages, to counsel the employer, their managing partner, as to any wise advance; able, on the other, as receivers of profits, to dissuade their fellow-workers from any injurious demand. ”

“ The great, at the present stage of development perhaps the greatest, opportunity for saving by consolidation, in the common run of cases, is afforded by the ubiquitous and in a sense excessive presence of business enterprise in the economic system. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence there was nothing to hinder a merchant from entering into contracts with organized consumers, to sell his business to them, and retain the management at an agreed salary, under such rules and regulations for the conduct of the business as they might adopt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ "Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ When we are all in the business working together, we all ought to have some share in the profits—by way of a good wage, or salary, or added compensation. And that is beginning now quite generally to be recognized.
There is now a definite demand that the human side of business be elevated to a position of equal importance with the material side. ”

“ The argument supposes the corporation to have been originated for the management of an individual concern, to be founded upon contract between individuals, having private trade and private profit for its great end and principal object. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They should, of course, provide for as many contingencies as can be foreseen, such as the nature, name and place of business, when the relation is to commence and when to terminate, what capital shall be contributed by each, what the share of each in the profits and losses shall be, what the powers of the partners as between themselves shall be, whether the business shall be continued after the death of one or more of the partners and how it shall be wound up. ”

“ The business transactions of this age are more complex, and the interests more important. Corporation controversies need to be adjusted by those who thoroughly understand the principles and practices of equity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is the constant multiplication of intervening agents—middle-men, factors, brokers, speculators, contractors, and distributors of every sort—between the producer and the consumer, or between the primary owner and the ultimate owner of almost everything which is the subject of ownership and trade. Those two, who are the actual persons brought chiefly into relationship by the thing in question, are put quite out of sight of one another in most of the transactions of modern industry and commerce ”

“ A firm that dates from past generations, still carrying on business in the name of its founder, has had all its members and employés changed one by one, perhaps several times over, while the firm has continued to occupy the same place and to maintain like relations to buyers and sellers. ”

“ The individual lawyer or carpenter perishes, but the profession or the trade survives, like a Platonic idea. In a stationary economic condition of a people, we might suppose that every trade and profession is an immortal, unchanging corporation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then with the development of business there soon came to be a conventionally correct hand for commerce. Early dealings of a business nature were carried on by men who held the shield in the left hand and bargained with the right. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An economic arrangement between companies performing similar functions in the production or sale of comparable goods or services is characterized as 'horizontal.' The effect on competition of such an arrangement depends, of course, upon its character and scope. ”

“ These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. ”

“ Existing Organisation of Industry Inadequate Is our present organization of industry in any way suggestive of a partnership, in which Labor, Capital, Management, and the Community are regarded as interrelated and interdependent? ”

“ 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? ”