Enterprise

“ Because private enterprise really meant more, therefore the Government said more, and the very defining of the work and circumscribing of its sphere made the results sounder, more lasting, and more substantial. ”

“ Enterprise; that’s what you want. What is it as stimilates trade an’ encourages prosperity to—to the latest improvements? Enterprise. Why is commercial opulentness took—at least, wafted—commercial opulentness wafted round the ’ole world consekince o’ what? Consekince o’ Enterprise.” Uncle Isaac tapped the counter with his forefinger and gazed solemnly in Nan May’s troubled face. ”

“ The spirit of enterprise must, indeed, be encouraged in every possible way. Organization of industries will be promoted by a judicious system of duties, by the employment of cheap raw material, and by the institution of a board to collect and publish industrial statistics. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the management of this commercial enterprise, to the minutest details of which he personally attended, he manifested a remarkable power of organisation, the effects of which were visible in the steady growth of his fortune, and in the comfortable condition and fidelity of his workmen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The industry which so comes into the foreground and so affects the scheme of institutions is peculiar in that its [Pg 50] most obvious and characteristic trait is the workmanlike initiative and efficiency of the individual handicraftsman and the individual enterprise of the petty trader. ”

“ The unexplored recesses of the earth are exploited in a manner and on a scale heretofore undreamed of and unknown, and every department of enterprise is carried on to a degree that distinctly stamps this decade as the acme of industrial enterprise and achievements, the golden age of industrial prosperity, and the acquirement of material improvement and material gain. ”

“ This association, organized by twenty-eight poor weavers with a capital of twenty-eight pounds, at first as a distributive enterprise, is now a rich and flourishing institution, which adds manufacturing to its distributive interests. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The history of the formation of any one of the great industrial coalitions of modern times will show how great and indispensable a factor in the large business is the invention and organization of difficulties desired to force rival enterprises to come to terms. ”

“ This view of the development challenge underlines in each and every case our basic economy policies, particularly those governing the role of private enterprise in the economy. There have been questions raised as to the role of private enterprise. ”

“ It spread equally among all classes of citizens-- men of science, shopkeepers, merchants, porters, chair-men, as well as "greenhorns," were stirred in their innermost fibres. A national enterprise was at stake. ”

“ The corporation, as a means of organizing and directing business enterprise is a product of the last hundred years. A century ago the business of the United States was carried on by individuals, partnerships, and a few joint stock companies. At the time of the last Census, more than four-fifths of the manufactured products were turned out under corporate direction; most of the important mining enterprises were corporate, and the railroads, public utilities, banks and insurance companies were virtually all under the corporate form of organization. ”

“ Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are then most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise. Protection from casual embarrassments, however, may sometimes be seasonably interposed. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Thus, larger and larger capitals are required, and enterprise is passing from the hands of the individual to the financially stronger corporation. This altered position as to the works and finance has made keener demands, both technically and in an administrative way, for the highly trained Page 191 man. ”

“ We have unjustly been styled a nation of shopkeepers; but it may in all fairness be alleged that, until the last fifteen years, we have been under the spell of the commercial and industrial spirit, and that the intellectual faculties of the nation have been mainly absorbed in the introduction and [135] maintenance of railroads and factories, in the raising and marketing of grain, in the development of real estate enterprises, and in trading in the commodities or securities which these various undertakings have produced. ”

“ In order to carry out these great enterprises, the industrial organization is complex in the extreme and tremendous in its magnitude. Great corporations capitalized by millions, great masses of laborers assembled which are organized from the highest to the lowest in the great industrial army, represent the spectacular display. ”

“ Enterprises, namely, which are carried on by private entrepreneurs by utilizing capital (money or goods with a money value) to make a profit, purchasing the means of production and selling the product, i.e. undoubted capitalistic enterprises, may at the same time have a traditionalistic character. ”

“ Not least is the business enterpriser, whose function is to direct the economic forces for production. It is vain to assign a mean place to the organizing intelligence and its social work. Its importance grows apace with the growing magnitude and complexity of industry. ”

“ In the enterprises, the activities of which provide the basis for the creation and increase of social wealth, the working people cooperate directly in management with the assistance of their elected bodies. ”

“ 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 ”

“ They who suggested it were moved by the success of those great enterprises which every day develops around us, and which, by the magic word 'Company,' assume vitality and consistence; they speculated on immense profits just as they could compute a problem in arithmetic. ”

“ The employer and the employe are mutually interested in the successful conduct of industry; the profits of the one and the wages of the other obviously are contingent upon it, as both profits and wages must be paid from the earnings of the enterprise in which the capital of the one and the labor of the other are jointly invested. This being true, the workman and the employer are equally concerned in the character of the product which is manufactured and sold by them, just as they are interested equally in good markets and regularity of employment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As financial enterprises, the chartered commercial companies were subject to such great practical difficulties that few of them survived for any great length of time or repaid their original investment to the shareholders. ”

“ Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies—unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand—unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances through its ordained routine at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then, again, the ability to organize and conduct industrial, commercial, or financial enterprises is rare; the great captains of industry are as rare as great generals. ”

“ The "productive-goods industries" show the modern industrial and business traits in an accentuated form and force, and they are, by consequence, in a strategically primary position in the business situation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The business man aims to gain control of a given block of industrial equipment - as, e.g., given railway lines or iron mills that are strategically important - as a basis for further transactions out of which gain is expected. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the same time the progressively wider and more close-knit articulation of the several industries in a comprehensive process is also going forward, and this also affects all branches of industrial business in some degree and in the same direction, as will appear presently. ”

“ They may learn, from the example of Drake, that diligence in employments of less consequence, is the most successful introduction to greater enterprises. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 ”

“ Through the doors of the different rooms passed an endless procession; men from the front with the marks of the desert sun on their faces—engineers, superintendents, bosses, messengers, agents—servants of the Company; laborers of every sort and nationality came in answer to the cry: "Men wanted!"; special salesmen from foundry, factory and shop drawn by prospective large sales of machinery, implements and supplies; land-hungry men from everywhere seeking information and opportunity for investment. ”

“ I.⁠Every organization, association, combination, or trust of persons or corporations, which seeks to control, combine, pool, or consolidate the business or property of any persons or corporations engaged in any trade, business, or manufacture, or which seeks to consolidate several such properties, or unite several businesses, or place the property of individuals or corporations, or the capital stock thereof, in the hands of individuals for control or management, shall be deemed a corporation, and subject to all the regulations of the laws as such. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To familiarize ourselves with the conception, let us consider what is done with the capital invested in any of the branches of business which compose the productive industry of a country. A manufacturer, for example, has one part of his capital in the form of buildings, fitted and destined for carrying on his branch of manufacture. ”