Private affairs

“ If statesmen would carefully observe the conduct of private individuals in the management of their own affairs, they would have much surer guides in promoting the interests of the state, than the visionary speculations of theoretical writers. ”

“ We are concerned in public affairs, but immersed in our private ones. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All experience affirms that wherever private enterprise will avail it is most wise for the General Government to leave to that and individual watchfulness the location and execution of all means of communication. ”

“ Foreigners who come to this country, foreign leaders, of course, who come to this country -- the administration believes it's important to listen to the causes of the American people, whether it's an individual or it's a business or whether it's labor. Q But is it appropriate for administration officials to meet with corporate executives who are seeking private action by the government -- seeking action to benefit their specific private interests? ”

“ We count, in the future as in the past, on the driving power of individual initiative and the incentive of fair private profit, strengthened with the acceptance of those obligations to the public interest which rest upon us all. ”

“ Government, not understanding its true relations to the people, failed to provide them. Private enterprise, more sagacious and more perceptive of the actual demands of the age, stepped forward, and, taking advantage of governmental supineness, developed the true greatness of the country. The time has now come, and the government is in position and understanding, to not only guarantee all needed internal improvements to the public, but also to take charge of those already existing, and to conduct them in the interests of the people. ”

“ For those whom the state has assigned you as companions and assistants in public business, you are answerable only within the limits I have just laid down; but for those whom you have chosen to associate with yourself as members of your private establishment and personal suite, you will be held responsible not only for all they do, but for all they say.... ”

“ The former concern government-are grants of political power, or of rights of property, connected with the exercise of political power for public purposes, in which no individual or corporate body can set up a vested interest, any more than a public functionary can set up a vested or private interest in his office. ”

“ Let us now take a glance at a snug little commercial bubble, blown into being by 'highly respectable men,' a private affair altogether, which never had a name upon 'Change, and was managed—we cannot say to the satisfaction of all parties—by the originating contrivers, without making any noise in the papers, or exciting public attention in any way. ”

“ I feel that we are coming to a view through the drift of our legislation and our public thinking in the past quarter century that private economic power is, to enlarge an old phrase, a public trust as well. ”

“ The state expresses the cooperative or mutual-veto will of that part of society which is politically organized for this purpose. Private property expresses the individual will of the several private owners, or of the private chief, whether patriarch, pope, suzerain, boss, or industrial monopolist, who is at the head of the particular institution. The sociological view, being strictly inductive, does not impart to the theory of the state that which is potential and ideal, but only that which is actual and historical. ”

“ National responsibilities, great civic or industrial responsibilities we are as yet cut off from. Through private relations then we must educate ourselves to the realization, that only through the just performance of duties can true rights be won. ”

“ This Government ought to employ men of real worth and capacity: it is not always that those showing qualities attracting attention in private life, or as companions, are of real capacity. Do those who administer the Government make it a rule to employ in the public service none but men of real capacity, or worth, of integrity, and of high character? Do they give their contracts and offices without fear, favor, or affection, to men of responsibility and character—to such men as you would in private life give your own contracts to? ”

“ Most of the statutes or acts, edicts, arrets, and placarts of parliaments, princes, and states, for regulating, directing, or restraining of trade, have, we think, been either political blunders, or jobs obtained by artful men, for private advantage, under pretence of public good. ”

“ In another State, a single corporation held it, and yet again, it was often held by a corporate group acting together. In many States one individual dominated public affairs and more often for good than for evil. ”

“ The State originated from the natural desire which men experience to obtain certain goods, such as peace, security of life and property, of personal rights and privileges, etc., etc. These are goods which neither individuals, nor families, nor private corporations can procure for themselves satisfactorily. People therefore unite to establish a State, in order to attain, through the State, what they cannot do by their own private exertions. The State, then, is made by the people and for the people. In our form of government it is a mere corporate agency. ”

“ In the third state, toward which society is trending, the concept of service will rule, and private property as a dominant concept will be compelled to take a thoroughly subordinate place in human activities. ”

“ CONFLICT OF LAW.—Although we have referred to the uniform legislation in the various topics of commercial law which we have been considering, there is still much in the subject of conflict of law which concerns the student of commercial law. International law is commonly divided into two branches, public and private. Public is that which regulates the political intercourse of nations with each other; private, that which regulates the comity of States in giving effect in one to the municipal laws of another relating to private persons. ”

“ The cases need no explanatory or fortifying comment. They demonstrate that a business, by circumstances and its nature, may rise from private to be of public concern, and be subject, in consequence, to governmental regulation. ”

“ There is no guarantee that, if other guardians of capital were appointed, the public would be better served.416 Modern industry has long ago proved the administrative superiority of private enterprise in commercial transactions; and all social functions that admit of it will gradually pass into private management, always excepting the great theoretic functions in which combined action will ever be necessary. ”

“ The election has again confirmed the determination of the American people that regulation of private enterprise and not Government ownership or operation is the course rightly to be pursued in our relation to business. ”

“ In guiding or opposing counciis, by which great public interests are fought to be promoted, men must look to the means by which the country may be benefited, independently of private interest, and in possible cases, independently of private reputation. In the machine of State are many movements with which the people are not acquainted ”

“ The chief aim of their organized government, such as it was, seems to have been to leave themselves free to go about their private business, with as little interference from the demands of public business as possible. ”

“ In Looking Backward the entire social process is made an expression of service. Service is a matter of course, not of compulsion. No business is so fundamentally the public’s business as the industry and trade on which the livelihood of the public depends.X-29 Therefore, to intrust industry and commerce170 to private persons to be managed for private profit is a folly “similar to that of surrendering the functions of political government to kings and nobles for their personal glorification.” ”

“ It cannot plead its inherently private character or its subordination to the market as cover for the pursuit of different goals of particular interest to itself. The public agency has an unquestioned tendency to pursue goals that reflect its own interest and convenience and to adapt social objective thereto. ”

“ In considering the harm done to civic duty by selfish personal interests we were led to observe that the fewer points of contact between government and the pecuniary interests of private citizens, the better both for the purity of government and for the conscience of the private citizen. ”

“ But every successfully conducted private business establishment in the kingdom was an example of the ease with which public ones could be reformed as soon as there was the effective will to find out the way. ”

“ Government is not partly public or partly private, depending upon the governmental pedigree of the type of a particular activity or the manner in which the Government conducts it. The Government may carry on its operations through conventional executive agencies or through corporate forms especially created for defined ends. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What we want is that in public affairs men shall reason about questions of finance, trade, national wealth, legislation, and administration, with the same consciousness of the practical side that they reason about their own interests. ”

“ You sell ’em out; you turn over the whole thing—the city, its property, and its people—to Business, to the big fellows; to the business leaders of the people. You deliver, not only franchises, privileges, private rights and public properties, and values, Boss: you—all of you together—have delivered the government itself to these men, so that today this city, this State, and the national government represent, normally, not the people, not the great mass of common folk, who need protection, but—Business ”

“ They are not acting in matters of merely private concern like the directors or agents of business corporations. They are acting in matters of high public interest, matters intimately connected with the capacity of government to exercise its functions unbrokenly and smoothly. ”

“ Applying the standards of society as a whole, we perceive that the completely independent and sovereign individual existence of private enterprises is only the historically conditioned form, whereas it is social interconnections that provide the foundation. ”

“ The government assumes complete charge of a job, and pushes it to a successful or unsuccessful conclusion, according to the extent with which its tradition or organization enables it to perform efficient work. Moreover, there is a certain kind of official supervision of a private business which does not bring with it any divided responsibility. ”

“ Everywhere, along with the reprobation of Government intrusion into various spheres where private activities should be left to themselves, I have contended that in its special sphere, the maintenance of equitable relations among citizens, governmental action should be extended and elaborated. ”

“ A clipped and regulated private ownership—a private company, for example, with completely published accounts, taxed dividends, with a public representative upon its board of directors and parliamentary powers—may be an infinitely more honest, efficient, and controllable public service than a badly elected or badly appointed board of governors of officials. ”

“ They propose not to leave a single concealed private advantage in the statutes concerning the duties that can possibly be eradicated without affecting the part of the business that is sound and legitimate and which we all wish to see promoted. ”

“ Knowledge of the business affairs of the country has disqualified men from taking any part in the conduct of the increasing participation of the government in the control and direction of business affairs. ”

“ In the political field there are private political parties and the public association, namely, the government, or the political party in power. Among juristic associations there are the privately-organized vigilance committees and the public associations, such as the police, the courts, the prisons. In the realm of economics there are private individual entrepreneurs, partnerships, corporations ”

“ The theory that the men of biggest affairs, whose field of operation is the widest, are the proper men to advise the government is, I am willing to admit, rather a plausible theory. If my business covers the United States not only, but covers the world, it is to be presumed that I have a pretty wide scope in my vision of business. ”

“ As observed on a former occasion, 'they are invested with the sole power to regulate domestic affairs of the highest moment to the prosperity and happiness of their people, affecting the acquisition, enjoyment, transfer, and descent of property ”

“ You will find continually that private corporations, such as joint-stock banking companies, come to grief from not acting on this principle; and what holds of these small and, simple private administrations holds still more of the great and complex public administrations. ”

“ Until we have developed and applied, much beyond present standards, the policy and practice of social agency on the part of individuals in the conduct of business, direct public control, and even public management of many kinds of business is the dictate of reason, of prudence and of patriotism. ”

“ First and foremost, the thing at which the "practical" men smile, which professional "reformers" sneer at as an evasion of the issue, viz., teach the fundamental principles of corporate and state relationship to all sorts and conditions of men. ”

“ The distinguishing characteristic of recent years has been the conduct of the government of the country by men who have but little concern with the business of the country, by men who distrust the man of business, who suspect the man of business. ”

“ There being a duty to the public on the one hand, there must be a duty incumbent upon the public on the other to see as far as possible justice done between the corporations referred to and their employés, so that the public interest may be enforced without wronging either of them. ”