Public business

“ You used to vote perhaps once a year, taking five minutes for it, and grudging the time at that as lost from your private business, the pursuit of which you called, I believe, 'the main chance.' Our private business is the public business, and we have no other of importance. ”

“ PART IV—AMERICAN POLITICAL PROBLEMS A. SOME ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT CHAPTER XXVII PUBLIC INTEREST IN BUSINESS: REGULATION 322. NECESSITY OF PUBLIC INTEREST IN BUSINESS.—Although individuals carry on business primarily for their own ends, the economic activities of men affect not only themselves, but the community as well. If every individual voluntarily confined his attention to those forms of business which strengthened the community as well as adding to his own prosperity, there would be little need for laws regulating the conduct of 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His business being a useful one, it is the interest of the public that the ordinary motives should exist for carrying it on, and that neither law nor opinion should prevent an operation beneficial to the public from being attended with as much private advantage as is compatible with full and free competition. ”

“ Every consideration of care for the public interest and every sensible business reason dictate such management or disposal of this important source of public revenue as will except it from the general rules and incidents attending the ordinary disposition of public lands and secure to the Government a fair share at least of its advantages in place of its transfer for a nominal sum to interested individuals. ”

“ The answer to all these questions is that the Government and the Municipalities have proved that they can manage vast and intricate businesses, and can manage them more cheaply, more efficiently, and more to the advantage and satisfaction of the public than the same class of business has ever been managed by private firms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As an interested party to any condition of business, labor also is claiming the right to be heard. The public in its direct dependence on certain classes of corporations for many of its necessities and most of its conveniences is also interested in the proper conduct of those businesses. ”

“ Legislation, public opinion, and the evolution of enforceable standards within particular business groups are tending all the while to narrow the sphere of purely acquisitive business. With respect to that great mass of business which has both an acquisitive and a productive side, these forces are gradually bringing us to an attitude of mind in which we regard gain as a by-product of service. ”

“ The more the citizens acquire capital and themselves enter on commercial undertakings, and form business habits, and get to look at things with a practical eye, the stronger and more general will grow the public sentiment that insists on replacing the reign of force by the reign of law. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Business enterprises containing any amount of promise are organized, forced upon the public by smart schemers of whom no one knows anything, and all of them succeed in obtaining a great deal of money. ”

“ ¶The first essential in determining how to deal with the great industrial combinations is knowledge of the facts—publicity. In the interest of the public, the Government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings of the great corporations engaged in interstate business. Publicity is the only sure remedy which we can now invoke. What further remedies are needed in the way of governmental regulation, or taxation, can only be determined after publicity has been obtained, by process of law, and in the course of administration. ”

“ AS soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall. ”

“ Don't cheapen the product; don't cheapen the wage; don't overcharge the public. Put brains into the method, and more brains, and still more brains—do things better than ever before; and by this means all parties to business are served and benefited. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Those still more inclined to generalization assert that the whole apparatus of political activities is a kind of protective coloration to conceal the fact that big business rules the governmental roost in any case. Business is the order of the day, and the attempt to stop or deflect its course is as futile as Mrs. ”

“ Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forc'd by the occasion. ”

“ It must always be remembered that in the working of a [Pg 218] monopoly by the State, the interest of the public as a whole is the paramount consideration, and every economy consistent with efficiency must be adopted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The management of purely local business by the localities, and of the great enterprises of industry by the union of those who voluntarily supply the pecuniary means, is further recommended by all the advantages which have been set forth in this Essay as belonging to individuality of development, and diversity of modes of action. Government operations tend to be everywhere alike. With individuals and voluntary associations, on the contrary, there are varied experiments, and endless diversity of experience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In view of these several features, which are so closely related that they form a common character, more or less fully shared by various industries, and especially in view of the necessity for the formal granting to them of peculiar privileges in the form of a public franchise, the public, in order to protect the general interest, is forced to undertake an exceptional control of these industries. ”

“ The undertaking by the State or the Municipality, or other units of social life, of various departments of industry, such as the railways, telegraphs, post-offices, is a definite assertion that, in the supply of the common services rendered by these industries, the competition of private interests cannot be relied upon to work for the public good. ”

“ A government enterprise is managed by the people who represent, or are supposed to represent, the consumers; but the good or bad economy of its management does not necessarily redound to the profit or loss of those who most use it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is much better to treat it at once as a public function; and if it be not such as the government itself could beneficially undertake, it should be made over entire to the company or association which will perform it on the best terms for the public. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this we ought to take nature for our guide, and throw into the public stock the offices of general utility, by a reciprocation of duties; sometimes by receiving, sometimes by giving, and sometimes to cement human society by arts, by industry, and by our resources. ”

“ Public management will begin in those branches where the difficulties are smallest. Publicly managed enterprises will originally represent kind of oases linked with private enterprises by the laws of exchange of commodities. ”

“ The industry and commerce of a great country, he endeavoured to regulate upon the same model as the departments of a public office; and instead of allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice, he bestowed upon certain branches of industry extraordinary privileges, while he laid others under as extraordinary restraints. ”

“ The habits of private life are continued in public; and we ought carefully to distinguish that economy which depends upon their institutions, from that which is the natural result of their manners and customs. ”

“ Most earnestly, therefore, does this Society call upon all to whom a maintenance, out of the public purse, is dear, upon those who value the places they hold at the expense of the country, or the permanence of the present Administration, to join them in promoting these objects and principles. ”

“ If you are at all distinguished in quality, you will have a competition among public authorities from the beginning, to act as sponsors and dealers for your work; benevolent dealers they will be, and content with a commission. ”

“ It is easy to underestimate the usefulness of human beings who finance the world of industry, and in estimating the returns that are due to members of the various social classes this form of public service that is so essential to the prosperity of all must receive recognition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The entire wealth of the country in its different forms, irrespective of ownership, shall be subordinated to the general interest. 2. Public initiative in economic activity is recognized. Essential resources or services may be reserved by law to the public sector especially in the case of monopolies. Likewise, State intervention in companies may be imposed when the public interest so demands. ”

“ The public service corporation which is administered, not to render service to the public, but to permit stock speculators to reap a harvest, can hardly hope for the same brand of justice, and it is hardly to be expected that such a corporation will welcome publicity. ”

“ They are not government in any sense, nothing but business. Here is an account of how streets have been paved, water purified and distributed to the people, school buildings constructed, supplies purchased, contracts awarded, labor employed, money collected and money paid out—why do they call these things government when they are simply business operations and nothing else? The problems that arise in connection with them are business problems; the methods needed are business methods; the organization best fitted to do the work is a business organization.
Most of the city’s work is business. ”

“ As a civilization grows in wealth and population the political apparatus becomes a major employer, a major producer of goods and services, a major purchaser of producer and consumer goods, a major agency for borrowing, lending, insuring, in short a major factor in the multitudinous activities of a commercial, industrial community. ”