Babbitt and the Boss
Carter, John
BABBITT AND THE BOSS By JOHN CARTER TO SAY that American Present economic conditions, not unlike the doldrums intelligent economic combinabusiness has at Wash- of yore, have led to...
...Business is the most radical force in America, radical in the sense that it is undermining established ways of doing things, ways of living, ways of thinking and acting, without any heed for the result...
...We have a system of checks and balances—and not in the business sense—which sets the Congress against the executive, the executive against the Congress and the judiciary against both...
...It sees the Federal Radio Commission bowing down before a "wild-cat" radio broadcasting station in Louisiana...
...It sees the Federal ington precisely the ship of business and political leaders...
...We must, he says ^ ^^ g ^ . , recognize that politics is not a mysterious process and r i_ t> r> ji can government for granted...
...It sees an Admiral Magruder bottled up because he criticized the wasteful administration of the Philadelphia navy yard...
...Such men as Roosevelt and Wilson have been bedeviled by fractious opposition to their plans...
...On the other hand, when politics looks at business it is equally depressed...
...The fundamental need of America today is to devise an efficient method of attacking and solving the staggering problems which confront politicians and business men alike...
...cheaP money policy encoura sort of necessary evil, a aging a disastrous orgy of cumbrous and complicated system for preventing things stock market speculation...
...Plants must be improved...
...The judiciary, which holds life tenure, is highly conservative, and the Supreme Court is ultra-conservative...
...Washington has seen our natural resources of oil and timber dissipated by the reckless competition of business groups, while the Teapot Dome and Elk Hills reserves of naval fuel have added a chapter to the story of business corruption of national politics...
...Today Babbitt looks at the boss with mingled resentment and incredulity, while the boss looks at Babbitt with intolerant incomprehension...
...This is a state of affairs which cannot long endure...
...Politics run from election to election at the least and there is no urgency in government work, apart from crises...
...Wages must be paid...
...It is proving enormously costly to the country at large and to business...
...to business, though it is very bad politics for Washington to say so...
...Lobbies are formed and politics are distorted to enable a single group of business men to get bigger and better profits—which is entirely natural—and to get them without any concern for the effect of their profits upon other business groups and other profits—which is not so natural...
...Politics sees that business is selfish, necessarily so...
...Business must support strong men for office, for every office, for the Board of Aldermen, for the State Assembly, for the county government, for the governor, for the House and the Senate...
...Moreover, big business has been able to utilize and perpetuate the very system of checks and balances which paralyzes American government, in order to be secure from interruption...
...This checker-board of politics can scarcely be regarded as an accident...
...President, Republican...
...Huge developments wait on it...
...And when we see corporation lawyers taking a leading part in politics, Washington has every right to feel that business is largely responsible for our political system...
...Where politicians are thinking of the next election, business men are thinking of the next quarter...
...The tariff is an old story...
...The result is that business is nearly always short-sighted in its view of political matters...
...To business, Washington presents a weird spectacle of political pussy-footing...
...Both must recognize that politics is not a mysterious process and that business is not simply legalized greed but that both are ways of getting things done...
...What would the average business man think of a situation in which the wife of a minor official in a branch of the government which had no relation to enforcement of prohibition, hesitated to sign a petition for the modification of the Volstead Law for fear it would jeopardize her husband's career...
...With the exception of Lincoln we have developed no statesman who compares with William Pitt, Disraeli or Gladstone...
...The suspicious peasant mind of the eighteenth century could not conceive of men who would not abuse their power to establish tyranny...
...And finally, there is need for cooperative thinking between politics and business...
...Politicians look ridiculous to industrialists, tax-payers' money to peg it is true...
...In a word, Washington is in a position to say "you're another...
...Carter analyzes the conflict, based on misunderstand- barrass ^ tIons of business has taken the Ameri- ^ff, and offers a tenta^e solution...
...to Washington, business presents an unpleasant spectacle of blatant short-sightedness...
...It sees initiative penalized and "yes-men" promoted...
...Washington has seen the replacement cost rather than the capital investment of a public utility forced upon the public as a basis for rates to the public and has even seen the hypothetical value of a public franchise included in the rate-making basis...
...This cooperation is necessary...
...And Washington has seen the business forces of the richest nation in the world incapable of preventing the disastrous unemployment of 5,000,000 Americans...
...It was established on the eve of the industrial revolution...
...And finally, bureaucrats are timid...
...State Senate, Republican...
...And the automobile is only one of many business factors which are remaking the United States...
...As a result, business is domineering...
...It is altering morals and tax systems, helping criminals to escape and women to go shopping...
...What a revolution has been worked by the automobile alone in the United States during the last twenty years...
...On the other hand, business is very largely responsible for the conduct of government under the constitution...
...They are afraid of losing their jobs...
...United State Senate, Democrat plus Progressive Republican...
...It sees a General Mitchell silenced because he criticized the administration of the army air service...
...And business should remember that though it is the dominant American interest it is not the only American interest, and that intelligent politics demands consideration for the interest of the public as a whole as well as for the business portion of the public...
...As a result, they are economically underpaid, overruled and thwarted...
...And it is characteristic of lesser men that they take more stock in a temporary personal dignity than they do in the tasks which they are supposed to perform...
...It sees the anti-trust laws used to prevent sumption of time which is the life-blood of business, who are afraid of their shadows every time a senator from the cow-belt makes a speech and lie down and roll over every time a vote for higher official salaries is in the offing...
...Washington has seen the so-called power trust buying up newspapers, editing textbooks and hiring professors to inculcate the principle that government operation is a fallacy...
...Business must use its power to put real men in office rather than rubber-stamps for some manufacturers association or labor union...
...Super-power projects, railroad consolidations, industrial rationalization, solution of employment, forceful and farsighted foreign policies, conservation policies, developments of inland waterways, reorganization of tax systems, the politico-religious anomaly of prohibition, the restoration of orderly municipal politics, the control of crime and the elimination of "rackets"—the budget for cooperative action is swelling from year to year...
...The difficulty is, primarily, that while American business is "radical" in the true sense of the word, American government is conservative in the worst sense of the word...
...When business looks at politics it sees a mixture of official pomposity, of administrative inertia and red tape, of individual timidity...
...Not understanding politics, business tries to push things through in spite of politicians, and is impatient of any political opposition to its plans...
...The automobile has affected every part of society, labor, religion, crime, foreign policy and the home...
...That, roughly, is the political situation in Washington, under a constitution that we so venerate that it is sacrilege to suggest that it is obsolete and injurious to the interests of the country to maintain it...
...Dividends must be declared...
...We were an agricultural country and we established a system which was designed to solve the political difficulties of the eighteenth century...
...Together, business and politics can work marvels...
...The two complement each other, each is responsible for any and all possible recriminations and accusations that the other can make, and both must work together if the situation is to be improved...
...And once business has put good men in office, it should support them, for their courage and intergrity and not for the degree of compliance which they show to the wishes of business...
...They are afraid of offending their superiors and they know that promotion does not go by merit but by seniority, at best, and by political pull, at other times...
...What would American business think of a concern in which the board of directors was constantly trying to oust the chairman, in which the chairman was trying to outwit the stockholders and in which an independent committee was constantly setting aside the decisions of the board...
...Cooperation between business and politics requires a thorough house-cleaning in each branch of American life...
...The first such which we experienced—slavery—was only solved after a civil war, whereas the British government solved the same problem at much slighter cost and in much less time...
...When it was drawn up, we had no railroads, no steamships, no automobiles, no telegraph, telephone or radio, no industrial power to speak of and no industrial problems...
...If business does not solve unemployment, politics will take a hand...
...We have a system which does not encourage leadership...
...What, on the other hand, does official Washington think when it sees producers of petroleum, of which we have the greatest production and export, incapable of shutting down on overproduction and clamoring for protection by means of the tariff ? Each rubs its eyes and each forms a highly uncomplimentary picture of the other...
...While Wall Street can and does wield the power of life and death over wide areas of the world, Washington muddles along under the double disadvantage of an obsolete constitution and an infatuated veneration for the old way of doing things...
...Each must revise its attitude toward the other...
...If politics does not solve the problem of mergers and utilities and consolidations, business will take a hand...
...For the better and return the scorn with interesU In the f°llowin9 P"P*r the price of grain and to empart of three generations, Mr...
...It is not enough to vote for a Coolidge or a Hoover every four years and spend the interval criticizing him...
...governor, Democrat...
...The result is that there is, and can be, little progress...
...Interest must be met...
...Time is of little importance in politics...
...The fact that business eagerly acquiesced in the Eighteenth Amendment because the business world thought it would mean more profits and that politics welcomed the same social experiment because politicians knew it would mean more jobs, illustrates the need for improvement in this branch of government...
...BABBITT AND THE BOSS By JOHN CARTER TO SAY that American Present economic conditions, not unlike the doldrums intelligent economic combinabusiness has at Wash- of yore, have led to considerable inquiry into the seaman- tions...
...You generally find them in banks or on boards of directors...
...Both politics and business must regain their perspective on society and restore respect for human rights...
...Business is beginning to recognize the dangerous precedent it allowed when it encouraged the outlawing of an entire industry for the benefit of the others, as it becomes apparent that there is scarcely a moral, economic or political argument against the liquor business which could not also be brought to bear against the tobacco, the chewing-gum, the advertising and the automobile business...
...Washington is, by and large, administered by second-rate men...
...Business must make a profit...
...The sugar trust scandals of the prewar days, the oil scandals of unsavory memory, are part and parcel of a corrupt condition extending back to the whisky ring and credit mobilier incidents of Grant's administration, to the cynical corruption of the United States Bank under Biddle, and to the incredible frauds which tainted the dissipation of the public domain...
...And business concludes that from being done, and save in matters of taxes and the Washington is administered by a group of second-rate tariff has shown little direct interest in the processes minds, by officials who take their positions more of legislation...
...There is a great deal of truth in this picture...
...The constitution is the charter of our liberties...
...Business must cease to think of politics as a dirty business and politics must stop thinking of business as dirty politics...
...The Editors...
...It is difficult for the average American business man to realize the spectacle of blatant, reckless and truculent greed which business presents at Washington...
...House of Representatives, Republican...
...it is also our political straight-jacket...
...Men like Morrow, Dawes and Owen Young are rare in official life...
...If the two continue to work at odds with each other, suspicion, dislike and recrimination will arise and will prevent constructive action...
...There is a frequent pattern in American politics which may be represented as follows: State Assembly, Democrat...
...The constitution so circumscribed the power of the federal government as to make it almost incapable of change or progress...
...The leaders of America are today in business...
...The result is a cleavage between the seriously than their work, who are reckless in the consimple, practical, direct methods of the business mind, and the intricate, theoretical, oblique methods of politics...
...The bad example of a few businesses in seeking corrupt favors from government has further weakened such government as Washington can give...
...The result has been that the government is almost incapable of handling any major issue, especially a major economic issue...
...These have inci- Farm Board going into the sort of government it de- dentally taken to bombarding each other with unusual wheat business and using the serves is as unsatisfactory as determination...
...Business needs quick returns and no questions asked...
...Since the Civil War, business has let government go its own way and tried to keep government from interfering with the conduct of business...
...Business does not present any too savory an appearance in politics...
...Business stands to benefit far more from government by able men of initiative than from government by pussy-footing "yes-men...
...And as usual, each is right and each is wrong...
...The need for political reform is growing year by year and if it is to be satisfied, there is need for the closest and most intelligent cooperation between business and government...
...The real trouble is that American business has the sort of government it deserves, while American government has the sort of business it deserves...
...Is this extreme...
...Washington has seen the cult of skin-deep prosperity and of loud slogans used to prevent any constructive improvement of industrial conditions...
...The distrust of politicians has bred a very general contempt for politics...
...apart, they can only perpetuate chaos...
...For several years the cleavage has been growing, until between political Washington and business America there is a gulf so wide that it takes an individual of exceptional competence to bridge it...
...The dominant class in America—the business class— and the politicians no longer speak the same language or think the same thoughts...
...that business is not simply iegdized greed> hut that both sees the Reserve Board s It has regarded politics as are ways of getting things done...
Vol. 12 • August 1930 • No. 14
