Paean to Big Business
Quinn, T. K.
Paean to Big Business Big Business and Free Men, by James C. Worthy. Harper. 205 pp. $4. Reviewed by T. K. Quinn You may take it from one who has been there that the subordinate officers in big...
...For all of these pressing, vital questions and many more concerning the free man in a big business society, Worthy has no answers...
...As a defender of the conservative viewpoint the author would do well to acquaint himself with Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind...
...Intolerable" would be more accurate...
...Do not favoritism and patience to stand in line become more essential to promotion than merit or ability...
...But Worthy evidently never heard of Kirk, Justice Brandeis, Thorstein Veblen, Charles Beard, or John K. Galbraith's The Affluent Society, or of Adolph Berle, Sumner Slichter, or Gardiner Means...
...Yet he decries the intellectual's opposition to business motives and pursuits...
...What follows is largely a paean to big business, when it is not apologizing, as Worthy does specifically in his preface, for any possible mild reflections on business and for any failure to emphasize the problems posed by the "powerful labor movement...
...Must not the individual conform to the corporation image and concentrate on its objectives to the practical exclusion of other interests...
...Do not the very impersonality, complexity, and size of big business tend to crush real freedom...
...Is not honest free enterprise actually overwhelmed by the requirements of huge capital and group and industrial harmony...
...To Worthy's credit he wishes business were more democratic and idealistic and humane and he argues unconsciously for smaller organization when he asks for closer ties with management...
...Big business in America has developed into an oligarchy of private capital with enormous power that is not being effectively checked by our democratically organized society...
...Quite naively and nicely he discusses but never comes to grips with basic motives, questions, or issues...
...Kirk says, "American businessmen are deficient in the disciplines that nurture the spirit...
...And "One can graduate from the business school, quite innocent of ethical principle or even decent tastes...
...He would discard vertical forms in favor of the horizontal where he thinks the individual is not so smothered...
...James C. Worthy, a vice president of Sears, Roebuck, protects his position in advance by getting his boss to write an endorsing foreword...
...Does not the individual in big business sacrifice his freedom and individuality to the imperatives of organization...
...Reviewed by T. K. Quinn You may take it from one who has been there that the subordinate officers in big business would be risking their necks if they ever wrote a book with any such title as this one without the approval of corporation superiors...
...However, when it comes to granting employes a place in the sun he says, "Business cannot be run by the ballot box . . . organized activity requires a degree of consensus, and evidence of lack of consensus is 'disturbing' to those in positions of responsibility...
...Hence the organization man, conformity, impersonality, apathy, and a big business society that is showing serious signs of moral sickness...
Vol. 24 • March 1960 • No. 3
