WHAT SHALL WE CALL IT?
Hall, Bolton
What Shalt We Call It? In Designating the Interests that Prey Upon the Public, Shall We Say "Big Busines" or "Privileged Business" By BOLTON HALL THE PAPERS generally classed all the Commercial...
...But there is a clear distinction between some of our "Merchant princes" and the Privileged Business at which Governor Wilson aimed...
...but otherwise with Monopoly...
...the New York Gas Companies whose gas is believed to cost them nothing, have been forced only by legislation to reduce the price to $.80...
...It seems to me that with Business, as with Babies, the bigger the better...
...These "Interests" have a more or less close Monopoly...
...Little Business, like the control of licorice, is just as much a beneficiary of tariff, etc., as Big Business...
...Similarly the Government having a monopoly of mail service enforced by law, charges two cents for deliveries that private carriers could get rich on by working for one cent...
...the legitimate Merchants welcome fair competition just as a Department usually welcomes a rival to open opposite knowing that the newcomer will" draw business" to the neighborhood...
...Is not what we really mean Privileged Business...
...To illustrate...
...ordinary merchants have none...
...I am somewhat shy of the term "Big Business": that it is big is no indictment...
...The Interests dread any competition, so that they summon law courts and even violence to shut it out...
...I am aware that with a few persons interested in economics, Big Business has come to have an indefinite significance as Business in politics, but the term is inaccurate and misleading...
...In Designating the Interests that Prey Upon the Public, Shall We Say "Big Busines" or "Privileged Business" By BOLTON HALL THE PAPERS generally classed all the Commercial Club diners together as the "Big Business" that President-elect Wilson denounces...
...It is unable to see and is not forced to realize that it would be more profitable to do the service cheaper...
...At each reduction from $2.25 they howled that they Would be ruined...
...but they seem to make more money at $.80 than they did at $2.25...
...Monopoly not only profits at the cost of the public, but as it is released from the healthy influence of competition, which cuts out the unfit, it always conducts its own business wastefully and usually stupidly...
Vol. 5 • January 1913 • No. 4
