THE SOULFUL CORPORATIONS
Mayer, Milton
The Soulful Corporations By MILTON MAYER IT IS HIGH TIME that somebody said a good word for free enterprise without being paid by the monopolies to say it. If I were in the pay of the monopolies,...
...If I were in the pay of the monopolies, I would not be spending, as I did last week, $1.25 to have my pants re-soled by a Mr...
...I remember one day last February, when I was riding the Twentieth Century Limited, at the expense of a free enterpriser, and a new engineer slammed on the brakes around that rattlesnake curve near Utica...
...The only drawback to my paean to free enterprise is that I am not sure that it would be any less enterprising if it were not free...
...Back around 1938, when the free Finns were pushing the communized Russians around, Mr...
...You can not name a road I have not ridden—except, maybe, the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley—since the beginning of the war, and every railroad I have ridden is doing a job of huffing and puffing that simply staggers me...
...The trains run on time, just as they did in Mussolini's Italy, and if, under all this gruesome pressure, they pull in a half hour late, the railroads hang their heads instead of telling the people that they are lucky to get there at all...
...And when you talk to the gentlemen who keep these free enterprises going, you wonder just what it is that makes them do it...
...The rails were icy, and the wheels on six cars locked and went fiat...
...Riding On The Railroads I have not heard from Winston on just what it goes to show, now that the free Finns and the communized Russians are shoving the enterprising Nazis' teeth all the way back to their collarbones, but whatever it just goes to show Mr...
...I am especially impressed with my own insight On this point as I hurtle across the country, North, East, South, and Wrest, on the enterprising railroad trains...
...I do not know, myself...
...Winston Churchill, of London, England, said it just went to show how a free people could beat the pants off a slave people, and off the bestial, low-grade, vicious, degenerate Russkies in particular...
...Mayer's Suspicion Not one of these nameless heroes ever says, "Because it is the New York Central System," or, "Because it is free enterprise...
...I am a violent opponent of statism and communism and collectivism because I am so scared of what it might do...
...I have, as Amos Alonzo Stagg used to say, a stinking suspicion that they would be no less enthusiastic if, instead of wearing NYC on their buttons they wore some such insignia as USA...
...He does his job—engineer, fireman, conductor, brakeman, porter, switchman, yardman—and exactly why...
...None, that is, in the sense that any yardman who tips the lids for hot-boxes is aware of...
...Passengers, baggage, freight, coffins, dogs, magnolia blossoms, and clingstone peaches are being pulled around at something like the pre-war volume by something like half the pre-war equipment...
...The only thing that bothers me about this display of the wonders of free enterprise is the fact, and I have seen it in operation, that the enterprisers are the boys who load the freight and baggage, herd and feed the passengers, and water the dogs and magnolia blossoms...
...When you ask him, he answers, "Because it's my job...
...Churchill, it just goes to show me that freedom, in the sense of every man's having his fingers on every other man's throat, has very little to do with enterprise...
...It is the train crews, the switchyard gangs, and the jerkwater station masters that keep the New York Central System going under these incredible conditions...
...His job —not the New York Central System—demands of him that he stay .in there and box, rain or shine, day or night, and if No...
...22 is coaled and watered, and if you -ask him why, he will say it's his job...
...But I am not in the least convinced, on the basis of my Marco Poloing, that the gentlemen who do the work of the world are so good at it, as indeed they are, simply because they are working for free enterprisers...
...I would be wearing new pants, and even have a second pair in the closet...
...Of course I may receive a whole clothing store as a token of the monopolies' esteem after this piece is published, but until then I am a free man—no bid, no ask, no open, and no clothes...
...Varsity Tailor...
...There is no esprit de corps, if I may lapse into the continental, whatever...
...Not one of them knows or cares who is competing with whom, or why...
...Five years later, when the communized Russians were pushing the free Finns around, this same Churchill said it just went to show how noble, heroic, and unbeatable our gallant Soviet allies were...
...All that each of them knows is that he has got an obligation to a job...
...All of which makes me wonder exactly what it does go to show, and whether there is any special percentage —beyond that achieved by Mussolini—in free enterprise, and whether these Joes who really do the running of the trains would not do it just as well and just as faithfully if they were doing it for the community instead of the monopolies...
...The pride of the New York Central System hobbled into the Grand Central Terminal five hours late, and you should have seen the New York Central System —free meals, flowers, baskets of fruit...
...22 is six hours late, he is down there to see to it that No...
...When you ask him why he sweats his ears off getting a train in or out on time, or the baggage loaded, or the sections joined, his only reply is, "Because it's my job...
Vol. 8 • November 1944 • No. 45
