Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/193

Rh In the second place, the diversity of opinion in the business world itself is mainly responsible for the prolonged controversies that unsettle business. In our political contests, the business interests are not a unit. They are not agreed about reforming the currency or revising the tariff. In regard to the trusts, the small capitalists are opposed to the large. In the controversy over railway rates, many farmers, manufacturers and shippers have been arrayed against the railways. At times the railways have entered politics to prevent the large shippers from securing rebates by playing off one road against another. The agitation which led to the enactment of the Elkins law in 1903 is a notable instance. There is no such solidarity of interests among business men as the socialist doctrine of the class struggle would lead one to expect. Our industrial leaders compete scarcely less in the political than in the industrial field. Some of them enter politics to obtain favors for themselves, while others are compelled to enter for self-protection. The railway interest has occasionally been on the offensive and then again on the defensive in our politics. Business men are less in the political limelight than lawyers, but they are more frequently the moving power behind the scenes. There are no more persistent political strategists than many members of the business community. Without their support, many a professional politician would find himself out of a job, and the political agitation that unsettles business would have a very short life.

In the third place, more important than reforming business is the problem of keeping it on a high level, much as the preservation of health transcends the curing of disease, and what preventive medicine is to the public health "pitiless publicity" is to the level of business morals. It is only in a political atmosphere that is potentially critical that those in charge of large business can be expected to be on their good behavior. If every would-be agitator were put under lock and key, the tone of business life would undoubtedly sink to a lower plane.

Fourthly, the fact that business, if let alone, will reform itself is no argument against the use of means that promise to hasten the process, any more than the fact that a patient will in time get well proves that there is no use in calling in a medical practitioner. The doctrine of laissez faire has long since been discredited.

Fifthly, the disturbing effect upon business of political agitation that is necessary should be sharply distinguished from that which is unnecessary, and due account taken of the fact that the self-seeking demagogue is by no means wholly to blame for the latter. The obstinate shortsightedness of not a few men prominent in the business world is also responsible. In place of cooperating with well-meaning politicians in devising appropriate remedies for manifest ills, a studied attempt is frequently made to arouse opposition by creating a state of alarm. To this end the mildest kind of proposals are misrepresented by a subsidized press, the most sinister motives imputed to their advocates, and the