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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
WAR IS EVER WITH US.
(Continued from page 3.)
Success in any kind of work depends largely upon the interest which we take in it.
If it were possible to perform every kind of labor with a machine someone would be found
with a genius sufficient to invent and produce the necessary machinery. That is impossible, for
even the most perfect machine has its limitations. Much as it is capable of doing, it finally reaches
Ihe point at which it will go no further. The human element must then come in, and it is that
human element which defines the difference between a good man and a time-killer.
One is interested in the work he is doing and is determined to make a success of it, no matter
what his vocation may be. He is not watching the clock, nor is he studying the easiest routes to
follow. lie has one thing in mind—success—and if he is selling goods, depend upon it, he is
going to sell them.
The time-killer is interested in directly the opposite condition. He is interested in looking for
the easiest routes, and if a man does not buy, why worry?
All employers will recognize the two types, and most of them
recognize the point of difference between them—and there is much
difference. The builder and the time-killer—one works with a defi-
nite purpose—the other is a spineless drifter.
Hysteria of Criticism Against Business
V
FRY forcefully and very aptly did Frank A. Vanderlip, presi-
dent of the National City Bank, set forth in an address
before the recent convention of the cotton manufacturers the need
of a saner view of things if the business of this nation is to advance
and present industrial and commercial uncertainty be remedied.
"We are to-day a nation grown critical of business methods
and resentful of business accomplishment," said Mr. Vanderlip.
"By far the greater part of Government energies, as related to
business, are directed toward destructive rather than constructive
and creative ends, llusiness men have been called to account by
Congress, commissions and courts and are being punished for past
deeds and hampered in present activities-
"The managers of railroads, although they have given to the
public an average freight rate much less than what similar service
costs in other countries, are found with ever-increasing bonds of
hampering regulations and are held to the strictest accountability
for any failure of administration which falls below 100 per cent,
of efficiency.
"If that is a fair measure of the duty to society which the
managers of public utilities may rightfully be expected to perform,
and I do not wish to be considered as denying that the public has
a right to exact wise and efficient management, then why should
not society demand wise and efficient conduct of the great agencies
of production. If a railroad manager is culpable and is answer-
able to society for anything less than ioo per cent, of efficiency,
what of the farmer and planter, holding the great agency of pro-
duction—land—and utilizing it with but 40 per cent, of efficiency?
That is the indictment that stands against no small part of the
agricultural community—a conduct of their business on a basis of
40 per cent, of efficiency.
"It will not do to say that railroad managers-and corporation
heads are the representatives of publicly subscribed capital and are
therefore subject, in the interests of society, to a surveillance that
applies only to the affairs of a public corporation, while farmers
represent only personal investment and may be left to work out
with such ignorance or intelligence as they choose to bring to bear
the conduct of their own affairs.
"Farmers and planters also owe something to society in the
way of intelligently conducting their business. They hold the
means of production in their control. The public interest and the
common good demand thai they exercise that trust with intelli-
gence, efficiency and thrift, quite as rightly as does public opinion
demand efficiency and honesty in business adnrnistration.
"Prices o'f produce go up in answer to the inexorable law'of
supply and demand; values of the great agency of production—
farm lands—have risen in our me:rory two or three hundred per
cent., not because those lands were more efficiently managed, but
because the demands of hungry mouths and backs to be clothed
have made prices that permitted much increased values, even when
not accompanied by increased efficiency of management.
"Is it not time for the maligned business man to direct some
attention to the honest farmer, and to ask whether the people
whose demands the politicians are so fond of formulating should
not have directed against- them and their small business methods
some of the same analytical criticism that it has been the order of
the day to' direct against big business?
"I believe that as a nation we have for some years been at-
tacked by a hysteria of criticism against big business, untiL a
majority of the people have come to believe that the way to secure
prosperity is through legislation, instead of through intelligent
hard work, improved methods and a scientific application of the
best knowledge of their own business.
"The particular men who happen for the moment to be occu-
pying official positions in Washington and elsewhere, and who are
laying unbearable hardships upon the proper development of busi-
ness in the United States, are not perhaps primarily to blame.
The blame lies back of them in an ill-informed and frequently
unfair state of public opinion. We have had a period of magazine
and political muck raking, which has brought about a condition
where business success is looked upo'n as a crime, where the man
who has demonstrated that he can manage his business well is
excluded from public counsel and where no small part of our Qov-
ernment affairs have been put into the hands of men who would
be incompetent successfully to manage modest business affairs."
are to be taken up by the association in due course. At the next
meeting the San Francisco piano men intend to take steps against
the giving away of free music rolls and to place this end of the
business on a sound mercantile basis. Then there is the matter
of the allowances on trade-in pianos—a reform, by the way, which
has engaged the attention of The Review, both in its editorial and
news columns, for the past year. This also will be given con-
sideration,
The San Francisco' Association has made a fine start on needed
reforms in the retail field. The way the members have taken hold
would indicate that the new organization is composed of men with
definite aims and purposes, whose good work is well worthy of
emulation by the piano trrde throughout the country, more par-
ticularly by piano merchants in those cities and towns which have
not yet seen the wisdom of forming local associations whereby their
interests may be conserved and materially advanced.