experience and should be somewhat diffident towards
experiment and novel theory.

But, making full allowance for this natural and proper disposition, it
must, I believe, be admitted that business, and especially the
representatives of large business, including high finance, have too
often failed to recognize in time the need and to heed the call for
changes from methods and conceptions which had become unsuitable to the
time and out of keeping with rationally, progressive development; that
they have too often permitted themselves to be guided by a tendency
toward unyielding or at any rate apparently unyielding Bourbonism
instead of giving timely aid in a constructive way toward realizing just
and wise modifications of the existing order of things.

Apart from these considerations and leaving aside practices formerly not
uncommon, but which modern laws and modern standards of morality have
made impossible, it may be said generally that business is doing too
much kicking and not enough fighting.

In fact, almost the only instance which I can remember of business
asserting itself effectively on a large scale and by a genuine effort
for its rights, its legitimate interests and its convictions was during
the McKinley-Bryan campaign, in saying which I do not mean to endorse
some of the methods used in that campaign.

And yet, the latent political power of business is enormous. Wisely
organized for proper and right purposes it would be irresistible. No
political party could succeed against it.

If this country is to take full advantage of the unparalleled
opportunities which the developments of the last two years have opened
up to it, if, in the severe competition which sooner or later after the
close of the war is bound to set in for the world's trade, it is to hold
its own, it must not only not be hampered by unwise and antiquated laws,
as it now is, in certain respects, but it must be intelligently aided
and fostered by the legislative and administrative powers.

Business in the leading European countries has been backed up by the
respective governments in the past and will be backed up, more than
ever, in the post-bellum period.

Everywhere else through the civilized world in matters of national
policies as they affect business, the representatives of business are
consulted and listened to with the respect which is due to expert
knowledge.

It is only in America that the views of business men in general (as
dist