eturns can only be sought through adherence to ethical
principles and although this aim at profits becomes the power plant
which drives the business machine, the latter gives its energies and
attention more directly to the rendering of service.

Concentration upon service tends to make a man relatively efficient
therein, but argues a relative unfamiliarity with the field of others,
from which we infer the advisability of confining one's activity to
the thing he has learned to do best. As an example of this, he should
avoid placing his surplus capital or savings in outside enterprises
where they will partake of risks that are unknown to him, nor should
he attempt to employ his savings at all with the purpose of making
money, unless, indeed, he can use them as capital in his own business.
The focusing of attention on one's own function also implies and
explains the custom of placing upon participants in a business
transaction the responsibility each for his own side, a custom which
is economically justified but which must be kept within proper limits,
as is fully recognized by the business men who are successful and who
therefore become models or examples for the guidance of other men,
influencing the latter towards high ideals.

We have found, on the other hand, that apart from men in charge of
business enterprise, the burden of providing thus for man's welfare
and development is assumed by very few, the vast majority, whether in
professional or business employment, treating it with neglect and
contempt. They think, perhaps, that they are aiming at higher things,
or that their efforts would not sufficiently count, or they do not
give the matter any sturdy thought; while the underlying motive, often
unconscious, is simply an unwillingness to practice self-restraint. It
is self-indulgence, we must conclude, that is to be overcome if we are
to meet this responsibility in a manly way, visualizing it with
sufficient clearness to see that thrift, the creation of capital for
one's self and for the race, comes into no necessary conflict with any
other proper aim in life, but on the contrary constitutes a
fundamental duty to society, to the state, to one's family, to his own
future, to his self-respect.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Creating Capital, by Frederick L. Lipman

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATING CAPITAL ***

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