“AMERICANS PERFECT CHILDREN IN BUSINESS.”
Bernard Shaw Says Our Stratum of Romanticism Prevents Us from Knowing the Real Thing.
George Bernard Shaw is never afraid to express an opinion on any subject, and apparently he is never at a loss for the opinion. The other day he expressed his views on business, saying:
The most striking peculiarity about business men is that I have never met one who understands the slightest thing about business.
Business men have certain set, conventional methods. Propose to them a way of doing business that departs from their usual method, and although the new way may mean more profit, they will not accept it unless forced to, and even then they believe they are being swindled.
My own way of doing business is perhaps novel, but it is neither harsh nor unfair. But it is novel, and therefore the men I deal with object to it, although they themselves are the gainers by doing things my way and not the way in which they are used. Yet they regard me with suspicion. It is very much as if you offered a man five dollars for doing something for which he had previously been in the habit of receiving a dollar, and having him denounce you as a swindler.
Not content with generalities, Mr. Shaw went on to discuss Englishmen and Americans as business men.
In making an agreement with an Englishman, you may be sure of one thing: if it is not entirely to his advantage he will not keep it.
An Englishman, when he wants a house, or money, or anything else, knows that in order to get what he wants he has to sign something. He does not care what he signs as long as he gets what he wants. After he obtains the money or the house, or whatever else he stood in need of, if he finds the agreement he signed disagreeable, he will denounce the man who holds it as a knave or a scoundrel and as one who is trying to take unfair advantage of him.
In my own experience with Englishmen, the terms of my agreements, satisfactory at the time of signing, have afterward proved irksome. They would then come to me and say: “Surely, Mr. Shaw, you cannot expect to hold us to such outrageous terms”; and when I would point to the agreements bearing their signature, they would retort: “Surely, Mr. Shaw, you are a gentleman!”
After all, the Jew is the only man who knows what he is signing, and will keep absolutely to his agreement.
Americans are perfect children In business. They have a stratum of romanticism that prevents them from knowing what business really is. This childish, romantic spirit impels them to be doing things, to cut somebody out, to do something that nobody else has done, or to do a greater thing than anybody else has ever done. Accidents, of course, will happen, and sometimes they make money. But the percentage of failures in America is something terrible. We never hear of these. Every attention is centered on the conspicuous few who have made success.
Shall we apply to Mr. Shaw the words of Horace,
Aliena negotia curo
Excussus propriis,
which, being interpreted, is: “I attend to the business of other people, having lost my own?” It were fairer, perhaps, to say that, in his rôle of witty playwright, everybody’s business is Mr. Shaw’s.