The old sureness is gone. The great pioneers were never assailed by doubts: they went straight forward, wearing the blinkers of a single aim, which kept their eyes like those of harnessed horses in the narrow road; God was with them, Progress was with them, Public Opinion was with them, the government at Washington was with them.
But their successors, like everyone else, look over their shoulders and see the shadows: see the government at Washington and attach a comic importance to that bewildered figure; just as the government at Washington looks over its shoulder and sees at New York the government by business, its traditional master, and wishing a master, is unaware that the twilight of the gods is come. And both see that greatest of all shadows, Public Opinion, the new monster of Frankenstein which everyone feeds with propaganda, and fears. These three things were all one in the bright days of the great pioneers, and in that perfect unity everyone was sure, so sure, and the few were free, so free!
Business no longer imposes itself up on the imagination through its extraordinary personalities. In vain do we seek to recover the past. In vain does the popular magazine fiction strive to furnish what life no longer does—the pioneer ideal, the hero who overcomes fire and flood and the machination of enemies and moves irresistibly forward to success, who believes in himself, whose motto is that the will is not to be gainsaid, whose life is one long Smile Week.
Vast propaganda exists to hold us true to the old faith; we read it as we used to read Sunday School fiction; but religion only sought its way into hearts within the covers of E. P. Roe when other channels began to close. We beat the bushes for the great, the kings that should come after Agamemnon. Monthlies of vast circulation tell us of every jack-of-all-trades who hits upon a million dollars. This one found out how to sell patches for automobile tires. That one was an office boy who never knew when it became five o'clock in the afternoon. Our faith requires vast stirring.
To the gradual weakening of the idea that business was all-wise and all-powerful, the war greatly contributed. Before 1914 men would say confidently, "Ah, but business, the bankers, will not let the nations fight. They have only to pull the strings of the purse and there will be no money for the fighters." After hostilities began they would say with equal confidence: "It will be all over in six weeks. The bankers will not let it go on."
Business was, however, not only powerless to prevent war but it stood by impotent while the very foundations on which it itself rested were destroyed. One illusion went.
Then again, during the war unorganized private production failed. Publicly organized production was immensely successful. Governments the world over showed that the industrial mechanism could be made to run faster and turn out more than ever before. The illusion that business was a mystery understood only by initiates, the men "'big' financially," was shaken.
After the war was over the government organization for regulating production was abandoned. A period of chaos, rising prices, speculation, wasteful production, of luxuries, ensued and then a crash. One may explain all that happened in both cases on the basis of the war. But business needed triumphs to restore its old place in the public consciousness, and it has had instead a catastrophe.
The weakness of business today is its division. Many financial leaders saw the depression that would follow peace. Frank A. Vanderlip, for one, came back from Europe in 1919 full of warnings. He counselled moderation. He urged deflation instead of further inflation. His advice was unpopular with those who saw profits from a sudden withdrawal of wartime restraints. And the consequence of his prudence, according to what he has told his friends, was his being forced to retire from the Presidency of the great Wall Street bank of which he had been head.
Henry Ford, moreover, is a destroyer of old illusions. He "defies economic laws." He does what business says is impossible. In a day of high prices he produces at an unprecedentedly low price. He does not cut wages. He finds a market where there is no market. To lower his costs he needs cheaper steel than he can buy, so he manufactures it himself cheaper than the great steelmakers can manufacture it. He operates independently of the "big business" group. Mr. Morgan sends for him and he declines to go. He grows vastly rich, proving that all the knowledge the men "'big' financially" have of the mystery of business is no knowledge at all, only rules made in their own interest.