We seek unity as perhaps the builders of Babel sought it after the confusion of tongues fell upon them.
One favorite hope of attaining it is through a new synthesis of business and politics. Government by business had worked. Let us return to Eden. Let us elect a business man President. One may substitute for President in this last sentence Governor or Mayor or Senator or Congressman, for whatever the office is, this recipe is always suggested.
Thus, so it is piously hoped, we may get back to those good old times before we builded for ourselves this Babel, a government that was independent of business, parties that were independent of everything under the sun, voters that were independent of parties, a press that was independent, a propaganda that was independent, and blocs that knew no rule but their own.
Elect the business man to office, so it is felt, and you will have an important synthesis, an old and tried one, one that worked, business and politics. You will do more. You will import into public life all that wonderful efficiency which we read about in the American Magazine, that will to power, that habit of getting things done, that instant capacity for decision which we romantically associate with commercial life. All this is in the minds of those who urge this method of achieving unity.
We have no greater national illusion than the business man illusion. In any other country a business man is just a business man; in America he is a demigod. Golden words, as Mark Twain said, flow out of his mouth. He performs miracles. He has erected a great industry and amassed a large fortune. Therefore he would make a great public official. We never think of him as merely a specialist having a narrow aptitude for heaping up money.
The reasoning about the business man is this. Success, real success, comes to the jack of all trades, a major premise handed down from pioneer days. "A" is a real success, for he has made several millions. Therefore "A" is a jack of all trades. Therefore he would be as great a President as he is a shoe button manufacturer.
We owe the business-man illusion to the pioneers. In a few years they subjected a continent to our uses. They accumulated for themselves wealth such as the world had never seen. The nation does not think of them as the luckiest of a generation facing such virgin resources as existed on no other continent, at a moment when means of transportation such as the world had never seen before, and machinery for manufacture without parallel were in their hands. The marvelous element was not the opportunity but the men.
One day they were telegraphers, day laborers, railroad section hands and the next they were colossal figures of American enterprise. As their like existed nowhere else they became the American type. They established the tradition of American business.
It has been a tradition profitable to keep alive. The men who by luck, by picking other men's wits, or by the possession of a special talent, useful only in a society like our own, grow vastly rich, love to read how wonderful they are. For their delectation a journalism has grown up to celebrate the epic of their marvelous industry, resourcefulness, efficiency, their god-like insight into the hearts of men; whose praises they pay for liberally in the disposition of advertising. Young men who would be great read this journalism diligently looking for the secret of success. Reading it they resolve not to keep their minds upon five o'clock when the closing whistle blows but to become rich by industry and thrift like its great exemplars; who profit by it not only in having their own praises sung but in getting more work out of their servants.
So much virtue rests upon the business-man illusion that no one would lay an impious finger on it. I merely analyze it to exhibit the contents of our minds when we say "elect a business man President," and to present the picture of a demigod out of the American Magazine in the White House, and a new synthesis of business and politics.