Moreover, we let ourselves be misled by the habit of speaking of the "public business" and accepting without examination the analogy which the word suggests. We say to ourselves, "Well, since government is a business, the proper person to be in charge of it is a business man." But it is not business in any exact sense of the word. If the product of the operation were a mere bookkeeping profit or even mere bookkeeping economies then it might properly be called a business. But that which business efficiency in office, if it could really be obtained, might do well, is the least part of self-government, whose main end must for a long time be the steady building up of the democratic ideal.
But the electing of business men to office does not build up this ideal. On the contrary it is a confession of failure in democracy, an admission that public life in it does not develop men fit for its tasks, that for capacity it is necessary to seek in another world and summon an outsider; establish a sort of receivership in self-government.
And it is a blind sort of receivership. We know little about business men except the noisy disclosures of their press agents. "X" has made a million dollars. If we no longer say, as in the days of Mark Twain, that golden words flow from his mouth, we accept his wealth as proof positive of his extraordinary capacity for affairs. There is no going behind the fact of his vast accumulation, for business is conducted in secret. The law recognizes that it has to be, keeping in confidence facts disclosed through income tax returns.
When we consider a successful business man for office no allowance can be made for the fact that the intelligence responsible for his success may not have been his as head of a successful organization. In no way may it be asked and answered whether all the original force which was in him may not have been spent before he is suggested for office. Senator Knox was an instance of spent force, his energy and ambition being gone when he entered public life.
Luck may explain a commercial career and you cannot elect luck to office. Special talents which are valuable in making money may be out of place in political life.
Moreover commercial success in America has been easier than anywhere else in the world. Opportunities are numerous with the result that competition has not been keen. Nothing has been so over praised or so blindly praised as business success in this country. We may occasionally elect men in public life to office upon false reputations, as we did Vice-President Coolidge, crediting him with a firmness toward the Boston police strikers which had been shown by a subordinate in his absence. But at least the acts of officials are subject to popular scrutiny. Behind success in business we may not look.
Take the case of a Middle Western corporation. Three quarters of its profits came from a subsidiary. The history of the subsidiary is this: The corporation came into possession of certain mineral lands through the foreclosure of a mortgage. A company developing a product from the mineral failed. The head of the corporation acquiring the property by foreclosure thought this product of little value. A subordinate felt that it could by a change of name and judicious advertising be widely sold. He had great difficulty in persuading his employer but in the end obtained the money to make his experiment, whose results fully justified his judgment. The public seeking a business man for office would look no further than at the success of the corporation, which would be proof sufficient of the great talents of its head. Electing him they would not obtain for public service the mind which made the money, even if it be agreed that the talent for making money is a talent for public service.
And this case: A great Eastern trust acquired possession of a piece of property in this way: It uses a mineral product not much found in this country. Some Westerners had a deposit. They went to the Eastern trust, which encouraged them and loaned them $10,000 for its development. They then found that the trust was the only market for the mineral and that it had no intention to buy. Ultimately this deposit passed to the trust by foreclosure of the $10,000 mortgage. The trust thus obtaining ownership, began mining and in the first year cleared $500,000 on its $10,000 investment. The transaction in this instance was not the work of a subordinate; it revealed, however, a peculiar talent in the head of the corporation that would not be serviceable in public life.
To get down to names. Many business men entered the service of the government during the war. Almost none of them left it with enhanced reputations. Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip, who served in the Treasury Department, had little success, so the men who surrounded him felt. I am not able to assess the causes of his failure. Perhaps he had assigned to him an impossible task.
Similarly men who had contact with him while financing the Republican campaign of 1916 were disappointed. After his service at Washington he ceased to be head of a great Wall Street bank. What do these adverse circumstances mean regarding Mr. Vanderlip's fitness to be, let us say, Secretary of the Treasury? Precisely nothing, let us admit. And his success for a number of years in banking, the large fortune he accumulated, by the same reasoning, mean no more.