BY
JOHN HAYS HAMMOND
In our last Congress, out of ninety-six members of the Senate and four hundred and thirty-five members of the House of Representatives, only about seventy legislators were classified as business men. This means that the Congress of the United States cannot be regarded as a genuinely representative body. To make it such, we should have a much larger representation than we have of the business class in the broadest sense of the term,—that is, not only manufacturers, merchants, and bankers, but also farmers, engineers, leaders of labor organizations, scientific men, journalists, physicians, educators, and men of other vocations influential in the life of the Nation.
This conception of the proper make-up of our legislative bodies is a comparatively new and unfamiliar one, partly because it has been felt that legal training and practice in applying the laws in courts made men particularly fitted to be law-makers and partly because until recently decidedly few business men have attracted public attention by reason of their knowledge and skill in handling questions of government. The old idea of the statesman was that he ought to be detached from the active every-day interests of the community and thus be in a position to give his attention to general matters of public and national policy. The present generation, however, has been coming to realize that most of these matters are directly or indirectly related to the business of the citizens of the country and that the wise determination of them involves taking into account the principles and the necessary practices of business. Hence the subject of the place of the business man in politics is becoming one of compelling interest, not only because of patriotic considerations, but also on account of the enlightened self-interest which should serve as a guide in legislation for the benefit of the country as a whole, as well as of the individuals who are its citizens.
For his comparatively small representation in legislative halls the business man himself is largely to blame. There has been a lamentable lack of interest on the part of American business men as a class in our country’s political affairs. By many of them politics has been regarded as having merely an academic interest, so far as they were concerned; by others politics has been held to be an unclean vocation. In a way, however, these allegations about the character of politics have been only convenient excuses for failure to take a proper part in public affairs. Generally speaking, the plain, unvarnished reason for the failure of business men to discharge their political duties has been their unwillingness to make the necessary sacrifices of social pleasures, of money or of present business opportunities. Business men who allow such motives to dominate their actions are simply shirking their civic responsibilities, are essentially disloyal to the community from which they derive their support, and should be so stigmatized by their fellow-citizens.
Still less justifiable than the indifference to politics which has just been described is the habit which too many business men, especially those controlling large corporations, have permitted themselves to fall into, of dealing with political and legislative matters at second hand and by indirection. This habit, fortunately for the country, has of late been greatly diminishing because of the strong condemnation of it by enlightened public opinion; but it cannot be denied that for many years in our political history the owners and managers of important corporations, with some notable exceptions, regarded it as justifiable, while keeping out of politics themselves, to make generous contributions to campaign funds and thus to assist in electing legislators who could be counted upon to attend to matters of legislation affecting their interests. Apart from its moral objections, this practice necessarily developed a class of mere professional politicians without any qualifications whatsoever to deal with the great business problems of our cities, our States and the Nation itself. Every thinking American must admit that a highly beneficial result of the agitation of the question of the relation of government to business in the past few years has been to bring about a vast change in this order of things. Corporations are no longer able to dictate legislation for their selfish ends through a conscienceless and morally stultified class of political representatives. It is well that this rank undergrowth, which impeded all proper participation in politics on the part of self-respecting business men, has been to a great extent cleared away.
There is a growing realization on the part of the public that our business prosperity and our political soundness are mutually interdependent,—that we cannot have business prosperity without the aid of just, adequate and far-sighted government, and that we cannot have permanently satisfactory public policies without the aid of the experienced and enlightened business class. Especially is this truth being impressed upon the minds of citizens of the country as they reflect upon the conditions that will have to be met as a result of the European War. We have already had a chance to see how few men in American public life are able to cope with far-reaching international problems, while at the same time it is rapidly dawning upon us that our chief political and economic problems of the future will be of the world, and not of the “parish pump,” type. This is bringing home to our minds the interdependence of all our industries and business activities, and of all classes in the community, in whatever vocations they may be engaged. There can be but little doubt that as public thinking follows these lines more and more fully and resolutely there will be a tendency in our future legislation, which the demagogic politicians will be unable to withstand, to subordinate considerations of petty political advantage, and of partisan aims and ends, to the right solution of the great economic problems which are at last seen to be vital to the welfare of the Nation, at home and abroad.
The assistance which business men can give in the work of arriving at correct solutions of these great economic problems is apparent. It is also apparent that without this assistance Congress and the administrative departments of our Government cannot be expected to reach correct and adequate conclusions in regard to them. The truth is that our Government as a whole is at this very moment suffering severely in efficiency and economy from the lack of the continuous participation of able business men in the conduct of its affairs. The administration of our governmental departments, for instance, is confessedly obsolete and uneconomical, if judged by the best business standards. Thus, both an increase in our national revenues and a decrease in our national expenditures could undoubtedly be effected through the coöperation of expert business men in Congress with the heads of these departments in the introduction of the most approved business methods. In the management of the ordinary affairs of the country our Government had been well likened to a great corporation in which all the people of the country are stockholders. This conception has not yet become universal, but when it does—and it undoubtedly will—there will result a general demand for successful business men in the administration of the People’s Corporation.
This, however, will be only a part of the demand that will arise when it is more fully appreciated how impossible it is to arrive at sound public policies and practices with respect to any matter, domestic or foreign, affecting the country, without having due regard for the business principles which control the means by which almost all the material and ideal benefits of society are procured. The larger demand will be that the politicians cease to look upon politics as a field reserved for their own often purely selfish activities and that business men as a class no longer treat politics as having only a remote and academic interest for them and hence as deserving to be relegated to irresponsible theorists or to casually selected and mainly incompetent legislators.
A new conception of the qualifications of those who conduct our Government is beginning to take shape in this country. Time was when the prevalent popular notion was that the chief qualification required for a political career was to be an adept in the Machiavellian arts; and the currency of this notion has undoubtedly deterred many a conscientious man of tender susceptibilities from taking the part in politics for which he was well fitted by his business experience and in which he could have been of great benefit to the community. But this conception is rapidly passing, no doubt to the intense irritation of some of the surviving politicians of the old school, who are having it impressed upon them that indispensable prerequisites to real and abiding success in politics, as well as in business, are integrity of purpose, straight-forwardness in dealing with the public and an honest intent to serve, not their own selfish interests, but the permanent good of the community. The old-time equivocations, lack of candor and nefarious machinations of the resourceful party boss have now so little chance of success that it is clear, even to those who are reluctant to give them up, that they must now be consigned to the scrap-heap of discredited politics. And it is this very fact that removes the most disagreeable obstacles from the way of the able yet scrupulous business man who feels impelled to do his share towards making politics subserve the best interests of the country.