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The. Commoner
'APRIL, 1915
can not understand the thing and cannot get ad
vice from the inside, then we will have to do it
with the flat hand and not with the touch of
skill and discrimination. Isn't that true? Men
on the inside of business know how business is
conducted and they can not complain if men on
the outside make mistakes about business it tuey
do not come from the inside and give the kind
of advice which is necessary.
The trouble has been that when they came
in the past for I think the thing is changing
very rapidly- they came with all their bristles
out; they came on the defensive; they came to
see, not what they could accomplish, but what
they could prevent. They did not come to guide;
they came to block. That is of no use whatever
to the general body politic. What has got to per
vade us like a great motive power is that we can
not, and must not" separate our interests from
one another, but must pool our interests. A man
who is trying to fight for his single hand is fight
ing against the community and not fighting with
it. There are a great many dreadful things
about war, as nobody needs to be told in this
day of distress and of terror, but there is one
thing about war which has a very splendid side,
and that is the consciousness that a whole nation
gets that they must all act as a unit for a com
mon end. And when peace is as handsome as
war there will be no war. When men, I mean,
engage in the pursuits of peace in the same spirit
of self-sacrifice and of conscious service of the
community with which, at any rate, the common
soldier engages in war, then shall there be wars
no more. You have moved the vanguard for the
United States in the purposes of this association
just a little nearer that Ideal. That is the rea
son I am here, because I believe it.
COMPETITION IN FOREIGN MARKETS
There is a specific matter about which I, for
one, want your advice. Let me say, if I may
say it without disrespect, that I do not think you
are prepared to give it right away. You will
have to make some rather extended inquiries be
fore you are ready to ( give it. What I am think
ing of is competition in foreign markets as be
tween the merchants of different nations.
I speak of the subject with a certain degree of
hesitation, because the thing farthest from my
thought is taking advantage of nations now dis
abled from playing their full part in that com
petition, and seeking a sudden selfish a'dvantage
because they are for the time being disabled.
Pray believe me that we ought to eliminate all
that thought from our minds and consider this
matter as if we and the other nations now at
war were in the normal circumstances of com
merce. There is a normal circumstance of commerce
in which we are apparently at a disadvantage.
Our anti-trust laws are thought by some to make
it illegal for merchants in the United States to
form combinations for the purpose of strength
ening themselves in taking advantage of the op
portunities 'of foreign trade. That is a very se
rious matter for this reason: There are some
corporations, and some firms for all I know,
whose business is great enough and whose re
sources are abundant enough to enable them to
establish selling agencies in foreign countries;
to enable them to extend the long credits which
in some cases are necessary in order to keep the
trade they desire; to enable them, in other
words to organize their business in foreign ter
ritory in a way which the smaller man can not
afford to do. His business has not grown big
enough to permit him to establish selling agen
cies. The export commission merchant, perhaps,
taxes him a little too highly to make that an
available competitive means of conducting and
extending his business.
The question arises, therefore, how are the
smaller merchants, how are the younger and
weaker corporations going to get a foothold as
against the combinations which are permitted
and even encouraged by foreign governments
in this field of competition? There are govern
ments which, as you know, distinctly encourage
the formation of great combinations in each par
ticular field of commerce in order to maintain
selling agencies and to extend long credits, and
to use and maintain the machinery which is
necessary for the extension of business; and
American merchants feel that they are at a very
considerable disadvantage in contending against
that The matter has been many times brought
to my attention, and 1 have each time suspended
judgment. I want to be shown this: I want .to bo
shown how such a combination can be made and
conducted in a way which will not close it against
the use of everybody who wants to use it. A
combination has a tendency to exclude now mem
bers. When a group of men get control of a
good thing, they do not gee any particular point
in letting other people into the good thing. What
I would like very much to be shown, thoreforo,
is a method of co-operation which is not a meth
od of combination. Not that the two words are
mutually exclusive, but wo havo come to have a
special meaning attached to the word "combina
tion." Most of our combinations have a safety
lock, and you have to know the combination to
get In. I want to know how 4heso co-oporativo
methods can be adopted for the benefit of every
body who wants to use them, and I say frankly
if I can be shown that, I am for them. If I can
not be shown that, I am against them. I hasten
to add that I hopefully expect I can bo shown
that.
IMPORTANCE OF SMALL BUSINESS
You, as I have just now intimated, probably
can not show iFto me off-hand, but by the meth
ods which you have the means of using you cer
tainly ought to be able to throw a vast deal of
light on the subject. Because the minute you
ask the small merchant, the small banker, the
country man, how he looks upon these things
and how he thinks they ought to be arranged in
order that he can use them, if ho Is like some of
the men in country districts whom I know, ho
will turn out to have had a good deal of thought
upon that subject and to be able to make some
very interesting suggestions whose Intelligence
and comprehensiveness will surprise some city
gentlemen who think that only the cities under
stand the business of the country. As a matter
of fact, you do not have time to think In a city.
It takes time to think. You can get what you
call opinions by contagion in a city and get them
very quickly, but you do not always know where
the germ came from. And you have no scientific
laboratory method by which to determine wheth
er it is a good germ or a bad germ.
There are thinking spaces In this country, and
some of the thinking done is very solid thinking
indeed, the thinking of the sort of men that wo
all love best, who think for themselves, who do
not see things as they are told to see them, but
look at them and see them independently; who,
if they are told they are white when they are
black, plainly say that they are black men with
eyes and with a courage back of those eyes to
tell what they see. The country is full of those
men. They have been singularly reticent some
times, singularly silent, but the country is full
of them. And what I rejoice in is that you havo
called them into the ranks. For your methods
are bound to be democratic in spite of you. I
do not mean democratic with a big "D," though
I have a private conviction that you can not bo
democratic with a small "d" long without be
coming democratic with a big "D." Still that is
just between ourselves. The point is that when
we have a consensus of opinion, when we have
this common counsel, then the legislative pro
cesses of this government will be infinitely il
luminated. I used to wonder when I was governor of one
of the states of this great country where all the
bills came from. Some of them had a very pri
vate complexion. I found upon Inquiry it was
easy to find that practically nine-tenths of the
bills that were Introduced had been handed to
the members who introduced them by some con
stituent of theirs, had been drawn up by some
lawyer whom they might or might not know,
and were Intended to do something that would
be beneficial to a particular set of persons. I do
not mean, necessarily, beneficial in a way that
would be hurtful to the rest; they may have
been perfectly honest, but they came out of cubby-holes
all over the state. They did not come
out of public places where men had got together
and compared views. They were not the prod
ucts of common counsel, but the products pf pri
vate counsel, a very necessary process if there Is
no other, but a process which it would be a very
happy thing to dispense with If we could get an
other. And the only other process Is the process
of common counsel.
VALUE OF COMMON COUNSEL
Some of the happiest experiences of my life
have been like this. We had once when I was
president of a university to revise the whole
course of study. Courses of study are chronical
ly in need of revision. A committee of, I believe,
14 men was directed by the faculty of the uni
versity to -report a revised curriculum. Natur
ally, the men who had the most ideas on the sub
ject were picked out and, naturally, each man
came with a very definite notion of the kind of
revision ho wanted, and one of tho first discov-
erles wo made was that no two of us wanted ex
actly tho samo revision. I went In there with all
my war paint on to get tho revision I wanted,
and I daro say, though it was perhaps moro skill
fully concealed, tho other men had tholr war
paint on, too. Wo discussed tho matter for six
months. Tho result was a roport which no on
of us had conceived or forenoon, but with which
wo woro all absolutely satisfied. Thoro was not
a man who had not learned in that commltteo
moro than ho had evor known beforo about the
subject, and who had not willingly revised his
pre-poBsessions; who was not proud to bo a par
ticipant in a genuine pleco of common counsel. I
havo had several experiences of that sort, and
it has lod mo, whenever I confer, to hold my
particular opinion provisionally, as my contribu
tion to go into tho final result but not to dom
inate tho final result.
This is tho Ideal of a government like ours,
and an interesting thing is that if you only talk
about an idea that will not work long enough,
everybody will see perfectly plainly that it will
not work; whereas, if you do not talk about it,
and do not have a great many peoplo talk about
it, you are in danger of having tho peoplo who
handle it think that it will work. Many minds
are necessary to compound a workable method
of life In a various and populous country; and as
I think about the wholo thing and picture the
purposes, tho infinitely difficult and complox pur
poses which we must conceive and carry out, not
only does it minister to my own modesty, I hope,
of opinion, but it also fills mo with a vory great
enthusiasm. It Is a splendid thing to be part of
a great wide-awake nation. It is a splendid thing
to know that your own strength Is infinitely mul
tiplied by tho strength of other men who love tht
country as you do. It is a splondid thing to feel
that tho wholesome blood of a great country can
bo united In common purposes, and that by
frankly looking one another in the face and tak
ing counsel with one anothor, prejudices will drop
away, handsome understandings will arlso, a uni
versal spirit of service will be engendered, and
that with this Increased senso of community of
purpose will como a vastly enhanced individual
power of achievement; for wo will bo lifted by
the wholo mass of which we constitute a part.
Havo you never heard a great chorus of train
ed voices lift tho voice of tho prima donna as if
it soared with easy grace above tho wholo melo
dious sound? It docs not seem to como from
the single throat that produces it. It seems a
if it were the perfect accent and crown of the
great chorus. So it ought to be with the states
man.. So it ought to bo with every man who
tries to guide the counsels of a great nation. He
should feel that his voice Is lifted upon the
chorus and that it is only the crown of tho com
mon theme.
A LITTLE WHILE
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A little while the tears and laughter,
Tho mrytlo and the rose
A little-while, and what comes after
No man knows.
An hour to sing, to love and linger
Then lutanist and lute
Shall fall on silence, song and singer , $
uotn do mute.
Our gods from our desires we fashion . '
Exalt our baffled lives
And dream their vital bloom and passion
Still survives.
But when we're done with mirth and weeping
With willow and with rose,
Shall Death take Llfo into his Jceeping? '.
No man knows. ' l( 4
What heart hath not through twilight place,
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Sought for its dead again,
To gild with love their pallid faces
Sought in vain.
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HH11 mount fh drp.am on Rhlnfnr nlnlon .":
OH11 t,.i,n,la V ..11 Jlat-n .?'
Whlrli shall hftVA tiltlmato dominion. v.
Dream, or dust?
A little while with grief and laughter,
And then the day shall close;
The shadows gather What comes a'ftecf
No. man knows!, ,u
Don Marquis, in New YtfffeEvening Sua,
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