The record-union., 1892-12-16
BUSINESS PROFITS.
Another View Of the Results Of Co.
Operation.
How Commodore Vanderbilt and 4
7. stewart Accumulated Co
Iossal Fortunes.

Attempts at cooperation thus far have
generally shown strong, if not fatal,
tendency to failure because Of the diff
Guilty of commanding the requisite skill
ana faithfulness in management. Co
operators are not willing to pay the price
for service which their business needs IN
order to succeed. They always stand on
the theory that the men who conduct
great enterprises get too much for Going
the business and the operatives too little.
IN course Of time, and usually not very
long time, their scheme goes down. This
is because III the nature OF things no hired
person on 4 salary Of fixed amount will
all the time keep his wits alive and study
into the small hours Of the night devisiug
ways and means to make money for other
people. They propose in their constitu-
ton to take from capital and skill por-
tion OF the profit that has usually been
accorded to them and give it to labor;
but alter thousands Of experiments dur
ing forty or more Years Of good business
in this country there is hardly a single
case Of such undoubtGd success as to war
rant the assertion that demonstration OF
feasibility has been attained. The COM
bined skill OF all the co-Operators in hall
magnitude. The almost uniform failures
seem TO prove that great management
must have great compensation, and IN
endeaVoring to get the skill without the
pay the co-operators' dream has come to
naught,
Now, this is equivalent to saying that
the world finds its business can be done
at less cost than by cooperation. The
latter fails because it is undersold and
unable to compete with such skill as gets
the better pay. Had Commodore y AN
derbilt been content with the salary OF a
steamboat Captain he would never have
developed into great business man and
railroad manager. The prospect of great
emOlument brought into exercise great
powers, 50 that he cheapened transpOrta-
ZION i'll ali astonishing degree and yet
made money to an astonishing amount
The people who saved tour or five dollars
in round trip between Boston and New
! Ork, and the people who got their bar
rel OF -four twenty-five cents less because
he ran a railway TO Chicago, enjoyed the
sensation at the time. but, when they saw
his fortune, could not refrain from tears
10 Uinnk OF the mercileSs robbery Jhey
suffered ut his hands. The thing hap
peued and succeeded, not because Van
uerDilt was a rObber. but by virtue of his
giving better terms to people who had To
travel and had to eat bread. His induce
y -
Suppose he and some Others of the same
kind OF enterprise had not come upon the
stage, what would have been the result?
Evidently the old ways of business would
have continued. We should still be 90
ing to Buffalo on canal boats and creeping
along the streets Of our cities i'll dilapl-
uated omuibuseS, still be doing our Jour
neying in Stage-cOacheS and dusty roads
and tedious Mills at a great sacrifice of
time, money, comfort and strength. The
enterprise OF the moncy-nlakers has prof
tied everybody else by exciting produc-
ton and accumulation. The money
makers have taken pay, not out OF labor,
but out of the increased production and
savings which their efforts have secured.
individuals have sometimes suffered.
The omnibuses were killed when the
horse-car came, and A. L. Stewart did the
business Of hundred small shOpmen;
but the people at large saved time in get
ting Where they were compelled to go in
one case, and got what they wanted at less
cost in the other The street railroad
makes ten times the money that the stages
did, and the people save money and time.
The people can do better by buying of
Stewart. and therefore they buy. Tnev
enriched him to the tune of thirty mill
ions, clean cash. This is great fact; but
ii does not show great robbery. 1t may
show the very opposite.
Stewart was in business for about forty
years, and for many years sold twenty
millions of goods per year. Had he sold
but fifteen millions per year at a profit
OF five per cent and invested the profit
with his usual sagacity, he would have
been worth more Jban thirty millions at
the end of his forty years. That he left
but thirty millions proves that his profit
was not over five per cent on the aver