New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1921-01-16


ton, communication, fuel and mechan-
zeal power-are as complicated as the
physiology of a man. And as is the
case in huma n physiology, the life of a
modern community depends upon the
correlation of its vital organs. , The
crucial question of life or death does
rot turn upon the perfect functioning
Of any specialized organ or any group
OF such organs. 1t turns upon the func-
tioning of some unspecialized organ, a
governing heart-that holds the balance
among all the specialized organs
pulsing the life blood to the place
where the stress is greatest.
Understanding Lacking
What is lacking in financial councils
at this moment is a due understanding
OF the organic character of modern
business. Our finance is unmodern and
rnsclentlfic because we persist in
thinking Of the business of a commu-
nifty Us if it consisted of number of
specialized concerns held together by
nothing whatever but their common de-
pendence upon a political system.
Thus the recent international finan-
cial conferences at Brussels and at
: Geneva treated credit in terms of
pawnbrokers and as if it were a
by-product of police power. These
conferences did indeed repeat the
phrases of bankers banquets They
business" but they used such words
with merely sentimental accent, re-
vcal;ng no comprehension of the truth
that the business of modern COM
mrnity is really d physiological unit
and that the administration of credit
is q new and powerful kind of govern
ment.
The fact is that the civilized world
has been committed to new and un-
familiar conditions of existence by the
recent development of grand scale
nology. We have broken with the life
of nature and are living life of art.
1t is as if society, as whole, had put
to sea in q ship.
The laws of great business are not
natural laws; they are artificial laws
laws that inhere in the nature OF
man. These laws fix the conditions
upon which it is possible to secare the
intense and sensitive team-play Of in
telligencc necessary to operate a vast
MISUNDERSTANDING mechanism, such as
Manhattan or the Mauretania. The
mental mechanism of great business is
as fine as its material apparatus. AS
electricity and steam are the driving
power of our physical machinery, so
news and credit furnish the motive
energy of the mechanism of modern
finance.
Ba0ed by Ignorance
We have been baffled in our efforts
to finance the recuperation of Europe
because of our ignorance of the in
trinsic laws of great business. Our
finance is literary and liturgical 1t
drcnes the traditionary dogmas of
Ricardo and Adam Smith. 1t does not
observe the contemporary facts. Most
Of the contradictions of modern So
ciety have their origin in the fact that
great business is in1its nature a crea-
tive process and so must necessarily be
governed by the laws of creative life.
These laws are wholly different from
the laws of political society 1t has
therefore come to pass that every
modern community has dual organ
ization. 1t makes its living by means
OF productive organization, and it
defends its life from internal or ex-
ternal fraud and violence by means of
a protective organization. The former
is business, the latter is politics. The
two things are oil and water. Every
attempt to mix them fails. They get
mixed only in our minds.
Financiers and politicians at Brus-
sells, Geneva and elsewhere go on talk
ing of business and politics as if poll
tics were the house of life and bust
ness only a modern Improvement. They
all assume that social order is
political rather than economic They
persist in the mental inversion of the
Paris Peace Conference.-The topsy-
turvydom of the Treaty of Versailles.
Nowhere in place of authority is
there, an accent Of modern and scien-
tifc finance.
Here, roughly set down, are some of
the missing fundamentals:
First, the productive organization
generates all power and all values.
Business is the seat of sovereignty
and the base of politics. The principle
of the American Constitution, that the
protective organization can have only
limited and derived powers, is scen-
tihc. 1t is therefore of universal
validity. 1t commands the peace of
the world.
Second, great business is necessarily
autonomous. 1t cannot be governed
otherwise than from within itself. The
invisible government of business must
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