The Glasgow courier. [volume] (Glasgow, Mont.) 1913-current, 1921-03-04
Business Sense
In Government
By WARREN G. HARDING

hear a vast deal about "big business"
but the big business of America is
nothing but the aggregate of the small
businesses. That is why we need bus
mess sense in charge of American ad-
ministrattion, and why the majority of
America has for more than half a CEN
tury been a Republican majority.
The Republican party has demon
strated a superior understanding of the
workaday problems of articulating the
business world. Those problems are
not as a rule very spectacular. They
do not greatly attract hte interest OF
academicians and theorists. They are
looked upon as pretty sordid by folks
who would like to engage at once IN a
Utopion reorganization of society, or
in the idealization of our social condi-
tons. But they are nevertheless in
t~ensely practical and absorbing, be-
cause they touch all the people all the
time.
1t is true that some people believe
present conditions in the world are so
bad that it would be better to scrap
everything and, out Of the resulting in
dustrial and economic chaos, attempt
to recrystalize the community, hoping
to produce something perfect. lam not
n of those, and | do not believe their
number is large enough to be a serious
factor in the community.
Right here it seems worth while to
say a cheerful word about the essen
tial strength and staying quality that
our present day structure of society
has displayed since 1914. Everybody
will remember that when the war
broke out it was a well-nigh universal
observation that "the wal cannot last
more than six months or a year, be-
cause economic exhaustion will starve
it to DEATH" That was the sincere
opinion of a majority of people who
were supposed to be wisest. Econo-
mists and experts solemnly assured
US that neither the financial, the trans
portati0n, the industrial nor the agri-
cultural resources of the world could
carry on while bearing the huge bur
den of waste that the war involved.
Yet, instead of ending in six months
or a year, the war lasted four years
and a quarter, the rate Of economic
waste was UNNECESSARILY larger during
most Of that period that. at the begin
ming, anybody had imagined it might
be; vet, as a whole, the world came
out of the struggle with it's social or
~ganization intact. and prepared to take
up NV huSN " NNbt re- ing "ie
reorganization.
In a very few years we will all look
back to this period of ferment and I'M
rest which has followed the war, and
smile charitably, at the predictions Of
aVulsion, of revolution, of social col
lapse and economic disaster. The truth
Is that at 10 previous stage in its his
tory hos human society been so well
organized to maintain itself and care
for it's units, human and social, under
the terrific strain, as in this epoch,
Bad as conditions individually are in
many parts of Europe, they are not
comparable to those which prevailed
after the Thirty Years Wal or the Ma
poleonic era. Whoever wishes reas-
surance for today and tomorrow he
need only to go back and study the his
tory Of yesterday and the day before.
1t is only a short year since we were
being told from all directions that "un-
less the world gets back to the serious
business of production and saving, ev-
erything is going to the bow-wows."
Well, the truth is that in that short
year the world has very largely got
back to production and saving. The
domestic production and foreign trade
of Great Britain, France, Italy, Ger
ItldIlS dl0 OuI o"l Soullli y al pIoNS
this. The very fact that we are not
exporting so much is an evidence thta
other countries are requiring less i'm
porting; that is, that they are rapidly
moving toward re-establishment of
their normal balance of production and
consumption. That is a healthy sign
for them, and therefore for us, despite
that it involves some difficult problems
in rpadiusting our own economic bal
ances.
We Carried Our Burden.
The war added hugely to the wealth
and also to the debt of our country.
Down to the entry of our own country
as a combatant we were protiteering
vastly by the misfortunes of Europe.
Then came our time to carry the bur-
den, and we carried it splendidly. But
at the end we were still far better pos
tured than any other great state, and
our recovery ought to have been at a
pace far outstripping theirs.
The fact that in the first two months
of the present fiscal year-the months
of July and August, 1920-our nation
al expenditures exceeded the national
receipts by $125. 900, 900, is the conclus-
tixe testimony of an ineptness and in
capacity for administration that, had
IL neen DafalleleQ IN Ine governments
of countries less fortunately situated
than our own, would have meant the
bankruptcy of their civilization.
1t will amaze many, even of usually
well-informed people, to know that we
are starting on the new fiscal year
with a deficit accommodating at such a
rate that, if continued, will add three
quarters of a billion to our national
debt this year. There has been so
much of misrepresentation and jug
Cling with the figures about our tinan-
cial situation that it certain to bring
a shock to many people to learn that
we are still %plunging deeper and deep
er into debt all the time, when We
ought to have begun to curtail. Yet
the Secretary Of the Treasury, in offer
ing for sale a recent series of notes
makes a statement which admits these
facts.
American business, we all believe, is
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