Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-02-06
Business AS Factor In Progress
BY EDWARD A. FILENE.

anti-socal. Certainly conspicuous business
cess has been regarded. And we are obliged
to admit that much of 1t in the past has been.
But the point l want to make is that business
must henceforth function in changed world
a world in which good business policies will be
found TO be good social policies.
What l mean concretely is this: Social
progress demands cooperation the modification
or-to borrow word from the psychoanalyst-
the sublimation of the class struggle, the access
of every man, woman and child to a. decently
adequate supply of the necessities of life. and
the release OF the individual from the things
that prevent his living q creative and contented
life. In the past. successful business has often
blocked the way to realization of these
cially necessary ends But coming conditions
are going to compel business men to make
changes in policy and in action that will result
in just these things. The business policies
that will enable me to make the big business
successes of the next 10 or 20 years will pro-
duce these things by-products
For some years to come, in the absence of
developments not now practicable, American
business will be unable to export the surplus
goods it will be able to produce the surplus
goods it is even now geared up to produce.
ramshackle Europe in reduced circumstances
will not be a good customer.
Unable to spend their surplus energy in
competing for foreign business, American bust
ness men will devote their surplus energy to
keener competition for domestic business.
In the supercompetition that will result, the
small business man and the inefficient business
the prices and the service of the big factories
and the big stores that do business the basis
Of mass production and mass distribution:
Everything will tend to drive American bust
and industry into mass production and
mass distribution.
The principle, widely applied, will result in
hitherto undreamed-of economies and efficien-
cies.
These economies and effciences will make
possible a marked reduction in prices, WILL in
fact, compel marked reduction in prices for
the main idea of mass production and mass
distribution in the matter OF profits is that the
largest total profit is to be made for the sale Of
an enormous number Of articles at small
profit per article ...--
This reduction of prices will relieve the
economic strain on the masses, mitigate the
fears of insecurity and unpreparedness against
the exigencies Of life and labor that today
haunt the minds of workmen, make possible
generally high standard of living and in
every way reduce that class friction which
seriously slows down the rate Of social advance
These things--to say nothing Of the uIti.
mately higher real wages that mass production
will make possible by bringing about at the
same time reduction in cost of -living-will
give greater freedom to the individual.
Aids Social Progress
Thus unsuccessful business, under the lash
of necessity. will make for social progress.
am not suggesting, mark you, that business
men are going to experience sudden new
birth of social idealism, but simply that bust.
ness men, face to face with difficult time, will
do the things that can alone assure their sue
cess. and will later discover that business in
telligence and social idealism have met and
merged
In, times past, business could be successful
despite many antisocial policies and practices,
because society was not in the tight corner it