The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1935-03-12
NEWSPAPERS OPINION
THE POPULAR PASSION OF CONCERNING
RITcJNESS4 49, ~


It is an opportune moment in America and in
North Carolina to re-thing the major premises and
postulates of business. And in that re-thinking to
make some corrections of current ideas and attl-
tudes
There is an altogether too prevailing DISPOSE
ton to assume that inherently business is out Of
ste with the higher social, ethical and moral COM
pulsions of a civilized society.
The criticism has only been intensified by mod
ern popular political assumptions Some of the en-
inent men in control of the government of America
have unwittingy of conscious contributed to the
pubIc's idea that business must always be watched
that unless it is properly guarded and pollced, the
public will be victimized.
The subsection of business and industry to codes
imposed by those in political control has been COM
monty accepted as prima facie evidence that these
areas required political therapy. To be sure, the
circumstance has put them on the defensive; 1t
has made business itself feel that it is being
watched and it has made the public to believe,
quite without reason, that Twentieth Century
business in America is being transacted on the
basis of the ethics of long-gone past
That there are evils in business is not to be de-
MED. But that business is evil is SANDER.
It has lost within our own generation much Of
that buccaneer and boorish incentive which was in
control even toward the latter part of the last
fury.
II was not merely individual, it was general and
COMPOSITE that at that time, the dominant motif
behind all purely material and secular transactions
was sesh 1t was the era of that species of rugged
indivdualsm which has run US ragged. Men did,
indeed, in that day operate their trade and COM
merce with no particular social compulsion.
Let the buyer beware was not merely catch
word coined by some aggrieved imp to character
lie the moral basis upon which business in America
was negotiated. That was then the understood at
titude which wise public would adopt when
the buying end of transaction and the principle
upon which it proceeded when the selling end
itself But no such phrase depicts the controlling
culture of modern business
1t recognizes the mutually of interests involved
in the Interchange of goods and commodities. And
the business man himself far from being the pi-
rate of the high seas of commerce, has scared into
new and higher social adventures which make him
unique among the builders Of new national life.
The social and culturazing agencies and move
ments in our communities are now safely entrusted
to the leadership of the men of the stores, the
banks, the mills, the countng-room and the market
place.
The of affairs no longer lives in the big
house over the. hill, insulated in his abundances
apart from the common contacts of his generation.
He is in the thick of every advancing movement,
of every picturesque development that has human
progress for its objective.
And society that would turn upon business
and business men as if they were hostile and to
be scofed and scorned is unmindful of the debt it
owes to the class it would cruicfy.
This man is society's best friend and usually his
only benefactor.
He is definitely committed to the social engage
ments of progressive era He is the modern re,
former, the educator, the phlanthropist, the Good
Samaritan, the builder of our cities the man who
floods our homes with ncandescence, the pioneer
in providing with the comforts and convenences
with which physical life is crowded. the dis
penser of the wealth that finds its way into the
channels for the common good
1t time to come to such fair appraisement
of the community and of the American business
man and have done with the still current delusior
that he is always to be watched and just as fire.
quently to be condemned for his exploiting selfish
ness and brutal unsociaties. .''
Business is business, to be sure as it has always
been in the sense that it is conducted for persona
gain, but it is far more than that. Business is life
and progress and morality and civilization and des
I tiny itself-Charlotte Observer.