Evening star., 1939-05-04
Bankers Group Hears
Benson Stress Value
Of Business Order
A. B. A. Chief Makes
Plea for encouragement
Of Capital Risks
THOUSANDS Of
ikcORhO hORArlON

Philip A. Benson, president of the
American Bankers Association, de-
clared that the American people
are turning back to an apprecia-
ton of the business order" in an
address before the Maryland Bank
ers' Association at Hotel Traymore,
Atlantic City, this forenoon, ac-
cording to special dispatch to The
Star.
THE past six years have been
among the most inconsistent in our
history" Mr.. Benson said Pros
trate in 1888, business, the process
that provides our employment, pays
our wages and other income and
maintains our standard of living,
has been kept under a cloud. And it
has been compelled to try to function
between two conflicting forces, one
bent on recovery, the other on
reform.
Business has always existed in
some form. 1t is the means by
which we live as beings superior to
savages. Even the most primitive
barter or form of exchange was busi-
ness. The moment man produced
more than he needed for his own
use and exchanged the surplus for
other things he could use he was in
business.
Defines Real Wealth.
"As a people we have needed to
be reawakened to the fact that the
only real wealth consists of goods,
commodities, plant, equipment,
buildings, machinery and other tan
gible things. 1t is only by the pro-
duction of raw materials, by COM
bining some of them with labor in
the manufacturing process, by trans
portation and marketing and by the
various services incident thereto that
all wealth is produced and dis
tributed as salaries, wages and
profits. The toll of the tax collector
now more than $4,000 900, 900, comes
out of the total wealth so produced
ut is to the credit of the Ameri-
can people that they seem to be
turning back to an appreciation of
the value Of the business order. There
are definite indications of such
change in public sentiment that give
hope of greater freedom for enter
prise.
so we may feel encouraged. We
are told that the program of re-
forms has been completed, that
government Is now interested in
encouraging business as the best
means of recovery. There seems to
be growing disposition in Con-
gress to be more realistic about the
retarding effect of excessive taxa
ton and other anti-business meas
ures"
Pleads for Investment.
Mr.. Benson made plea for the
encouragement of investment. "The
element that requires encourage
ment most is risk capital" he said.
1--WE have heard considerable criti-
cism of banks as institutions which
have retarded recovery by with
holding needed credit. But that is
not the main source of trouble.
Credit does not initiate business.
Business initiates the use of credit.
If business lacks the confidence to
risk, it will neither seek nor use
credit.
"Our major trouble is not in the
field of commercial credit but in
the field of capital investment, and
I mean capital that will take risks.
Risk capital simply is not working.
Such capital only takes risks in
the expectation, or at least the hope,
of profit.
Business does not ask a balanced
budget Immediately. 1t appreciates
the difficulties and the shock in
volved in that. All it asks is that
definite steps be taken in that direc-
ton, that economy begin, that
definite policy be put into and kept
in operation. The best way to begin
anything is to begin"