Evening star., 1943-07-11
The Spirit Of Enterprise
By Edgar M. Queeny. fScrtt

ners.
Edgar M. Queeny Is chairman Of
the Board Of Directors Of the Nom
santo Chemical Co. and one OF
Americas prominent industrialists.
He has written here his defense
Of our countrys traditional business
system, as opposed to the recent
trend toward absolutism and coilec-
tivism which stems from Europe.
Unlike many businessmen when
they turn from action to words, Mr..
Queeny shows at no disadvantage
as a writer. He Is scholarly, witty
and dispassionate.
The thing which he Is defending
he says cheerfully. Is capitalism.
And let us call 1t capitalism, he
insists. The word has been sub
.jected to degradation by the col
lectiyists, and sensitive businessmen
have taken to substituting other
names for it--as free enterprise"
and SO on. But In Mr.. Queeny's
view capitalism, while not perfect
among systems. has, by comparison.
nothing to b. ashamed Of. From
the standpoint of the general vel
fare Of the, people. 1t has worked
better than any of the others.
Moreover, observes Mr.. Queeny,
Capitalism" is the word with the
real meaning. You cannot take a
Whit of free enterprise, he notes,
and build a factory with it. But you
can take capital and do that same.
So he stands sturdily on the old
fashioned term.
His historical summing up begins
with our Nation when, as he re-
minds us, Patrick Henry called not
for four freedoms but one-liberty,
the freedom to be free. Freedom
was not rationed in those days, he
remarks. Individualism was then
born, so new a commodity that, when
the English translation of De Toe
queville was made, no exact Eng
lish equivalent could be found for
the word. De Tocqueville himself
had defined the term as a construc-
tive expression of self In nature
opposed to mere egotism.
Under the individualistic system,
American business made new
world toward which all other peo-
Piles looked with envy and desire.
But 1t also committed an act against
its own being, says Mr.. Queeny,
when 1t introduced pressure politics.
American businessmen were our first
lobbyists, and they have lived to
reap the whirlwind which they un-
Willingly sowed when they began to
influence legislation, for pressure
politics is practiced on scale today
which threatens to destroy our es-
tablished forms of government. And,
as those forms disappear, and
bureaucracy. RECOMMENDATION and col
lectivism take their place, business,
as we traditionally know 1t, Is like
wise being destroyed. For business
has been the great medium Of ex-
preston for individualism In our
country, and the tndividualistic
spirit is naturally viewed as the
enemy of centralized control.
The depression saw the beginning
of the present trend. as Mr.. Queeny
interprets 1t. In all previous de-
pressions business had been able to
pull itself together. In this one,
however, New Deal measures showed
such hostility to private enterprise
that businessmen hesitated to en-
bark on new ventures. Instead OF
being encouraged. business was then
reviled. The goose which had laid
the golden eggs was advertised as
the raven. This, Mr., Queeny con-
siders, was a deliberate policy. He
does not lay the blame at the door
of President Roosevelt but puts it
rather on a clique Of young Marxists
who grew up esteeming Veblen as
the essential prophet of the new day.
These thinkers, he says, consider the
President simply as the "Kerensky"
of their revolution. Mr.. Queeny, in
making these charges, writes with
out emotion.
We are, at present, perilously close
to imitation, he says. 1t may well
be, in his view. that the Veblen
planners have deliberately planted
the time bomb" of imitation danger
in our national structure as threat
to any change of regime. He re-
views their stated plans for new
postwar world and points out that,
while they are revolutionary in
spirit, they will rest, for execution,
on a bureaucracy-a system which
always shows a minimum of initia-
tive. There is only one agency in
the world, he considers, which so