A CYNICAL MAXIM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 413, 3 November 1930, Page 9

A CYNICAL MAXIM

BUSINESS IS BUSINESS THE TRUE ATTITUDE A STRIKING ADDRESS ) Sir Francis Goodenough, in view ol his great work on behalf of better _ business organisation, was asked to adj I dress (he British Association recently In tho course of his speech he said; > “In its implications and application* ! that cynical maxim ‘Business is busi- • ncss’ has proved an excuse for a deplorable disregard of truth, honesty, . and humanity in business; for a demoralising and entirely false distinction between honour in business Ji. and honour in private life. “The phrase ‘Business is business’ acts as an anaesthetic on some consciences, enabling their possessors to act in the shop or counting-house as they would never dream of acting on the cricket Held, on the gulf Jinks, or in daily relations with their friends. “The true attitude of the business man should be to regard his occupation as ‘Service for Mutual Profit.’ Why should we not, therefore, urge upon the best of our sons to go into the groat profession of commerce—whore worthy ideals can be and are followed, ami are proved to lead to success and honour—and so help to raise the general level of commercial practice throughout the country and throughout the worldAlways Room in the Upper Ranks “In this connection it is, I suggest, worth notice that there is congestion in most of the professions to-day, whereas in industry and commerce there is always room in the upper ranks for firstrate men. “There is a science of business with clear principles of universal application. The same principles apply to selling lemons as to selling locomotive!', to selling meat as to selling motor-cars. “These principles constitute the science, and their application in each industry the art, of commerce, and the study of that science and that art has advanced little in the past twenty years, because the existence of the fundamental science has not been recognised. “ Are we not, many of us, too much inclined to look upon our daily worx < for each other as the curse of fallen c man, to be escaped from to the joys r of leisure, rather than as the performance of mutual service? t

“Want of joy in work is one of the weaknesses of our country to-day. Employers can do no greater social service than to see to it that conditions of work—-spiritual as well as physical —make it easy to get joy from its

doing. “We are under the imperative necessity,” concluded Sir Francis, “to attach more value to (and accordingly pay a higher price for character plus brains raised to their highest power by education—or in the alternative wc shall go down in the field of commerce, defeated by those who have aireaay realised the needs of commerce in this highly competitive and increasingly scientific world.” Business as Scientific as Medicine “Just as medicine, which was at one time no more than an art, established itself as a science,” says The 'Times, in commenting on the speech of Sir Francis Goodenough, “so in commerce a similar development may be witnessed. Modern business unquestionably demands all the ordered thought and systematised knowledge, which is science, that can be put into it, and, that being so, it calls for first-rate character and intellect. “Whether it is now getting what it needs in this country is doubted by many; a.nd, as Sir Francis Goodenough maintains, it is a question of education not in the technical sense, but in that of the larger qualities which it is the business of the highest education to foster. Sir Francis Goodenough is at the present moment the chairman of a committee of inquiry on the subject, which has already issued an interim report; but its urgency justifies a constant. attention to it.

“Everything, indeed, conspires to make modern business a field for the best talents. It offers a satisfaction for many of the strongest human instincts—contact with mankind, co-oper-ation with a team, and endless scope for knowledge and intellectual ingenuity. The team spirit is consciously trained in the public schools; but it is more doubtful if intellectual interests are equally well looked after in all of them.

“Commerce, it is true, wants something better than the diligent student, and the suitable type ought to be forthcoming with encouragement. Tho emphasis, however, which Sir Franc* Goodenough lays on ‘character plus brains’ appears to suggest that in his opinion the brains are often not given enough to occupy themselves with at school. If good mental habits are not developed there they are exceedingly difficult to acquire afterwards.”

“All education can do,” states the Morning Post, “is to equip the possessors of essential qualities for the better exercise of them, and. above all things, not to discourage their manifestation and development, as so itiucli of modern education does ... If trade seems less eventful to-day, is it not because the risks and the achievements are less dramatically revealed?

“Certainly they demand no less courage, zest, character, and, above all. imagination—and if, as Sir Francis Goodenough asserts, all those qualities are needed to recover our industrial supremacy, is it to be hoped that any educational system can surmount the adverse influence of our political system. in its latest tendency?”

“A few years ago,” says Reynold’s Illustrated News, “business men were urging that boys and girls should be educated for commerce. They poured scorn on ‘all this cultural stuff,’ which merely filled minds of boys and girls with a lot* of nonsense, and unfitted them for business.

“Well, they got what they wanted. Our educationists grabbed hoys and girls early, taught them and shorthand, bookkeeping, the principles of business, and all sorts of ‘commercial’ subjects. “Still, business men arc not satisfied. They find the young people equipped no better in the things that matter; and even loss good in many respects. “Sir Francis Goodenough has been telling them why. He says that education for commerce should mean a general training of mind and character rather than the acquisition of particular kinds of technical skill. “A good cultural education will lay the foundation for anything in life, whether commerce or anything else. The lack of it will prevent all but a few from mak’rg fh P mOf q O f what is in them.” I