The American Philosophy
So this, then, is an essay on the American Philosophy. The American Philosophy is founded on the Science of Economics. ¶ Just here, in order that we may speak a common language, a few definitions are in order. Economics is the Science of the production, distribution and use of wealth. Science is accurate, organized knowledge founded on fact—or, as Herbert Spencer expressed it, “Science is the classified knowledge of the common people.” All that which is simply assumed, believed, conjectured, taken on dogmatic statement, or mayhap read out of printed books, is unscientific, no matter how plausible ❦ All practicalbusinessmen are scientists. ¶ Business is a vocation. Philosophy is—or should be—an avocation. To make a business of philosophy is to institutionalize and dilute it, just as to institutionalize love and religion is to degrade and lose them. Religion is philosophy touched with emotion ❦ Philosophy is your highest conception of life, its duties and its destiny. A religious organization is a different thing from religion. A religious organization is built on a feeling made static, or fear frozen stiff. It then becomes a superstition, and is employed as a police system, and is taxed all the traffic will bear. ¶ Science is definite, accurate, organized knowledge concerning the things that make up our environment. Modern philosophy is the distilled essence of wisdom that eventually flows from science. Or, if you please, philosophy is the explanation of science—a projection from science ❦ Transportation, manufacturing, distribution, advertising and salesmanship are allvariants of business. Each and all are scientific, that is, capable of analyzation and demonstration. Weight, size, color, number, qualities and time are all elements of science. ¶ Theology is antique and obsolete philosophy. It never is nor ever was scientific, not being derived from knowledge. Faith is the first item in its formula. Theology comes to us from dogmatic statements gotten from books or the hearsay words of men long dead. Theology is voodooism; in matters of importance it is in the same class as alchemy, astrology, palmistry, mantology and augury ❦ Science is understood, while theology is believed. Psychology is the science of human minds and their relationship one to another ❦ Superstition is scrambled science, or a religious omelet flavored with fear. ¶ Organized religion being founded on superstition is, perforce, not scientific ❦ And all that is not scientific—that is, truthful—must be bolstered by force, fear and falsehood.Thus we always find slavery and organized religion going hand in hand. ¶ Business, to be successful, must be based on science, for demand and supply are matters of mathematics, not guesswork. Civilization turns on organization. And organization, in order to be of any value, must be scientific. ¶ Economics is a new science. History does not show a single instance of its existence in the days of Greece and Rome ❦ They had simple mathematics, but not complex. Fractions, percentages, statistics, averages, were beyond them. The blueprint, even for humorists, was unguessed ❦ Philosophy was speculation; business was barter. Since then, up to within a few years ago, the problem of how man could save his soul has been uppermost. This world has been neglected in the endeavor to gain another. When the Science of Economics is finally formulated it will be expressed first in America ❦ In America all nations meet and blend. Here the factors, elements andcategories of Economics are to be found. Here we have one language, and no more, and this is necessary for the expression of a new science ❦ The first endeavor to found Economics as a science was the work of Adam Smith. ¶ And when Thomas Henry Buckle said that Adam Smith’sWealth of Nationshad influenced the world for good more than any other book ever written, save none, he stated truth. ¶ Economics changes man’s activities. As you change a man’s activities you change his way of living, and as you change his environment you change his state of mind. Precept and injunction do not perceptibly affect men; but food, water, air, clothing, shelter, pictures, books, music, will and do. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, all wrote on Economics, but none was an Economist. Each based his logic largely on presumption, assumption and hypothesis. If this happens, then that will occur. They were Political Economists—theypursued Economics as a policy, not as truth. They loved love, not the lady. They were students of Economics, and their work was not grounded in Science. Since the days of Smith, Mill and Marx we have had many students of Economics ❦ But the world has not yet produced an Economist. To be an Economist, a man must be a Scientist. He must be both a man of action, and one who knows why he acts. He must work and he must contemplate his work. He must act and he must think. ¶ A Scientist is the man who has done the thing—who has seen and knows. Then from his positive knowledge springs his Philosophy. And the Philosophy of a businessman, analyzed, explained and formulated, would constitute a Science of Economics. ¶ The American Philosophy will be formulated by Scientists—by Businessmen who have succeeded. Thackeray’s lawyer in the Debtors’ Prison, who was working out a new financial policy for the Nation, wasnot a Scientist ❦ His knowledge was academic and his scheme conjectural. Science was outside of his orbit. He lacked experience. He had feelings, but not facts ❦ He did not have enough cosmic mortar to construct an arch. Emotionalism, charity, altruism, optimism, are not science, and they may be hysteria. ¶ When I speak of success I do not mean it in the sordid sense. A successful man is one who has tried, not cried; who has worked, not dodged; who has shouldered responsibility, not evaded it; who has gotten under the burden, not merely stood off, looking on, giving advice and philosophizing on the situation. In fact, the result of a man’s work is not the measure of success. To go down with the ship in storm and tempest is better than to paddle away to Paradise in an Orthodox canoe. To have worked is to have succeeded—we leave the results to time. Life is too short to gather the Harvest—we can only sow. ¶ Up to the year Eighteen HundredSeventy-six the business world was tainted by trickery in trade ❦ The methods of booth and bazaar were everywhere practised. Business was barter, and he who could cheat and not get caught was accounted clever. On the customs of the time there was no copyright. They were a take-over from monarchical days ❦ But a new ethic has arrived. Within ten years’ time the thought has gone through the entire business fabric that to cheat and not get caught is really a worse calamity than to get caught. To be caught means that some one has applied the brake and you are given pause. Not to get caught means that you are headed for the precipice on the high clutch and down grade. To cheat another is to cheat yourself. Theology did not teach us this, for precept and preaching never touch our lives. We shed them. We are moved in only one way, and that is by self-interest ❦ Cut off our food-supply and we are no longer apathetic. Andself-interest is a form of selfishness; it is the desire for life ❦ It is the instinct of self-preservation in action. It was all a matter of mental growth, evolution. ¶ The discovery of truth as our most valuable business asset is the one great achievement of the age in which we live ❦ For truth there is no substitute, and this discovery was made by businessmen. Honesty as a working policy was first put forth by Benjamin Franklin; and his remark was regarded as a mere pleasantry until yesterday. The clergy have not yet adopted it; the doctors are considering it, and the lawyers haven’t heard of it. However, all these will finally adopt it, as a last resort, as a means of self-preservation. ¶ Economics based on falsehood leads to dissolution. Falsehood is a polite form of conquest. The lie is exploitation. The preacher has diverted us while the lawyer picked our pocket; the doctor gives you ether and accomplishes the same result ❦ Egypt,Rome and Greece lived on their slaves and outlying colonies. ¶ Slave labor is the most expensive kind. In time the land is exhausted, and the slaves die. But before this happened to the capitals that were, the aristocrats who wasted, destroyed and consumed had gotten nervous debility, and were impotent, also impudent. Then they died and the barbarian overran the land ❦ A wise Economist—and America has many—could have figured out exactly how long Babylon and Nineveh would have lasted ❦ None of these ancient civilizations produced economists. They had soothsayers, priests, lawyers, poets, artists, clowns, dramatists, orators, rhetoricians, singers, philosophers. And most of all they had guzzlers and gormands. But they had no scientists, and their philosophy, being based on augury, dreams, theology and fear, was futile and fallacious. A philosophy that is not founded on science is false in theory and base in practise. ¶ Modern businessbetters human environment. ¶ It means gardens, flowers, fruits, vegetables; it means quick, safe and cheap transportation of people, commodities and messages; it means books, maps, furniture, pictures, playgrounds, pure water, perfect sewerage, fresh air, sunshine, health, happiness, hope, light and love—because business gives opportunities for all to work, earn, grow and become. Business consists in the production, transportation and distribution of the things that are necessary to human life. Through this exercise of our faculties we educe the best that is in us; in other words, we get an education. ¶ Inasmuch as business supplies the necessities of life, it is impossible to have a highly evolved and noble race except where there is a science of business. Business is human service. Therefore, business is essentially a divine calling. ¶ Once men believed religion to be the chief concern of mortals here below. Other men have thought that killing is thechief concern of mortals here below. Gladstone once said, “Only two avenues of honor are open to young men in England—the army and the church.” This has been the prevailing opinion of the world for nearly two thousand years, and is the one reason why the Dark Ages were dark. During those years of night the fighting man was supreme. It was a long panic, and human evolution was blocked through fear ❦ The race crawled, crept, hid, dodged, secreted, lied and nearly died. We now say that the Science of Economics, or Business, is the chief concern of humanity ❦ Business is intelligent, useful activity. The word “busy-ness” was coined during the time of Chaucer by certain soldier-aristocrats, men of the leisure class, who prided themselves upon the fact that they did no useful thing ❦ Men of power proved their prowess by holding slaves, and these slaves did all the work. To be idle showed that one was not a slave. Butthis word “business,” first flung in contempt, like Puritan, Methodist and Quaker, has now become a thing of which to be proud. Idleness is the disgrace, not busy-ness. ¶ The world can be redeemed only through business; for business means betterment, and no business can now succeed that does not add to human happiness. ¶ We believe that only the busy person is happy, and that systematic, daily, useful work is man’s greatest blessing. We are a nation of workers, builders, inventors, creators, producers. We are the richest country, per capita, in the world; and our wealth has come from the farm, the forest, the factory, the mine, the sea. We have dug, plowed, pumped smelted, refined, transported and manufactured ❦ We did not inherit our wealth, neither have we laid tribute on other countries, as did those earlier civilizations. Any individual who uses the word “commercial” as an epithet, who regards business enterprise assynonymous with graft and greed, who speaks of certain men as “self-made” and others as “educated,” who gives more attention to war than to peace, who seeks to destroy rather than to create and build up, is essentially un-American ❦ The word “education” sometimes stands for idleness, but the American Philosophy symbols work, effort, industry. It means intelligent, thoughtful, reasonable and wise busy-ness—helping yourself by helping others. ¶ The world’s greatest prizes in the future will go to the businessman. The businessman is our only scientist, and to him we must look for a Science of Economics that will eradicate poverty, disease, superstition—all that dissipates and destroys. The day is dawning!