Word: businessman
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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During the first half of his 61 years, Charles Allen Ward worked the waterfronts of China, mined gold in Alaska, fought with Pancho Villa in Mexico. But his career as a businessman did not really begin until he had served time in Leavenworth on a narcotics charge. Allen's cellmate (income-tax evasion) was Herbert Huse Bigelow, head of St. Paul's Brown & Bigelow (calendars, other advertising novelties). Bigelow thought Ward was "made of good clay," asked him what job he wanted with the company when he got out of stir. "Your job, H.H.," said Ward. Replied...
...American Democracy has no hero, only a villain-the American businessman. He is not, says Laski comfortingly, any more villainous than his European counterpart (whose predatory impulses are merely concealed under "greater elegance of form"). But he has, Laski believes, unknowingly "adapted . . . the main doctrines of Machiavelli's Prince." He regards the world primarily as "a market which the combined power of high-pressure salesmanship and cheap mass production will open to him . . . Massively energetic in action," skeptical of theories, he considers most politics as "a wanton interference with the natural laws by which businessmen govern society...
Business Over All. In matters of education, Laski believes, the businessman is the trustee who can (and does) seat and unseat college presidents, purge faculties. He dominates radio; his stake in Hollywood virtually ensures movie mediocrity because he will not risk his enormous investment by risking "offense to any large source of profit." He supports the church, but often, says Laski, because his conception of religion is like that of the late Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts, who said: "In the long run, it is only to the man of morality that wealth comes . . . Godliness is in league with riches...
Respected Villain. Laski insists that he has written this book "out of deep love of America." He admits that the businessman's energy, skill and audacious vitality are (like the qualities of the best U.S. newsmen) "unsurpassed." He even concedes that the big businessman's faith in free enterprise is shared by such a large number of lesser U.S. citizens that labor has not even been able to build a political party worth the name. Therefore a successful anti-capitalist revolt is impossible unless the U.S. businessman is willing to lend a hand in arranging his own execution...
...more Laski indulges his distaste for the American businessman, the more reckless he grows in boosting the merits of a collective economy and in minimizing its dangers. His bland references to the U.S.S.R. as "the great experiment" which threatens free enterprise with "successful socialism" are likely to chill the spines of many who otherwise might hear his opinions with respect...