Word: ruml
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...Profits. Ruml bluntly reaffirms the principle that the great energizer of business is profits. But he candidly admits that "public opinion today is skeptical of accepting the highest obtainable profit as a desirable social standard." But he firmly believes that it is time the public learned that high profits are socially desirable...
Order In Business. Business, Ruml holds, is itself a private government (like the trade union, the family, the church). It is a rulemaker with the job of bringing "order and certainty to the production of things for use." But Ruml concedes that business has frequently brought this order only at the cost of the freedom of others. The reason lies in excesses of the very qualities most desirable in businessmen. Thus without regulation "initiative becomes arrogance; resourcefulness, cunning; efficiency, greed; tenacity, obstinacy; and willingness to take authority and responsibility, pride and lust for power...
Because human nature is inevitably low, says Ruml, the Federal Government must protect the public from business excesses, by exercising certain minimum controls. In turn, business can do much to head off further regulation by increasing the freedom of those it governs-stockholders, employes, customers and consumers. He suggests one way: give each of them a director-trustee to represent their interests on the boards of directors which run business, thus a voice in management...
Order In Labor. What labor must learn is that it, too, as a private government, must eventually be regulated. But first Ruml foresees a "period of serious conflict" to which the present turmoil over the union shop is only the prelude. Philosopher Ruml, admitting that the labor union has a proper and necessary function, approves the principle of the union shop: "It seems inescapable that those who benefit [by union bargaining] may fairly be required to share the burden...
...businessman, he contends that the time is not ripe for the rapid extension of the union shop. His reason: labor leadership is "not competent to use this great power wisely." Moreover, because it is a monopoly power, Ruml argues that the union shop must inevitably lead to Government regulation of unions to bar racial discrimination, excessive production costs through "feather bedding," etc. Until "the majority of labor leaders . . . are willing to accept such regulations as the price of the union shop ... too much haste [in extending it] would cause bitter, wasteful and unnecessary strife...