REAL    ESTATE





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B UlLDERS





Vol. CII.





NEW YORK, DECEMBER 14, 1918





No. 24





Business Men Declare For Business As Usual

Representatives of 381  Lines in Convention Complete Plans for
Preventing Great Disturbance in Readjustment Period





Atlantic City, Dec. 10, 1918.

THE greatest piece of constructive work accom-
plished by the convention of business tnen held
here last week under the initiative of the Cham-
ber of Commerce of the United States was the re-estab-
plishment of American pluck and determination to
achieve success in the niinds of several thousand leaders
in hundreds of lines of business who came here disposed
to have confîrmed their opinion that the country was
in for a bad time generally for the next few years.

It is probably true that nine out of every ten dele-
gates to the convention expected to hear that conditions
elsewhere in the United States were much worse than
in his own community where he was assured "there was
likely to be trouble." There had not been any trouble
yet, it was true, but just wait until one of many things
happened and then everybody would see what we were
up against. There were the four million soldier boys
who would be back in a short time and want jobs—and
would have to have them even if some other fellows
who had been just as patriotically at work but who
had not been in uniform had to get out. There was
the labor question, meaning the question of a reduction
of wages, and just listen to what Gompers said last
week. And there was the mater of the piles and piles
of wool, and iron and wheat and cotton and tractors and
autos and monkey wrenches and a million other things
that the Government had bought, at high prices, Ijad
not used, and was now ready to dump into the regular
channels of trade at a price that would play havoc with
the whole works. These were only a few of the things
that "were going to" bring about chaos, and nearly
every man had local variants of the tales of woe. Gossip
had been busy spreading the propaganda of disintegra-
tion and decay and possible revolution throughout the
clubs and in the corner groceries of the whole country.

And these men who are good business men because
they keep in touch with what is public opinion and com-
munity afifairs had been influenced to despair of getting
back to normal conditions without having to undergo
the wrenching and vicissitudes of panicy times.

That's how it was when the convention met. In two
days seven men had turned nearly fĩve thousand timor-
ous and hesitant individuals who were apparently ready
to settle down into aimless acceptance of an inactive
and unprofĩtable period of reconstruction into a militant
body of alert, vigorous American manhood ready to
make Business Depression look like Chateau Thierry
after the old 69th had smashed its way through it over
the flower of the Hun's army.

These seven men deserve the Congressional Medal or
surely as General Pershing did. They said, relying on
their intimate knowledge of the tested enterprising
character of the American business man, as General
Pershing knew that he could depend on the men in his





army when he ofîered it to General Foch, that the
American Army of Commerce was equal to the emer-
gency which confronted it and was ready to and would
go over the top.

The American Expeditionary Force without the grit
and courage and confĩdence of General Pershing would
have made a sorry exhibition of itself instead of ac-
quitting itself with glory. The American Commercial
Force under the inspiring leadership of Generals
Wheeler and Schwab and Redfĩeld and Farrell and
Rockefeller and Warburg and Baruch has turned "face
front" and is ready for business.

It took nerve to say to five thousand men, hungry
for foreign trade to keep their will wheels turning, that
the United States must not try to bag the foreign com-
merce of the world but must practice the doctrine of
live and let live so that the American people could not
be accused of dollar philanthropy—but that is what Mr.
Harry A. Wheeler, President of the Chamber of Com-
merce and Chairman of the convention did not hesit^te
to say, and was heartily applauded.

It was courageous for Mr. Charles M. Schwab, Presi-
dent of the Bethlehem Steel Company, to suggest bor-
rowing money to build factories when the five thou-
sand pessimists in front of him were wondering what
they were going to do with the plants they had—but
he made them feel he was on the right track.

It required vision to urge upon a crowd of men bur-
dened with the problems of practical business to seek
the aid of science in shaping the future so that competi-
tion would be more easily overcome, but Secretary
William C. Redfield lifted a big load ofif the tired busi-
ness men's shoulders when he showed them that with
the aid of the machinery in the Department of Com-
merce they could cut the costs of manufacture and en-
able them to meet foreign competition on better terms.

It was only to a nation that had been baptized with
fire for humanity's sake that a man could say we must
not accept as our commercial standard the principles
that had brought the hatred of the world upon the
heads of the German people, but James A. Farrell, Pres-
ident of the U. S. Steel Corporation, declared that
the future security of the world could not be brought
about by waging a perpetual bloodless war, inspired by
the same emnity, suspicions and fears that but lately
divided the world—and the men who are the keenest in
business competition in the whole world saw the truth
in what he said.

High purpose was necessary to point out to those who
had grudgingly admitted labor to a share in the profĩts
of business that still more of freedom and of generous
participation must be granted to the partners of Capital
in the world's work if the land was to be made safe to
live in—but Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s, creed was
subscribed to with enthusiasm by the men who had