Business Administration: Theory, Practice and Application. [vol. 1] Business Economics

Part 1

Transcriber’s note:

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BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

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BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION TEXT BOOKS

Business Economics. Business Organization and Management. Advertising and Salesmanship. Trade and Commerce. Transportation. Money, Banking and Insurance. Investments and Speculation. Accounting. Auditing and Cost Accounting. Business Law and Legal Forms.

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BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Theory, Practice and Application

Editor-In-Chief

WALTER D. MOODY

General Manager, The Chicago Association of Commerce, Author, “Men Who Sell Things.”

Managing Editor

SAMUEL MACCLINTOCK, PH. D.

Editorial and Educational Director, La Salle Extension University

This work is especially designed to meet the practical every-day needs of the active business man, and contains the fundamental and basic principles upon which a successful business is founded, conducted and maintained. To those looking forward to a business career, this work forms the basis for a practical and systematic course in “Business Administration”

Published by La Salle Extension University Chicago

Copyright, 1910, Lasalle Extension University.

BUSINESS ECONOMICS

¶ This treatise has been especially prepared by E. L. Bogart, Ph. D., Associate Professor of Economics, University of Illinois, and Author of Economic History of the United States; Hon. O. P. Austin, Chief of Bureau of Statistics, Department of Commerce and Labor; and John Bascom, D. D., LL. D., former President University of Wisconsin. It is supplemented by the writings of recognized experts in the production, preservation and distribution of wealth. The treatment is modern, popular and authoritative. The volume contains many timely and practical suggestions which can be applied with profit to any business. It is also arranged to serve as a quick reference work, and includes a complete table of contents, a comprehensive index and test questions.

WALTER D. MOODY, Editor-in-Chief.

INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION.

BY WALTER D. MOODY.

General Manager, The Chicago Association of Commerce.

Author of “Men Who Sell Things.”

“The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your own opinion and content with your knowledge.”

Part 2

This is an era of the greatest commercial activity the world has ever known. The development of business is one of the marvels of the new century. A few years ago science, as a factor in commerce, was little known and less appreciated. The amazing advantages to business of intellectual attainments were utterly without recognition. Today, however, business has become a contest in which the quickest perception wins, thus transforming the counting room into a battle ground upon which brain matches brain for supremacy and success.

Ah, that enchanting word, S-U-C-C-E-S-S. It does not require a magic key to unlock the door to business efficiency. There is nothing mystic, nothing mysterious in the applied method of the really resourceful men in this day of great successes, of marvelous achievements in business enterprise. The sum total is contained in two words, words that electrify, nevertheless. EDUCATED ENTHUSIASM.

The most formidable barrier to progress has always been the senseless opposition of those to whom it would be of the greatest benefit. Changing conditions are the order of the day, for enlightenment has worked wonders. In olden times, a man of affairs was obliged to guard his property and his loved ones by building a moat around his house and posting sentinels in and around his estate. The time is not long past when, because of prejudice, perversity or ignorance, many men believed that opportunity knocked only once at any man’s door. Today, thanks to deeper insight, most men believe that life itself is opportunity; that the very air we breathe is opportunity; that each new day presents broader opportunities for accomplishing more because of better directed energy. This is not alone the accepted dogma of the man who is making his way in the world. It is the creed, doctrine, tenet or religion, whichever you may care to term it, of the great captains of industry everywhere.

The more successful the man, the more does he think, study, plan, as a part of his daily occupation in the development of the affairs in which he is interested. Newer and better ways to get things done is the business standard employed today by successful men in all lines. Only yesterday if a man of genius advanced a new idea, he found himself ridiculed and his innovation opposed on all sides because it was a new idea. Today, it is different. The man of ideas counts in the trend of affairs as he has never counted before.

Everything has a subjective reason. Progress is acting as a mighty dynamic force in changing men’s viewpoint of life and things. Suppose the stroke oar on a varsity crew, while in a race against an opposing crew from a competitive institution, should suddenly stop rowing in harmony with his associates and begin to row backwards-that crew would not get very far without trouble. Suppose a lawn mower should be reversed and forced to run backwards--there would not be much progress made in cutting grass on that lawn. Varsity crews and lawn mowers must move forward. Business men must advance with the times.

A great merchant in Chicago tells a good story of his youth. He was a member of a state regiment of militia. On a certain occasion, his company was sent out on dress parade. An old maiden aunt, with considerable colonial blood in her veins, took much pride in her nephew and his company. While reviewing the parade, she was suddenly heard to exclaim: “Why, every single man in that company is out of step excepting my nephew.” Most men who fail to get on in the world do not realize that success lies in keeping step--in making progress with changing conditions. They generally make the mistake of thinking that the world and everything in it is out of harmony with themselves.

A business man of successful experience realizes that ideas--newer and better principles of conducting business--are of the greatest value, and he also knows that it pays him to search for them. The same old way of doing things cannot longer be successfully employed month after month and year after year as under the old regime. The business man must be modern, up-to-date. The physician or lawyer finds that to compete successfully he is compelled to search without ceasing in order that he may comprehend the advancement in treatments or procedures. “To the man who fails belong the excuses.”

President James, of the University of Illinois, was asked if there was any demand from business houses for college-bred men. His reply was: “The demand has been far in excess of the supply since courses in business administration were established in our institution seven years ago. Each year has brought many more requests than we have men to recommend.” Ten years ago President James would have been ridiculed for advancing this new idea for the establishment of a school of commerce in connection with a university. Today, commercial schools are a part of the regularly established courses of nearly all of the great universities of our country. Men trained in the theory, practice and administration of business will always occupy the best positions and will always command the greatest salaries.

All men fail at times in the accomplishment of satisfactory results in the various enterprises in which they are engaged, without being able to give an explanation. The principles that have been applied successfully for many years seem apparently to have counted for nothing. It is frequently evident that in such cases a very insignificant thing, a mere oversight perchance, has been the direct cause of the failure. To be able to put the finger on the precise cause of the lack of success in one’s method would locate the cause of the disaster. Then it is that a real appreciation of new ideas is fully realized.

Failure is more often chargeable to a refusal to learn by mistakes how to avoid them than it is in making them. Experience is a good teacher, but who can deny the value to be gained in learning from the experience of others, for we cannot all have the same experience or the same view of similar experiences. There are many pathways to success, but the road of individual experience is narrow and rugged. It is a commonly accepted fact that for every ten dollars a high-salaried man draws, he receives nine dollars for what he knows and one dollar for what he does. On the same basis the successful business man, employing a large force of other men, realizes that his own greatest worth, as applied to his affairs, lies not so much in what he can do himself as how much he can encourage his employes to do. In either case, his own personal knowledge is the power behind the throne.

The man who would secure the largest net return from his individual effort in the field of endeavor, and he who would realize the greatest possible advantage from the efforts of those under his command must, of necessity, possess knowledge--indispensable perception far in excess of the needs of the moment. Discernment, like a bank account, soon runs out if it is overdrawn or if it is not continually replenished. In business the “checking system” of knowledge is the sort of account that pays best--not the “savings account system.” Knowledge that is simply corked up and allowed to accumulate cobwebs and rust can avail nothing. The sharpest vinegar is procured by constantly replenishing the old stock with new.

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