Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Quote for 8/2
"James Livingston has written an excellent short account of this rapid social transformation, calledOrigins of the Federal Reserve System, from which I’ve taken some lessons. Livingston tells us that the very language of proponents of corporate America underwent a radical change at the start of the century. Business decisions began to be spoken of almost exclusively as courses of purposeful social action, not mere profit-seeking. Charles Phillips of the Delaware Trust wrote, for instance, "The banker, the merchant, the manufacturer, and the agent of transportation must unite to create and maintain that reasonable distribution of opportunity, of advantage, and of profit, which alone can forestall revolution." (emphasis added) It hardly requires genius to see how such a directive would play itself out in forced schooling.
In 1900, in his book Corporations and the Public Welfare, James Dill warned that the most critical social question of the day was figuring out how to get rid of the small entrepreneur, yet at the same time retain his loyalty "to a system based on private enterprise." The small entrepreneur had been the heart of the American republican ideal, the soul of its democratic strength. So the many school training habits which led directly to small entrepreneurship had to be eliminated."
Same book! Just thinking a lot about our small business class with some youth today and this quote hit me like a ton of bricks!
In 1900, in his book Corporations and the Public Welfare, James Dill warned that the most critical social question of the day was figuring out how to get rid of the small entrepreneur, yet at the same time retain his loyalty "to a system based on private enterprise." The small entrepreneur had been the heart of the American republican ideal, the soul of its democratic strength. So the many school training habits which led directly to small entrepreneurship had to be eliminated."
Same book! Just thinking a lot about our small business class with some youth today and this quote hit me like a ton of bricks!
