@-rHE MARK OF A OUALITY PRODUGT

CERTIGRADE Red Gdar Shingle manufacturers arc proud of their produa. They gilardntee the grade arrd quality of, every bundle of Certigrade Shingla. Behind that guarant€e is careful manufacnrre from the f,nest red cedar grown-rigid grading rules -independent inspection-and the prestige of mills representing a f50,000,000 investrnenr.

RED CEDAR SHINGT,E BUREAU

H eadquatas, *anle; Canadian officc,Vancouver, B. C

Yet, every business in Amcrica has and is participating to a marked extint in this type of an absurdity. Every business has increased its item of political overhead more than 800 per cent ! Government employees are on the payrolls of every business on an 800 per cent greater scale than 1890 !

Demonstration has been made of the way unemployment is created by an individual business permitting exce-ssive- costs. When thi ccist of government is excessive the effect is precisely of the same kind. It creates unemployment to the extent ihat government is excessive. It difters in its results only in that instead of bankrupting one or a few businesses, it filters its effects through all the units of production and distribution, partially harming them all. The aggregate unemployment resulting from excessive cost of government is the same as the aggregate unemployment resulting from a comparable excessive cost of a comparably sized business. The Lad efiects are merely better dissipated-the burden is more evenly borne. The total devastation is the same !

If the incidence, that is the shift, of these political excesses were more generally understood, if the unemployment and the discontent they create were blamed to these excesses' blamed where much of the blame really belongs, public opinion and public action would soon make short work of them. fnstead, ihe public has been made to believe there is economic virtue in theie excesses and has joined in support of the trend that insures its own destruction- Any government beyond the minimum of necessity is excessive and to the extent it is excessive. to that exteni is the factor subverted that would cause our plentiful physical facilities to create a condition of an abundance of goods and services widely distributed.

It is not my contention that the excessive waste in government is the only behavior of ours that destroys the operation of this factor. It is merely one of them. I have used it simply to illustrate the character of the problem. I use it to encourage vou to examine the thousand and one other things that we do in the light of their effect upon this economically sound -objective oJ -ote goods and services for more people. That, io -y way of thinking, is going to be the type of _program that will be prosecuted by the trade association and the chamber of co-rne.ce of the future. Without it, in my opinion, our place in the sun is about over and furthermore it should be.

I want to conclude with one more idea and that idea has to do with the "why" for the ineffectiveness of business organizations. May I use the Chamber of Commerce of the United States for my example? I prefer it because I sincerely believe that during ihe past twenty-five years, the National Chamber has honesily .ttd faithfully represented the best of organized business thought in America.

We in the Chamber have always contended that the public interest and the business interest were identical, that they were compatible interests. We have always contended that nothing couli be in the interest of business that was not in the public interest. We believe that to be true today. Ih other words, our position, all the time, has been an economically sound one'

However, there were those who came along in re-cent years and who s"id th"t the business interest and the public interest were antagonistic. They did a mighty- fine job of. getting the American"public to beli-eve that when the business interest was harmed, the public interest was enhanced' So, therefore, when an orsaiizatibn like the National Chamber representing American dusiness went before the Congress or before the public and argtred iis position from the piemise of the business interest, ih. Cottgt.ss and the public have immediately l:aped to the indefens-ible conclusion- that because we were for it, it must be wrong, and therefore we have created antagonisms rather than hospitality for our views.

Now, this condition should not be so, but it is. It is a condition with which we must realistically deal. Should we not, therefore, attempt to find a premise from which to argue our cause that is at once economically sound and publicly acceptable ?

I believe this can be done and I think it can be done by our business organizations thinking of themselves in terms of crusades. Crusiders for what? For more goods and more services for more people! Crusaders against what? Against poverty and unemplo)'mentl These are two ways of saving precisely the same thing, for any intelligent man knows that the only way poverty and unemployment can be relieved is for the people in those classifications to have more goods and more seryices, which are the only component elements of wealth.

This is a load-star or an objective that is wholly acceptable, and that has a common appeal. For instance, is the business man interested in anything more than he is in producing more goods and more seryices for more people? Of course not. fs thete a Republican or a New Dealer, a laboring man, a Communist or a consumer, and the latter represents all of us, interested in anything more than having more goods and more services, or in other words, more wealth? Again, of course not.

Now then, if we will accept this position as our objective, we will then examine our practices and our behaviors and all of the proposals that come before us in the light of their effect upon this objective. If these practices and behaviors and proposals in our opinion, tend to destroy the furtherance of this objective, we will then be against them and against them for this reason. If they tend to promote this objective we will be for them and for them for this reason, and if we will proceed on that basis we can go ahead pursuing the case for sound economics and good business practices with all of the vigor we possess-a thing which we must be able to do if American business leadership is to make any contribution whatever to the solvency and the well-being of this magnificent edifice which we have been so fortunate as to inherit.