Our Economic and Other Problems: A Financier's Point of View |
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Our Economic and Other Problems: A Financier's Point of View Otto Hermann Kahn No preview available - 2023 |
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action Acworth administration Allied American American glory artists attitude believe bonds burden bureaucracy called capacity capital cause Château-Thierry Comédie Française Committee Congress corporations cost course deal duty economic effect effort enterprise eral Europe European excess profit tax exercise existing experience extent fact fair Federal fight France French functions Germany give Government governmental Harriman income tax increased individual industry instance interest Interstate Commerce Commission investment labor League of Nations legislation less liberty Liberty Bonds means measure ment methods nature ness never nomic opera operation opportunity organizations peace political practical problems production prosperity public opinion purpose railroads realize reason recognized result securities Senate short selling social spirit Stock Exchange task taxation things tion tive trade Union Pacific Union Pacific Railroad vast wages wealth wise
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Page 274 - The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done by one effort in all past time, as, in the providence of God, it is now your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it!
Page 274 - This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything.
Page 259 - I have heard your orators and watched the work of your movement the world over. I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for thirty years; have been closely associated with many of you, and know how you think and what you propose. I know, too, what you have up your sleeve. And I want to say that I am entirely at variance with your philosophy. I declare it to you, I am not only at variance with your doctrines but with your philosophy. " Economically, you are unsound ; socially, you are wrong; industrially,...
Page 329 - Paris, the nerve center of the French railroad system and the seat of many French war industries, not only, but the very heart of France, far more to the French people in its meaning and traditions than merely the capital of the country; Paris in imminent danger of ruthless bombardment like Rheims, in possible danger even of conquest by the brutal invader, drunk with lust and with victory! As one Frenchman expressed it to me: "We felt in our faces the very breath of the approaching beast.
Page 246 - ... or which ought not to be fulfilled. We must deal with all these things with common sense, mutual trust, with respect for all, and with the aim of guiding our conduct by the standard of liberty, justice, and human sympathy. But we must rightly understand liberty. We must resolutely oppose those who in their impatient grasping for unattainable perfection would make of liberty a raging and destructive torrent instead of a majestic and fertilizing stream. Liberty is not fool-proof. For its beneficent...
Page 301 - The workman would come to realize that capitalists are not, perhaps, quite as wise and deep as they are given credit for, but, on the other hand, a good deal less grasping and selfish than they are frequently believed to be, a good deal more decent and well meaning, and made of the same human stuff as the worker, without the addition of either horns or claws or hoofs. 2. The worker's living conditions must be made dignified and attractive to himself and his family. Nothing is of greater importance.
Page 54 - These transactions, first becoming known to the public through the investigation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which gave them a doubly suspicious appearance (they would, as a matter of course, have been disclosed anyhow in the next annual report of the Union Pacific), lent color to the impression that Mr. Harriman was aiming at a gigantic illegal monopoly of the railroad industry. This, taken together with the simultaneous unfair and hostile presentation of the old Chicago...
Page 258 - German — have not only read, but studied them. I have heard your orators and watched the work of your movement the world over. I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for thirty years; have been closely associated with many of you, and know how you think and what you propose.
Page 26 - Almost all of the members of the Board had been previously connected with the Union Pacific, either through old affiliations or through membership in the Reorganization Committee. Mr. Harriman was a newcomer, and by several members of the Board his advent was not regarded with friendly eyes. He was looked at askance, somewhat in the light of an intruder...
Page 12 - ... his death coincided with what appears to be the ending of an epoch in our economic development. His career was the embodiment of unfettered individualism. For better or for worse — personally I believe for better unless we go too far and too fast — the people appear determined to put limits and restraints upon the exercise of economic power, just as in former days they put limits and restraints upon the absolutism of rulers.