Old Gorgon Graham Part 13

Personally, I want to see fewer businesses put into trusts on the canned-soup theory--add hot water and serve--before I go into one; and I want to know that the new concern is going to put a little of itself into every case that leaves the plant, just as I have always put in a little of myself. Of course, I don't believe that this stage of the trusts can last, because, in the end, a business that is founded on doubtful values and that makes money by doubtful methods will go to smash or be smashed, and the bigger the business the bigger the smash. The real trust-busters are going to be the crooked trusts, but so long as they can keep out of jail they will make it hard for the sound and straight ones to prove their virtue. Yet once the trust idea strikes bed-rock, and a trust is built up of sound properties on a safe valuation; once the most capable man has had time to rise to the head, and a new breed, trained to the new idea, to grow up under him; and once dishonest compet.i.tion--not hard compet.i.tion--is made a penitentiary offense, and the road to the penitentiary macadamized so that it won't be impa.s.sable to the fellows who ride in automobiles--then there'll be no more trust-busting talk, because a trust will be the most efficient, the most economical, and the most profitable way of doing business; and there's no use bucking that idea or no sense in being so foolish as to want to. It would be like grabbing a comet by the tail and trying to put a twist in it. And there's nothing about it for a young fellow to be afraid of, because a good man isn't lost in a big business--he simply has bigger opportunities and more of them. The larger the interests at stake, the less people are inclined to jeopardize them by putting them in the hands of any one but the best man in sight.

I'm not afraid of any trust that's likely to come along for a while, because Graham & Co. ain't any spring chicken. I'm not too old to change, but I don't expect to have to just yet, and so long as the trust and labor situation remains as it is I don't believe that you and I and the kid can do much better than to follow my old rule:

_Mind your own business; own your own business; and run your own business_.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

THE END.