America and the Age of Merchandising
TUERE are plenty of books about America by Englishmen, and for all I know just as many by Americans about England. But as this sort of indiscretion is usually reserved for the market where the critics and readers know even less than the writers, we here see all the former and very few of the latter. Books about America are always useful whoever writes them, as long as they find a few readers, for every scrap of information about that economic Mecca which dribbles through is very badly wanted here.
- In American Prosperity we have a book on America written by an American, and written in such a way as to be under- standable by an Englishman.; not only is Mr. Paul M. Mazur dealing with a subject of which he is an acknowledged master, but he succeeds as so few of his emmtrymen manage to do in dealing with it in language that does not require a special American education from the reader on this side. The student of prosperity, wealth, trade, commerce, economics--call it what you will—who is really a student of these things and not (as it must be admitted most students are) merely a politician with a sort of collateral interest in such matters, will revel in this business man's discussion of them. It might almost be said that Mr. Mazur's omissions are from our point of view the most important parts of his interesting work. Fancy discussing industry and employment without any reference to, and in apparent ignorance of, the views of. Mr. Sidney Webb or Mr. Amery or even the Bishop of Manchester ; yet Mr. Mazur does it. Or imagine a book on trade without a word about Employers'- Liability or Factory Acts, Unemploy- ment Insurance or even Trade Unions ; it seems almost impossible.
Yet Mr. Mazur, notwithstanding these limitations, has something to say on almost every aspect of the industrial problems that are so much in our minds to-day. He starts on the simple basis " that business men make economics," is not prepared to accept without question everything that comes out of the " academic laboratory," and offers his thesis "not as the last word on a complicated subject, but in the hope that it is only an opening sentence to the real yolume on fundamental business economics that business leaders, themselves, will some day write." He has a proper con- ception of the prerogatives of law makers, but " Legislation is not required to prevent monopolies of brains, for the very reasons that no one has worked out the mechanism of cornering z the- particular commodity.", Even " the claims which econ-
omic services make to their responsibility for American prosperity need not be taken too seriously. Although many of these prophetic devices have failed utterly to anticipate conditions, some few, it is true, have been accurate. But the subscribers are a mere handful as measured against the host of business men whose combined activities constitute American industry." So Mr. Mazur attacks his subjects without the handicap of all the sophisticated complications which our pampered intelligentsia has inflicted upon English students and writers. He takes us rapidly through the history. of American industry dealing first with production and then with wholesale and retail distribution, leading up by natural and easy stages to the
evolution of the consumer. " The average consumer of the middle nineteenth century who struggled for shelter and necessities has been left far behind by the great twentieth -century middle class of America riding in its seventeen million automobiles, and worrying primarily about its luxuries."
Mass production has delivered the goods, raised wages and lowered prices, but people are only just beginning to realize that high-cost distribution is the price exacted by mass production." Thus we enter " the age of merchandising" and Mr. Mazur deals directly, and almost it seems without knowing it, with some of the most vital questions that confront us in England to-day. We have so- filled our minds with wages and workers, that we have never realized the importance of those parts of the industrial organism on which this writer is most illuminating—shopkeephag, adver- tising, instalment selling and generally the- creation and satisfaction of consumer demand. Most English people fail to realize that the making of a cigarette or the milking of a cow is an insignificant detail by comparison with the impor- tance of having that cigarette or the pint of milk at the particular spot in the particular street at the particular time that it happens to be wanted.' Mr. Mazur will correct any such false impression.
It is the special duty of the business man to look ahead for difficulties to be overcome, and our author must not therefore be blamed for a gloomy chapter on " Money and the shadows of Europe." He realizes that the War by transforming America from a debtor to a creditor nation has altered the whole basis on which that great country has operated hitherto. He insists quite rightly that sooner or later America must submit to an excess of imports over exports and makes use of that most deceptive of all economic. phrases " the balance of trade." He does not seem to be quite as clear as one would expect from so sane an economist, that the country which is able to claim more goods than it sends away, is a 'country to be envied.
It is true that we, who have for more than a Century been in that most fortunate position, seem sometirnet quite linable to understand or appreciate our good fortune, but even so Mr. Mazur need not worry quite so much about it. - '
' The man, whoever he was, who dubbed America the land Of the Almighty Dollar did an injuAice to Arnerica and no service to the rest of the world. " America is not dollamnad in the miser's manner. It is activitY-mad. It Mies the game of business ; and it keeps score in dollars. Its successful players win, and then risk their all once more to win again." . . . " Utilitarian is such a reading of the life-line of America. But it must be remembered that from her palm has come the greatest physical well-being that any !ration has ever been able to accord its people. And surely that is worth some- thing." We should think so, if we could say it.
Finally, although this is merely an aside in one of his earlier Chapters, Mr. Mazur gives us the whole secret of the difference between America and 'Ourselves. " Calvin Coolidge has impressed upon the American business man many a conception of Federal government. His policy of non-interference has given the confidence to do things, and confidence is a'neceSsary ingredient in the recipe."
ERNEST J. P. BENN.
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