Behind the Mirrors

he young man is the nominal master of the business. He lacks confidence in himself and what is worse still his wife and mother lack confidence in him. They have fortified hi

ife and mother have provided. He in turn proves no final authority but must discuss the question with his sister. Ultimately the widow who owns most of the stock must be approached. She hires others to run the prop

atly from business opinion. Parties reflected the will of business. Authority was centered. Whether you said it resided in p

what is party opinion, what is business opinion, what is public opinion, or wha

er afraid of the public. It will assume no responsibility. Public opinion, what is it? Mr. Hearst's newspapers? Or the rest of the press? Or the product of the pr

circle seeing the young man, his wife, his brother-in-law, and the widow who inherited the property, is our constant dream. Let us get ba

size in one social aim, the common element in the aims of various interests into which the country is

book upon the subject, despairing of the press, would put the making of public opi

ers of Babel sought it after the c

worked. Let us return to Eden. Let us elect a business man President. One may substitute for President in this las

ment that was independent of business, parties that were independent of everything under the sun, voters that were indepen

ore. You will import into public life all that wonderful efficiency which we read about in the American Magazine, that will to power, that habit of getting things don

a demigod. Golden words, as Mark Twain said, flow out of his mouth. He performs miracles. He has erected a great industry and amassed a large fo

r premise handed down from pioneer days. "A" is a real success, for he has made several millions. Therefore

seen. The nation does not think of them as the luckiest of a generation facing such virgin resources as existed on no other continent, at a moment when means of transport

hey were colossal figures of American enterprise. As their like existed nowhere els

to celebrate the epic of their marvelous industry, resourcefulness, efficiency, their god-like insight into the hearts of men; whose praises they pay for liberally in the disposition of advertising. Young men who would be great read this journalism diligently looking for the secret

yze it to exhibit the contents of our minds when we say "elect a business man President," and to present the pic

rson to be in charge of it is a business man." But it is not business in any exact sense of the word. If the product of the operation were a mere bookkeeping profit or even mere bookkeeping economies then it might properly be calle

lure in democracy, an admission that public life in it does not develop men fit for its tasks, that for capacity i

y, as in the days of Mark Twain, that golden words flow from his mouth, we accept his wealth as proof positive of his extraordinary capacity for affairs. There is no going behi

ve been his as head of a successful organization. In no way may it be asked and answered whether all the original force which was in him may not have be

ect luck to office. Special talents which are valuable

or so blindly praised as business success in this country. We may occasionally elect men in public life to office upon false reputations, as we did Vice-President Coolidge, crediting him with a firmne

ring the property by foreclosure thought this product of little value. A subordinate felt that it could by a change of name and judicious advertising be widely sold. He had great difficulty in persuading his employer but in the end obtained the money to make his experiment, whose results fully justified his judgment. The public

000 for its development. They then found that the trust was the only market for the mineral and that it had no intention to buy. Ultimately this deposit passed to the trust by foreclosure of the $10,000 mortgage. The trust thus obtaining ownership, began m

ith enhanced reputations. Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip, who served in the Treasury Department, had little success, so the men who

head of a great Wall Street bank. What do these adverse circumstances mean regarding Mr. Vanderlip's fitness to be, let us say, Secretary of the Treasury?

usual in the business world. His agreeable personality made him liked by editors. He achieved unusual publicity. Was his reputation solidly based or was it newspaper made? The public does not know, cannot know. I use his cas

of wealth any one has ever heaped up, except Mr. John D. Rockefeller. I say "somewhat uneasily" because I have in mind Mr. Mellon emerging from a Congressional hearing at the Capitol, flu

accused of a crime he would hang himself by appearing in his own defense, unless the jury

nal committees, before reporters in the dreadful conferences which are the outward and visible eviden

Sphinx here got to say on the subject." Thus impelled, the Secretary of the Treasury replied, unconsciously in

self down beside the others in the great American copy book and saying seriously to the youth of the land, "Look at me, I worked always fifteen minutes after the whistle blew and behold the result. Follo

hy of great business success. But granting that the real Mr. Mellon is shown in the enormous fortune and not in the timid asking of a subordinate, "Did I

ON, SECRETARY

e can identify ourselves in our imagination. He must be articulate. He must get across. Mr. Harding does it admirably. You watch him and you realize that he is the oldest of stage heroe

is our familiar aphorism, "The office makes the man." All

h power." He strutted to fill the eye. He was the consummation of articulateness. The poi

lief that where there is a slow tongue profundity is found being one of those pleasant things which we like to think about ourselves-"we could and w

nd call in the gods from another world. It is as I have said a staged receivership. We can not identify ourselves with the hero. We are poor worms, not millionaires. We might have the

are many. He does more. He fits admirably into what Mr. Walter Lippmann has called in his new book one of our popular stereotypes. We demand a conflict between reality and the stage. We like to see the

Dover in their efforts to fill his department with politicians was not so much a

nk of New York he would not discharge all the National City Bank employees and bring in a lot of men who had never seen the inside of a bank bef

our work. I want you to stay with me," "Ah, but, Mr. Mellon, I can't," plead this Democrat, "You really

tection. He could not live in the atmosphere of politics. He had to do things as he always had done them. The Gods coming dow

flict with the politicians. Without them one does not know what would

the books on finance and knows the rules. Originally our Secretaries of the Treasury were amateurs, like our generals who beat ploughshares into swords. When one got into trouble, he boarded the Cong

The young men who tell us whether we have a good Secretary of the Treasury or not are the financial writers of the newspapers. The Secretary

suggestion to make. You would hardly know that Secretary Houston was gone and Mr. Mellon had come. And there is an explanation for this continuity, beside that of the rule books. The hard work of the Department has been done under both administrations by Assistant Secretary S. P. G

nknown and unfavorable environment. But he is perceptible in Washington, he does appear before Congressional Committees and at newspaper conferences. You can stu

to be seen only through the golden aura of a great fortune, sitting shy and awkward u

e is shy and unbusiness-worldly, he has a brother who has that force of personality which we usually associate with fitness for life. His bank was t

ombination of favoring circumstances and favoring personalities and names are usually given arbitrarily. The name given in this case is Andrew W. Mellon. But how much of it is Andrew W. Mellon a

e. Or if he is all that he seems to be, measured by his great fortune, perhaps they get him after he has spent his force or after his head is turned by succ

fore, they make self-government go in

is just a romantic development of