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PREFACE

THE plan presented by this book is an application of democracy to business. If democracy is to go on making America, democratic principles cannot remain merely in politics. They must go into business. Democratic principles must drive business privilege out of our business system or business privilege will drive democratic principles out of our political system.

Democracy is in the making in America and still has most of America to make. The hardest battles are ahead. Across democracy's march toward full freedom and fraternity business is a Chinese Wall of contradiction. It is bastioned by favor and oppression and defended by the fearsome Giant Despair. Yet the high spirit with which the hosts of democracy started demands more than the scaling of that wall. The frowning top must be turned into a beautiful boulevard of progress. Democracy applied to business can make this wall more useful to each as an avenue on which to advance than it ever was to some as a barrier to others. The plan of Civilized Commercialism is presented in the hope

that it will aid the marchers for the greatest cause in the world-the cause of the common good.

Since the author first published the germ of this book in the form of an article in the American Law Review (June, 1914), he has had the benefit of much discussion with many friends and correspondents in all parts of the United States. To each of his esteemed collaborators he offers his cordial thanks. ERNEST G. STEVENS.

New York City,
February 21, 1917.

CIVILIZED COMMERCIALISM

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