Irish Jesuit Province

Business Is BusinessAuthor(s): John HannonSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 38, No. 446 (Aug., 1910), pp. 436-439Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20502859 .

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[ 436 ]

BUSINESS IS BUSINESS

By JOHN HANNON

"9 { F wise repartees made after the event, the wayside

Q_J ditches are full," says Manzoni in The Betrothed, greatest of Catholic prose romances-of which

Macaulay wrote in his diary that, were half its view of the Church correct, he would " turn Papist " on the morrow.

" Sono fiene le fosse "-the ditches, that is, of the dukedom of Milan. Yes, and equally full are the chinks in the pavements of modern cities, and the holes worn in the linoleum of busy office stairways, and the corners of descending lifts, or elevators, as the contrivances are known in the land of their invention.

If muttered words could leave material relics of their thorny existence wherever they tumbled, we should be always tearing our garments on some briery stem of a big rose of apt retort: a rose which blossomed all too late. No need to go searching

rosa quo iocorum Sera

moyetur,.

It would find us out, whosoever first grew it, in a ten minutes' walk through any commercial street of our towns and cities. We should have to stoop and pick the thing off, like a thistle-burr.

Seriously, however, and as things are, it is only our own " wise repartees made after the event " which we recall and regret, much as Manzoni's honest tailor remembered and

mourned the fine reply he did not make to Cardinal Federigo

Borromeo, St. Charles's nephew and devout successor:

" The poor man opened his mouth and pronounced the words, 'You may imagine ! ' At this point not another word would

occur to him. This failure not only disheartened and vexed

him at the moment, but the tormenting remembrance ever after

spoiled his complacency in the great honour he had received. And how often, in thinking it over, and fancying himself again in the same circumstances, did numberless words crowd upon his mind, out of spite as it were, every one of them better than that foolish 'You may imagine!' . . .

" The Cardinal took his leave, saying: 'The blessing of God

be upon this house.'"

The treatment accorded by '' man's inhumanity to man

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BUSINESS IS BUSINESS 437

in business interviews occasionally admits of no reply, morally if not physically speaking. We need not halt here to dwell upon instances of the latter-cases such as that mentioned in the pleading lines:

It was all very well to dissemble your love, But why did you kick me down stairs ?

or the milder treatment which another bard resented:

He shut the door with such a slam, It sounded like a wooden d

Let us confine ourselves to the commonest and woodenest of commercial moral dams-in the engineering and irrigatory sense of that word-to a phrase which modern merchants think there is no gainsaying, to a truistic shibboleth which is aUowed

by them to check all further talk, more effectively than lock gates hold a stream.

I mean the expression: " Business is business.') What finality this paltry pseudo-proverb is allowed to

possess! Even the subtle French mind has tolerated its stolidity, and we read at the conclusion of articles in the Gaulois and equally well-written journals: " Les a//aires sont les a//aires," with the monotony of Ainsi-soit-il in a prayer book.

Retort to this catchword at the time (I am speaking of com mercial or professional interviews) is quite impossible as a rule, for the phrase comes most readily from the lips of employers or other principals. All one can do to relieve the irritation of the moment is to seek cool comfort in the remembrance of Oliver

Wendell Holmes's lines:

Thou sayest an undoubted thing In such a solemn way.

The mischief is that it is hard to frame a rejoinder as you go downstairs. Such strength is there in " this fool-gudgeon, this opinion."

Suppose we look at the phrase, in' the light of Newman-s

experience, when he said, that if opponents defined their terms explicitly most controversy would be either superfluous or im possible.

What does the word " business " mean ? It is hard to

mention any mundane thing or movement which it may not signify. Like its Latin equivalent, the little word res, it is a verbal blank cheque on which the context writes the ever

VOL. Xxxviii.-No. 446. 30

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438 THE IRISH MONTHL Y

varying value. In the grammatical subject of the sentence we are analysing, the word " business " is made to mean " the successful conduct of commercial or professional affairs." The surprising popularity of the saying is due to the fact that " business," in the predicate, can be made to mean whatever the speaker desires, from the elimination of all pity, benevo lence, and friendship during office hours, and the maintaining of a keen eye on the main chance always, to " a further reduction of my workmen's wages," and even " the falsification of this particular balance-sheet."

It is an ominous fact that so many London workmen now

out of employment should bitterly hate and resent the catch word. " I can't help your wife and four children: bizniss is bizniss-that's all the answer I got from the boss." You often overhear words like these in the suburbs, as you pass a group of worried, pale-faced men. If the Social Revolution ever breaks out in England-which may our good God avert rich men will be swung to lamp-posts, with this mocking legend pinned on their breasts.

The only wise and true reply to this materialistic maxim is the Catholic Church's answer: Business is a business, but not the business of life. Success in commerce or a profession is a business, auxiliary and ancillary to the business of us all, which -need I write it ?-is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and (here comes the rub in counting house discussions) our neighbour as ourselves.

" Business is a business, but not the business of life." With Mammon-worship rampant, this is one of those repartees which had best be made " after the event." Spoken to a superior, or even to many an equal, it would sound either midsummer mad ness, or the mumbled treason that Hamlet terms " miching mallecho." Even when it was addressed to the world by the most exalted of all possible earthly superiors, in the person of the late Leo XIII., too many within the Fold were like luckless

Don Abbondio in the tale:

" He hung his head. His mind, during these arguments, was like a chicken in the talons of a hawk, which holds its prey elevated to an unknown region, to an atmosphere it has never breathed before. Finding he must make some reply, he said in unconvinced tones of submission, 'My Lord, I shall be to blame.' "

However, sursum corda ! Don Abbondio becomes a better

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HOMESICK 439

man in the novel, and in the true romance of life tens of thousands are yearly entering the Church of the Poor in Spirit, and learning, with many a deeper truth, that business is not The Business-our Father's business-in anything like its totality.

HOMESICK

I HAVE toiled for the Saxon strangers (They stint both their gold and their praise),

Not unscathed I have come through dangers, I have known few griefless days;

But God has kept me from hunger, My body, my soul, He has fed,

And joys have been mine from a source divine, The blessings of God above corn and wine,

Yet for lost joys my heart has bled.

I have looked on the glittering city, I have breathed its smoke-fouled air,

And little I feel but pity For the poor who suffer there.

I have found me a home and a dwelling, And sometimes a welcoming hand,

But my dwelling-place is not with my race,

And I long for the smile of an Irish face, And the speech of my own homeland.

Once I dwelt in thei lap of the mountains (Oh, mountains, I see you still!)

Once I strayed where rock-born fountains Threw back the sun from the hill,

There was joy in the wind-swept spaces, There was peace in the sigh of the rain.

And my heart is sore for a brown stream's roar, Which fills a valley nigh Galtee Mor

Where I walk in dreams again.

I hornthwaite, Keswick. GEORGE MAcKENNA.

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