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Address by Secretary of Commerce Rogers C.B. Morton to be Delivered before the Protestant Foundation of Greater Chicago Annual Dinner [Speeches by Others]
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7341810
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Address by Secretary of Commerce Rogers C.B. Morton to be Delivered before the Protestant Foundation of Greater Chicago Annual Dinner [Speeches by Others]
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1975-12-05
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1975
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Digitized from Box 18 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF
COMMERCE
OFFICE
OF THE
SECRETARY
NEWS
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20230
FOR RELEASE FRIDAY A.M., DECEMBER 5, 1975
ADDRESS BY SECRETARY OF COMMERCE ROGERS C. B. MORTON
PREPARED FOR DELIVERY BEFORE THE PROTESTANT FOUNDATION
OF GREATER CHICAGO ANNUAL DINNER, PALMER HOUSE, CHICAGO,
ILLINOIS, 6:30 P.M. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1975
It's a great pleasure to be here this evening, and
to join this very distinguished gathering in its support
of the Protestant Foundation of Greater Chicago.
One of the suggestions for my address was that I
present a challenge to the leaders of American business.
The thrust would be to challenge you "to provide leader-
ship in restoring to our country the high value standards,
ethics, morality and spiritual commitment upon which the
Nation was founded."
Now, that is clearly a worthy theme, to the tune of
which a master organist could pull out all the stops at
once and pound out some thundering chords. But frankly,
considering what you are here for tonight--and what you
have been doing so well for so many years--I'd be a little
embarrassed to preach you that kind of sermonette.
So, I'd like to approach the same kind of thoughts
from a slightly different angle--not as your friendly
pastor, but simply as a fellow American; as one who has
spent many years in business; and as a member pro tem of
the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.
I don't think there's any question but that America
was founded upon the highest moral, ethical and spiritual
standards. The imminent approach of our 200th birthday
bombards us with daily reminders of that fact.
But, as Professor Paul Samuelson has pointed out,
-2-
America was also conceived in the search for a better
economic life. For every family that arrived here
seeking religious freedom and relief from despotism,
a hundred settlers came in search of jobs.
I'm always reminded, in that context, of the
journalist who traveled to the furthest boondocks of
India immediately after independence-- to learn how the
natives felt about the departure of the British. To
his amazement, most of them were unaware that the Brit-
ish had ever been there. Their political awareness
began and ended with an empty stomach.
I have to agree with Professor Samuelson that
political and religious freedom are irretrievably
bound up with economic freedom. The American free
enterprise system, our free economy, is the found-
ation stone without which all our other vaunted
freedoms would be--at best--academic.
If there is a genuine flaw in the American business
system, it is that it may have succeeded too well. Grind-
ing out a Gross National Product in 13 figures, to provide
the highest standard of living for the greatest number of
people in the world's history, the U.S. economic system
has made the miraculous appear mundane.
The prevailing attitude, therefore, too easily be-
comes: "Ho hum, what have you done for us lately?" Ex-
pectations, based upon performance to date, have grown
so voraciously that there is no possible way to fulfill
them all for any reasonable future term.
Faced with this fact, there is a growing tendency
to turn against business and the free enterprise system
itself. We hear calls to break up the big corporations;
to nationalize this or that industry; to allocate credit
by government fiat; and to adopt some form of the central
economic planning that has hardly distinguished itself
in any country that has tried it.
I suppose that normally we could attribute that
kind of clamor to what I call the "economic illiteracy"
of a great many citizens, some of their elected repre-
sentatives, and many of the informational and educational
-3-
media. The kind of illiteracy that leads to an amazing
paradox: everyone is in favor of more and better jobs,
higher real incomes, and a steadily improving standard
of living for all. Yet, most of the people who cheer
for all these good things feel that American business
is making too high a rate of profit.
So you have to wonder. It's kind of like wanting
more and more eggs all the time--but trying to wring the
neck of every hen you can get your hands on.
"Normally," as I said, we might attribute these
alarming trends to a simple lack of economic understand-
ing. But when illegal campaign contributions, bribery
of foreign officials, and the like enter into the equa-
tion, there is no point in trying to blame it on mis-
understanding or a lack of understanding.
Similarly, the public hears business complaining
about "stifling government regulation" and I will
agree that there is entirely too much of that. But
when the President makes specific proposals to get the
dead hand of government off of various businesses, and
to let the forces of free competition prevail, sudden-
1y the "regulatees" appear not to want to be deregulat-
ed after all.
It boils down to what Preston Robert Risch, of the
Loews Corporation, recently told the Executives' Club
here in Chicago. "Leaders in almost every field, includ-
ing business," he said, "have fallen into a habit. It
has become something of a reflex--of thinking of public
opinion as something to be molded and manipulated for
their own purposes. They do not tell the truth; they
tell a carefully varnished version of the truth, de-
signed to produce a predetermined result."
I don't say--nor believe--that anyone in this room
is guilty of any of the things I've been talking about.
But I will say this: anything a firm or company does to
diminish the confidence of the public in American business
as an institution--is a disservice to the company itself,
to all business and industry, and to the Nation.
-4-
I don't believe there's any question but that our
economy is going to need somewhere between four and five
trillion dollars in new investment over the next ten years
in order to grow at a reasonable and stable rate. That
level of investment can only come from a decent rate of
profit--and from the savings of millions of people who
have the confidence to invest in American business.
If profit is allowed to become a dirty word--or
worse, if confidence and trust in the business community
are permitted to erode to the point of no return--there
simply will not be enough capital formation to provide
some 15 million new jobs we're going to need over the
next decade. And if that happens, bewailing the eco-
nomic illiteracy of the American people is not going to
be of much help to a failing economy.
I've addressed myself so far to business--first,
because you are influential business leaders with an
earnest concern about ethics and morality; and second,
because it "goes with the territory" if you happen to
be the Secretary of Commerce.
But I also recognize that any crisis of confidence
we may be going through applies with equal force to gov-
ernment, the professions, the media, labor unions--indeed,
to any institution large enough to have gathered power to
itself.
Perhaps it is as Walter Lippmann saw it back in 1913,
when he wrote: "Business and political leaders don't mean
badly; the trouble with them is that most of the time they
don't mean anything."
Well, I think our 200th birthday is as good a time as
any--in fact, the best time--to start meaning something, to
stand for something. And what we've got to stand for, as
we look to our third century, is what we stood for back at
the very beginning: Duty.
And that means all of us: business, government, media,
labor, citizens, Republicans, Democrats, just plain Americans.
-5-
"I know my rights! How often have we heard that
declaration?
Yet rights are only the other side of a coin called
"obligations" and the simple word for obligation is "duty."
But how often do we hear someone assert: "I know my
duty"?
If we take the ratio of the first to the second, it
would appear to be much easier to demand one's rights than
to insist upon one's duty. But there are no one-sided coins.
There are no rights without concurrent duties.
Vital new rights have been written into law: the rights
of minorities, of women, of workers and of consumers--and it
is right that these things have been achieved through the
struggles of the great civil rights movement.
But where is the civil duties movement? Where is that
groundswell demanding equal opportunity for everyone to
carry out his or her inalienable responsibilities?
I don't see it. I don't notice the crowds marching
in the streets, flags and banners flying proudly. I don't
hear the singing and the shouting and the slogans ringing
out.
Call for a civil duties march and the streets will be
deserted.
Sing a civil duties song--and you'll be drowned out
by the clamor for more rights.
With good and ample reason, we cherish our Bill of
Rights. But where is our Bill of Duties?
It is recorded that the soldiers at Valley Forge left
their bloodstained footprints in the snow. No one had to
read them the Orders of the Day about their duty; they lived
by it. And many died for it.
The Stars and Stripes does not fly over the Land of
-6-
the Free because people were preoccupied with enjoying
their rights. It flies there because brave men and women
were doing their duty!
The first Americans had a vision. It was their
vision--and their sense of duty--that shaped America
for 200 years.
It was that vision and that sense of duty that
brought us safely through wars and recessions and de-
pressions. It was that vision and sense of duty that
moved a people and a Nation to greatness.
Now we ourselves--and others in the world--are
questioning whether we have the stamina, the plain old
guts, to continue building upon the greatness we have
known.
I for one am confident that we can do it, that we
can go on to build a Second America even greater than
the first--morally, ethically and economically.
But the world in which we have to go forward is
far more complex today than it was in 1776; every nation
depends upon the others as Spaceship Earth speeds through
the void.
Things are no longer simple, with clear blacks and
whites. We live in a world with few if any absolutes.
The great multinational corporations were perhaps the
first to recognize the concept of an economy as being
a global concept. In the last analysis, I am convinced
the record will show that the multinationals bring ben-
efits not only to their home countries, but also to the
other lands in which they conduct their operations. They
are the lead pioneers of the one world that I feel we will
ultimately have to become.
Yet today we face a dilemma in the fact that practic-
es of which we heartily disapprove are not only legal in
other countries, but are a long-established way of life
and of doing business.
-7-
That is only one of the many gray areas - like the
oceans and population control and the distribution of
resources - that abound in a world which is tugging in
many different directions, despite the obvious fact that
we are all growing more and more dependent upon each
other.
Until that happy day when all of these issues shall
have been resolved by international accord, our surest
guide must be our individual conscience, our duty to our-
selves and our country, and our duty to all mankind.
That sense of duty, I know, is what impels all of
you here to give so freely of yourselves and of your
efforts in behalf of the Protestant Foundation of
Greater Chicago.
I am proud to have been here to be a part of what
you are doing.
Thank you.