In our study of business we are always emphasizing the "long-time point of view," and we fall back upon this convenient phrase to harmonize many discrepancies between our so-called scientific principles and present facts. On the whole, we are well justified in assuming these long-time harmonies, but it will not do to overlook the fact that many important and legitimate enterprises have to justify themselves from a short-time viewpoint. Of more importance still is the fact that in this country enterprises of the latter sort have predominated in the past. This circumstance has a very marked bearing on the nature of our task, when we try to approach business from the standpoint of education. There are strong historical and temperamental reasons why nineteenth-century Americans were inclined to take a short-time view of business situations. Our fathers were pioneers, and the pioneer has neither the time, the capital, the information, the social insight, nor the need to build policies for a distant future. The pioneer must support himself from the land; he must get quick results, and he must get them with the material at hand. Every one of our great industries--steel, oil, textiles, packing, milling, and the rest--has its early story colored with pioneer romance. The same romantic atmosphere gave a setting of lights and shadows to merchandising and finance and most of all to transportation. Whether we view these nineteenth-century activities from the standpoint of private business or of public policy, they bear the same testimony to the pioneer attitude of mind. Considering our business life in its national aspects, our two greatest enterprises in the nineteenth century were the settlement of the continent and the building-up of a national industry. In both these enterprises we gave the pioneer spirit wide range. With respect to the latter, industrial policy before 1900 was summed up in three items: protective tariff, free immigration, and essential immunity from legal restraints. This is not the place to justify or condemn a policy of _laissez-faire_, or to strike a balance of truth and error in the intricate arguments for protection and free trade; nor need we here trace the industrial or social results of immigration. We need only point out that the policy in general outline illustrates the attitude of the pioneer. The thing desired was obvious; obvious instruments were at hand--immediate means used for immediate ends. From his viewpoint, the question of best means or of ultimate ends did not need to be considered.