Unless punishment is discriminately administered, demoralization will follow, and if the big boys are whipped for no other purpose than to please the little folks, they will probably go fishing. And whenever the big boys of America take a day off, trouble ensues. Only a very few years ago, I saw a thousand men standing in line awaiting their turn for a cup of coffee and a slice of bread at the hands of charity. Business simply could not stand the lash incessantly applied. It had taken a day off. Then the war came, abnormal demands were created and great prosperity ensued. But before the revival of industry, sufficient time elapsed to permit a fundamental economic principle to be elucidated in the greatest school of the world, the school of experience. CHAPTER XVII OBSTRUCTIVE LEGISLATION While supervision and control of big business is essential, the trend has been in the direction of interference and in many instances inhibition. While both political parties, and all administrations, profess great friendship for business, the treatment that both political parties have accorded business is well illustrated by the fable of the elephant that, in going through the jungle, stepped on a mother bird. When the elephant saw the havoc she had wrought, she called the orphaned chick and said: “This is deplorable. I did not intend to kill your mother. I am a mother myself and have the mother instinct. But the deed has been done and is past recall. Being unable to restore your mother I shall give my efforts to the task that your mother would perform if she were living.” So the elephant sat down on the chicks. The American people have shown great aptitude and achieved unparalleled success in two distinct fields—baseball and business. During the period of development and successful prosecution of these two great national games, the rules of the game were made by experts in the respective games. Practical bankers made the rules of banking, experienced traffic men made rules governing transportation, and expert baseball players formulated the rules of that game. Business has suffered because of modern methods, and baseball will go where business had gone prior to the war, should the same policy be pursued and the committee that is to make the rules of baseball be selected under the direct primary system, from among those who never play the game, and seldom see it played, upon a platform demanding that strenuous playing shall cease, and that the score must be a tie regardless of errors. Instead of permitting practical bankers to apply fundamental banking principles, we have forty-nine distinct sets of statutory rules, one for each state and one for the union of states, enacted by men some of whom have no more knowledge of banking than they have of aeronautics, and frequently administered by those whose tenure of office depends upon the amount of trouble they can make.