The general decline in standards today

[3fingers]

"keepin' it real"

That's another buzz word/phrase whose originator should have been beaten with an axe handle.

 

[STEVIEBOY1]

On a similar subject. I just heard on the BBC radio news, that the speaker of the UK House of Commons ordered the education minister to write 1000 lines during Prime Ministers Question time! (I think with tongue in cheek), but rather ironic as this education minister only recently suggested that schools toughen up behavior problems by bringing back writing lines and having more detentions. (I found being given lines when I was at school very tedious indeed.)

 

[hatguy1]

Me too. We Also had to copy entire pages out of a huge dictionary. That was torture!


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[STEVIEBOY1]

Me too. We Also had to copy entire pages out of a huge dictionary. That was torture!


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Yes, sometimes instead of having to write lines, we had to copy out several pages from text books too, or write out very long essays, or do hard maths, without calculators, which were only just coming onto the market when I was at school and we were not permitted to use them in maths lessons, nowadays they seem to be allowed to which seems to be rather illogical. If we were given detention to do these impositions in, these could last from a minimum of 30 minutes, but 1 - 2 hours was more normal, longer sometimes if we had a half day holiday, or had to do a Saturday morning detention.

 

[hatguy1]

Yeah...and somehow we survived and weren't scarred for life.


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[GHT]

On a similar subject. I just heard on the BBC radio news, that the speaker of the UK House of Commons ordered the education minister to write 1000 lines during Prime Ministers Question time! (I think with tongue in cheek), but rather ironic as this education minister only recently suggested that schools toughen up behavior problems by bringing back writing lines and having more detentions. (I found being given lines when I was at school very tedious indeed.)

Our school had the novel idea of making you write on a subject which you could do with improvement on:
To this day, I can quote lengthy tracts of Shakespeare, word perfect. You won't believe how many times I wrote out scenes from The Merchant of Venice. I got that for going for the cheap laugh. When asked to read the lines of Shylock, I put on an East-End, cor blimey, cockney accent, along with hand and arm gestures.
At the time there was a large Jewish community in the East-End of London.
If you are a Londoner, I went to The Coopers Company School in the Mile End Road.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When doing time for burglary in a Massachusetts prison, the future Malcolm X decided to educate himself -- by copying an entire collegiate dictionary by hand onto legal pads. He always credited that project with developing the love for language that made him one of the most dynamic orators of his generation.

 

[STEVIEBOY1]

Yeah...and somehow we survived and weren't scarred for life.


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Yes very true indeed, all this was just part of normal school life & growing up.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Well, I think it all comes down to an interesting point -- one thing that seems to be constant thruout the past hundred and fifty years is that to make it to the top of the business world you have to be an individual of no moral scruples whatever. Obscuring your sins thru philanthropy is an old, old stunt -- but we don't seem to be as skeptical about it nowadays as we used to be.

I question your premise. Having read the biographies of dozens of business leaders, my impression is that the most successful were also the most honest, and had the greatest ability to attract and motivate smart talented people. They could be tough when it was called for but that is not where they made their money.

The out and out crooks usually burn out quickly. They make their pile and either skip town or end up in prison or in the poor house. The biggest successes are built up over a long period of years by honesty and fair dealing. Anyone who doesn't observe this rule will soon find his Dun and Bradstreet rating is nil and no one will do business with him.

You are doing Rockefeller and many others an injustice. Rockefeller was religious as a youth and stayed that way all his life. His religion was the conventional Christianity of his time and involved contributing to the church and to other charities, which was also his lifelong practice. When he was young this amounted to a few dollars, when he was old and rich he gave away millions but his principles never changed.

Rockefeller gave millions to medical research and founded the University of Chicago. Andrew Carnegie endowed thousands of public libraries including the one in Port Hope that I have been using all my life.

I would also ask if your theater is a success, and if it is, how much was built on cheating people? How much depends on your skill in dealing with the public, your employees? How much depends on being tough in sticking up for yourself, and how much on running roughshod over everyone else?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I question your premise. Having read the biographies of dozens of business leaders, my impression is that the most successful were also the most honest, and had the greatest ability to attract and motivate smart talented people. They could be tough when it was called for but that is not where they made their money.

The rules in small business are very very different from those in Big Business, and you can't legitimately equate them. The folks who founded our theatre were decent, working-class people who dealt honestly with their customers and the public because they were an integral part of their community: their entire reputation depended on their personal face-to-face honor, and they stood, in person, behind that honor for the eighty years they did business here. People like that can't hide behind Boards of Directors and Shareholders and public-relations flacks and the Boys From Marketing. Everything they are is right out there standing in the front doorway looking their actual employees, neighbors, and customers right in the eye every day of the week. But the people they themselves had to deal with, the film distributors, the executives, the movers and shakers, were, by and large, a bunch of cheap thugs. No exaggeration, either -- the business of film distribution in New England in the twenties was controlled by the Boston mob.

There are other decent businesspeople in the world -- look up the "Mensch of Malden" for the story of a decent man who stood by his workers when he could have just abandoned them. But history has shown that his kind of businessman is an exception, especially in the modern era.

Henry Ford -- a tin-plated monomaniac with delusions of godhood, who treated his workers as interchangeable parts.

Alfred Sloan -- a vicious, vindictive man who used military force against his workers when they fought for their rights.

David Sarnoff -- a liar, a fraud, and a would-be monopolist.

Asa Candler -- a pious, psalm-singing hypocrite who got control of the Coca-Cola Company thru a series of sleazy back-room deals that ensured the real founders of the company died in poverty.

James Buchanan Duke -- not only made his fortune monopolizing the American sale of a filthy stinking addictive poison, he made his fortune selling an *adulterated* filthy stinking addictive poison.

William Randolph Hearst -- who built his newspaper fortune as much by the brass knuckles and blackjacks of the brutal goons in his circulation department as by his journalistic expertise.

Walter Francis O'Malley -- a greasy, conniving low-ball lawyer who cut the hearts out of two million people just so he could make even more money than he was already making.

Steve Jobs -- a man who was more concerned with building a cult of personality around himself and his products than he was about the well-being of the people who made his wealth possible.

Mr. Rockefeller spent most of his later life force-feeding a sanitized version of his biography into the media in hopes of obscuring his cut-throat business methods. He didn't get where he got to be by standing in his doorway in a derby and sleeve-garters like a square-dealin' country storekeeper, he got there by crushing his competition wherever and however he possibly could, by means fair or foul. That he was a religious man gives him an even higher standard to uphold -- one of doing unto others as he would have others do unto him, but I kind of doubt he worried too much about that when there was another competitor out there to crush underfoot. Dropping a thousand dollar bill in the collection plate on Sunday doesn't justify what you did to earn that grand the other six days of the week.

Carnegie, admittedly, is probably the most decent man in his generation of Robber Barons, but that's sort of like being the thinnest fat man in the room. He paid his lip service to the rights of labor, but big talk and big philanthropy didn't wash the blood of the Homestead Strike off his hands. The actions he approved during that strike did more lasting harm to working people in America than those of any other man between 1880 and 1940.

In my ideal world, no business would ever grow so big that its proprietor didn't have to look his workers and his customers in the eye every day. I fully realize that's an unattainable ideal, but that's the point of an ideal, isn't it?

 

[Harp]

Yes, sometimes instead of having to write lines, we had to copy out several pages from text books too, or write out very long essays, or do hard maths, without calculators, which were only just coming onto the market when I was at school and we were not permitted to use them in maths lessons, nowadays they seem to be allowed to which seems to be rather illogical. If we were given detention to do these impositions in, these could last from a minimum of 30 minutes, but 1 - 2 hours was more normal, longer sometimes if we had a half day holiday, or had to do a Saturday morning detention.

Our school had the novel idea of making you write on a subject which you could do with improvement on:
To this day, I can quote lengthy tracts of Shakespeare, word perfect. You won't believe how many times I wrote out scenes from The Merchant of Venice.

The Christian Brothers of Ireland usually meted out direct discipline with a razor strop or fist,
but I recall writing lines of Shakespeare and Saturday detentions, called "jug."
I have to admit that these methods were not necessarily pleasant but were effective.

 

[Sharpsburg]

While Mr. Rockefeller may have become infamous in later life for giving away shiny dimes to hungry little urchins, he, like the modern financial "leaders" believed that he and his businesses were completely above the law of man or God. He refused subpoenas, refused to testify, provide information or respond in any way to government requests. He believed that the laws of the business universe transended the laws of man. He, and later his son, tried to right some of his wrongs, but he was a ruthless capitalist through and through.

 

[STEVIEBOY1]

The Christian Brothers of Ireland usually meted out direct discipline with a razor strop or fist,
but I recall writing lines of Shakespeare and Saturday detentions, called "jug."
I have to admit that these methods were not necessarily pleasant but were effective.

Sometimes, the PE/PT Masters would make us run several times around the playing fields which were huge, around 9 acres I think, in rain, sunshine, or snow, and or, do loads of press ups/push ups if we were misbehaving. (I could never and still can't, keep a straight back when doing the latter, I tend to sag in the middle!)

 

[Stanley Doble]

Do you have a positive opinion of anybody? I could name a few big businessmen of the past who do not fit your template in any particular.

One that comes to mind is George Mason of the Nash-Kelvinator corporation. When Charlie Nash was planning his retirement he asked around among his old friends in the industry like Walter Chrysler and Al Sloan, if they could recommend a good man for CEO of Nash. One name that came up several times was George Mason who had recently taken over running the Kelvinator refrigerator company. Nash was impressed by his business ability and said later there were 2 things that struck him with particular force. The first was that he turned the Kelvinator company around, from a near bankrupt concern to a thriving enterprise. This in itself was not so unusual, but he did it in the worst depression the US had ever seen. The second thing was that he didn't fire anybody. The same management and executive team that could not succeed without him, turned in an outstanding performance under his leadership.

One other thing. Mason was an ardent fisherman and during his lifetime, bought thousands of acres along the Au Sable river for the fishing. On his death he left the property to the Boy Scouts of America along with $25000 to pay for the fish he had taken out.

They don't make them like that anymore.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Do you have a positive opinion of anybody? I could name a few big businessmen of the past who do not fit your template in any particular.

One that comes to mind is George Mason of the Nash-Kelvinator corporation. When Charlie Nash was planning his retirement he asked around among his old friends in the industry like Walter Chrysler and Al Sloan, if they could recommend a good man for CEO of Nash. One name that came up several times was George Mason who had recently taken over running the Kelvinator refrigerator company. Nash was impressed by his business ability and said later there were 2 things that struck him with particular force. The first was that he turned the Kelvinator company around, from a near bankrupt concern to a thriving enterprise. This in itself was not so unusual, but he did it in the worst depression the US had ever seen. The second thing was that he didn't fire anybody. The same management and executive team that could not succeed without him, turned in an outstanding performance under his leadership.

One other thing. Mason was an ardent fisherman and during his lifetime, bought thousands of acres along the Au Sable river for the fishing. On his death he left the property to the Boy Scouts of America along with $25000 to pay for the fish he had taken out.

They don't make them like that anymore.

Don't get me started on the Boy Scouts...

 

[vitanola]

Do you have a positive opinion of anybody? I could name a few big businessmen of the past who do not fit your template in any particular.

One that comes to mind is George Mason of the Nash-Kelvinator corporation. When Charlie Nash was planning his retirement he asked around among his old friends in the industry like Walter Chrysler and Al Sloan, if they could recommend a good man for CEO of Nash. One name that came up several times was George Mason who had recently taken over running the Kelvinator refrigerator company. Nash was impressed by his business ability and said later there were 2 things that struck him with particular force. The first was that he turned the Kelvinator company around, from a near bankrupt concern to a thriving enterprise. This in itself was not so unusual, but he did it in the worst depression the US had ever seen. The second thing was that he didn't fire anybody. The same management and executive team that could not succeed without him, turned in an outstanding performance under his leadership.

One other thing. Mason was an ardent fisherman and during his lifetime, bought thousands of acres along the Au Sable river for the fishing. On his death he left the property to the Boy Scouts of America along with $25000 to pay for the fish he had taken out.

They don't make them like that anymore.

Nor do they make industrialists of the stripe of Julius Feiss, Alexander Prinz, Rollin White and Louis Greve.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd have respected Mr. Mason more if he'd gotten rid of Harry Beutlich (pronounced "bootlick.")

 

[sheeplady]

There are people who believe that all people have some good and some bad in them. There are also people who believe that things like money and power corrupt people and lead to the bad side coming out.

Conversely, there are people who believe that all people have some good and some bad in them. There are also people who believe that things like money and power don't corrupt people and lead to the bad side coming out.

That may seem like a simplistic explanation because it is, but this is where this argument seems to be going. These are kind of elemental beliefs we are talking about. You either believe the first, the second, or someplace between but only a really morally weak person doesn't have a belief about things like power and money and the effects of power and money on society. It is kind of a fundamental belief.

 

[Foxer55]

Don't know that I buy into the "all capitalists are criminals" perspective. I think there are enough opponents of capitalism in history and around the world that were/are far, far, FAR more evil than any capitalists. There are the people like Rockefeller, Ford, Gates, Jobs, Hughes, and others that live in a different reality than most of us poor slobs live in and they are driven by ideas, ideals, and demons that are beyond us. I've met some people like this and I've met idiots who try to emulate them and they are far worse than the bona fide entrepreneurs. Without the titan shakers and movers we'd still be living in grass huts. That's the same thing, BTW, that Camille Paglia says would be the case if women ran the world. I will admit that I marvel at the cunning and force of these people while, at the same time, I despise their shortcomings. Its a love hate relationship that can only be tolerated by knowing there is such a thing as karma.

 

[Sylvesterd]

Easter brunch at a local hotel. Ham, turkey, pasta, etc . I wore a regular navy blue suit. I noticed that only a few men wear suits or even slacks. Some even wore jeans. You can find a cheap suit anywhere these days. Why do some men choose not to dress up on Easter? Do they feel they are making a statement? Is there something wrong with me?



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