On What Actual Business Is

True business represents the mutual organized effort of society to minister to the economic requirements of civilization. It is an effort by which men provide for the material needs of each other. While it is not an end in itself, it is the important means for the attainment of a supreme end. It rests squarely on the law of service. It has for its main reliance truth and faith and justice. In its larger sense it is one of the greatest contributing forces to the moral and spiritual advancement of the race.

— Calvin Coolidge, excerpt from an address on “Government and Business” delivered before the New York Chamber of Commerce, November 19, 1925

President Coolidge welcoming riverboat operator & hero, Tom Lee, earlier that same year (May 1925). Photo credit: Library of Congress.

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