Positive Thoughts on Business and Capitalism

​In 1950, B. C. Forbes published the first of what would ultimately become over two decades a three-volume set of quotes, epilogues and statements on “The Business of Life.” Initially, I started to list some of my favorite quotes from Volume I, but a question came to mind: What was the overall impression—the big picture—of all the quotes in this first volume?

​What was on the mind of these early industrialists, philosophers, and business founders (and B. C. Forbes) when these short business-life idioms were written, collected and published?

​This is an ordered list of the number of times each subject is included in the “Subject Index.” Maybe at a later date, I will publish how many times each word shows up in a complete search of the book, but for now I believe this list, in a small way, shows where the heads of some great individuals were at when it came to business in the generations living before 1950—many thoughts were post World War I and World War II.

​It appears obvious that for many (1) business was “life,” (2) “God” and “Happiness” were close seconds—seemingly to provide guidance or a balance, and (3) “work, success, character, mind, education, faith, truth and wisdom” were top of mind too. Great food for thought.

Subject from the "Subject Index" and Number of Mentions

​Life                       148

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​God                        106
Happiness          104

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​Work                       95
Success                93
Business               76
Character             72
Mind                        71
Education             67
Faith                        62
Truth                        58
Wisdom                  54

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​Ideas                     50
Progress              52
Fear                       46
Peace                   46
Democracy        44
America               43
Courage              42
Experience         42
Courage              42
Action                   41
Doing                    35
Civilization          30
Evil                         27
Confidence        26
Cooperation      23

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A footnote: Consider that each subject may be more expansive than what is listed here. For instance, the category “Action” does not include “Act, Actions, Deeds, or Doing.” Neither does the category “God” include subjects such as “Faith, Religion or the Golden Rule.”

​Also, little effort has been made to count the exact number of mentions in the index. These were cut/paste into a Word document and the number of words then extracted. The actual count may be off by one or two—forgive me as this was a trade-off on my part between accuracy and effort. Maybe, if I were a university professor who could put a graduate understudy to work on it, eh?