| Some of our business ancestors had the idea that | | | | cotton fabric to retail markets, under pricing his |
| making money required being cruel and cutthroat. | | | | competitor across the river, he drives his horse |
| We still live with the weeds they sowed. They | | | | and buggy out of the crowded city and into the |
| thought they could separate business from the | | | | country where his family awaits him in a mansion. |
| softer values like compassion and cooperation. | | | | His groom takes the horse and buggy off to the |
| They thought they could leave the women home | | | | stables. He goes inside to the world he has |
| as keepers of virtue and a warmth to which they | | | | created, one where woman and children do not |
| could return after a day of slaughter. They saw | | | | give up their health for a few pieces of bread a |
| no better way to live. | | | | day. |
| Take a mill owner in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the | | | | There he finds his wife instilling into their |
| day when cotton was woven into cloth by | | | | daughters the values they will need to keep a |
| woman and children seated at large partially | | | | home that is a haven from the world of business, |
| automated hand looms, the factory version of | | | | values such as nurturing and caring. It's a |
| earlier looms used throughout medieval Europe to | | | | bring-me-my-slippers-and-pipe world, for him, if |
| weave woolen cloth. This mill owner knows the | | | | not for the women. He counts on the selflessness |
| woman and children work long hours. He pays | | | | of the females in his household. After all, he |
| them a pittance and watches them sicken and die | | | | supports them. It's an exchange, of sorts. But he |
| of white lung disease from the bits of cotton fiber | | | | will send his sons off to prep school and Ivy |
| they breathe. He replaces the dead with new | | | | League Colleges to toughen them up, to prepare |
| workers who seem to have no other option. It's | | | | them to do the callous things they must do to |
| not a life he would accept for his own wife and | | | | make a living. |
| children, but somehow he convinces himself that | | | | We today have a lot of baggage to overcome. |
| these human beings do not matter the way his | | | | Those who work in internet businesses are invited |
| loved ones do. | | | | into a new frontier. As one entrepreneur said |
| Yet, he knows he is doing harm. And he believes | | | | recently, "The internet is still the wild west." He |
| he has no choice. His conscience bothers him, but | | | | meant that opportunities abound, among them |
| he pushes it back and does his best to silence it. | | | | ways to make money while also being kind and |
| Each evening after working mostly in the mill | | | | helping others as people in pioneer communities |
| office where he oversees the ordering of bales | | | | did. I like the image of internet business as the |
| of cotton from the slave south and shipping out | | | | wild west. Yippie! |