Mark Shields Quotes

Affirm the priority of work over capital and the fact that material goods are meant for all … The priority of work over capital places an obligation in justice upon employers to consider the welfare of the workers before the increase of profits.

I’ll stop demonizing business when business stops putting their profits before the country and starts putting their workers before their greed.

There are two forces in this and in every other nation of the world today. One force is the taker and the other force is the maker.

There are some who incline to favor a “minimum wage,” but who “kick at” a “maximum price.” Such surely forget that the capitalist could here just as easily as in the case of a rise in wages compelled by a workmen’s combination, or by any other cause, take his old profits out at the other end by raising the price of the manufactured article.

There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.

The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit, than the labourer can without wages.

The Ford Motor Company, the greatest and most successful automobile manufacturing company in the world, will, on January 12, inaugurate the greatest revolution in the matter of rewards for its workers in the industrial world. At one stroke, it will reduce the hours of labor from 9 to 8, and add to every man’s pay a share of the profits of the house. The smallest to be received by a man 22 years old and upward was $5 a day.

The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.

Corporations are not in business to be social-welfare organizations; they are there to make money.

The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract, and employers who are organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners.

The strongest form of fight against the capitalist class is the strike. Strikes are necessary, ever again, against the capitalists’ tendency to increase their profits by lowering wages and increase the hours or the intensity of work.

Corporation. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

There can be no distress, there can be no hard times, when labor is well paid. The man who raises his hand against the progress of the workingman raises his hand against prosperity.

Labor alone creates and pays the profits of capital.

My heart lies with the workers.

There are no employees without employers.

Fundamentally, where you have an industry in which labor is the primary cost, we can’t compete and probably shouldn’t.

Anything that benefits workers, the environment, or the general population is going to reduce their [the corporation’s] profits.

The pendulum of capitalism has swung way too far to only trying to maximize the profit of shareholders rather than many of the traditional other virtues and accomplishments of a company.

I actually am a capitalist, and I believe in shareholders. But I believe in them as a result of what I do, not as a reason for what I'm doing. The same with profits - profits alone cannot be an objective. It has to have a purpose.

There is one and only one responsibility of business: to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.

It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost and at any risk to the rest of the community.

You can't be pro-labor and anti-business.

Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture.

Everything in the world is purchased by labor.