Roger Maris Quotes
It's a business. If I could make more money down in the zinc mines I'd be mining zinc.
Dickson, Paul. Baseball's Greatest Quotations. HarperCollins, 1991, p. 268.
Leaders of nations for years only trusted as truly patriotic those man—usually nobles of the aristocracy—who owned land. If an invader came and seized their land, they would lose their wealth. However money is fungible, and a banker can easily move his money abroad and join another nation or side in a war. If the country is ruined by war, the manufacturer cannot obtain labor or raw materials, The financier depends on none of these and so hs not the vested interest in the welfare of the nation.
What is interesting about this quotation is that there was great argument at the time that business—in this case coal mining—had an obligation to provide safe working conditions for the miners, require reasonable work hours, and pay a fair wage. Baer and most other industrialists of the time were of the opinion that the only obligation that it owed was to its shareholders. Business had not moral or ethical obligations to workers. Theodore Roosevelt and the reformers of the day challenged that notion, and it seemed to have been resolved in the New Deal of FDR. However, in the last quarter of the 20th century, there was a conservative economic and political movement that went back to this position of Baer’s. While many corporations adapted that view in the 21st century, many did not, and some like Starbucks and Google urged an even greater ethical obligation to workers than ever.
Roger Eugene Maris was an American professional baseball right fielder. He is best known for setting a new Major League Baseball (MLB) single-season home run record with 61 home runs in 1961; the record remained unbroken until 1998.
