The Practical Business Men From the beginning the useless people set up a shriek for
“practical business men.” By this they meant men who had
become rich by placing their personal interests before those
of the country, and measuring the success of every activity
by the pecuniary profit it brought to them and to those on
whom they depended for their supplies of capital. The piti-
able failure of some conspicuous samples from the first batch
we tried of these poor devils helped to give the whole public
23
GB Shaw
side of the war an air of monstrous and hopeless farce. They
proved not only that they were useless for public work, but
that in a well-ordered nation they would never have been
allowed to control private enterprise.
