Admiral Moreell is Chairman of the Board of Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation. The above statement is from an address, “The Role of American Business in Social Progress,” before the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce at Indianapolis, December 9, 1955. Copies of the address are available through the Foundation at 10¢ each.
There is a growing sense of responsibility on the part of businessmen for the support of education. There are, also, certain responsibilities of business management to its stockholders, those who have invested their savings in the business. Included among these are:
1. Recruiting and training a labor force
2. Procuring sources of raw materials
3. Acquiring efficient tools and equipment
4. Developing economical manufacturing processes
5. Locating profitable markets, and
6. Making a decent profit
But more important than all these is the responsibility for preservation of the stockholders’ property.
When “government ownership of industry” ideas are on the rampage, as they are now, and when the only antidote to these are “private ownership ideas,” it is the duty of management to aid educational efforts which promote private ownership ideas. By the same token, it is the duty of management to withhold aid from those educational efforts which support government ownership ideas.
Ben Moreell
Admiral Ben Moreell (1892 – 1978) was the chief of the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks and of the Civil Engineer Corps. Best known to the American public as the Father of the Navy's Seabees, Moreell's life spanned eight decades, two world wars, a great depression and the evolution of the United States as a superpower. He was a distinguished Naval Officer, a brilliant engineer, an industrial giant and articulate national spokesman.