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Big business   /bɪg bˈɪznəs/   Listen
Big business

noun
1.
Commercial enterprises organized and financed on a scale large enough to influence social and political policies.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Big business" Quotes from Famous Books



... tell you he's crazy! That man's the head of a big business. He can't kick up any nonsense like this. Come on, Herm, cut the comedy. It's time we were getting across to our hotel. Look at the crowd thinning, and what's left is getting ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... came were the foolish ones. One day it will be asked of you and of me, 'What did you do with the life which I gave you, that you might know Me?' And if we have only the answer, 'O Lord! I founded a big business in Manchester—I made a fortune—I wrote a clever book, that was most favourably reviewed—I brought up a family'—the only thing fit to be said to us is, 'Thou fool!' The only wisdom is the wisdom that secures the end for which life ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... relieved of nearly all laborious activities about the place, much to his enjoyment, spent his time reading, smoking and dozing through the days of late winter and early spring, and discussing politics and big business in the country store at the cross-roads of ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... Doctor, are you sure that you are on the side of Justice in this big business battle that's now on between competition and combination?" asked the younger ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... confined to public life. It was Lincoln Steffens, I believe, who first perceived that fact. For a time it was my privilege to work under him on an investigation of the "Money Power." The leading idea was different from customary "muckraking." We were looking not for the evils of Big Business, but for its anatomy. Mr. Steffens came to the subject with a first-hand knowledge of politics. He knew the "invisible government" of cities, states, and the nation. He knew how the boss worked, how he organized his power. When Mr. Steffens approached the vast confusion ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... Illustrated by C. E. Chambers. Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who revolts against his father's plans for him to be a servitor of big business. The love of a fine girl turns Bibb's life from failure ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... his homeward voyage, he had had himself put ashore a little north of Spurn, and had trudged the five and twenty miles to Hull, the rising port on the east coast. Then, after appointing an agent and starting what seemed likely to grow into a big business, he had tramped the hundred and twenty miles or more that separated him from Newcastle and his home, cutting a quaint figure on the road, with his old-fashioned hat and cloak, and his much-twisted and knotty oak stick. The result of all this energy was that when he was in a ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead

... is haggling over it; he won't give more than four thousand francs for two thousand copies, and you want six thousand francs. We made you out twice as great as Sir Walter Scott! Oh! you have such novels as never were in the inwards of you. It is not a mere book for sale, it is a big business; you are not simply the writer of one more or less ingenious novel, you are going to write a whole series. The word 'series' did it! So, mind you, don't forget that you have a great historical series on hand—La Grande Mademoiselle, or The France of Louis Quatorze; Cotillon ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... Owen proposed a stroll. They took a walk through the park and discovered that they both were interested in Social Reform. David Dale owned the mills at New Lanark—a most picturesque site. He was trying to carry on a big business, so as to make money and help the workers. He was doing neither, because his investment in the plant had consumed too ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... to our legislatures asking for laws for the protection of the weak, we have generally obtained them easily, when they did not interfere with 'big business.' It took Illinois women nine years to get a State Home for children. We passed such a law without any effort whatever. In two-thirds of the States of the Union women are trying to make mothers co-equal guardians of their children, and trying in vain. That was the first law our enfranchised women ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... along the road of efficiency, big business, expansion, world power, domination, at the expense of the great spiritual verities, the fundamental humanities of national life, that make for the real life and welfare of its people, and that give also its true and just relations with other ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... of moderate circumstances. Very few of them have had occasion to familiarize themselves with the laws, the history and the functionings of finance and trade; to come into relation to the big business affairs of the country, or to compare views ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn

... bully!" he thought. "The only sun in sight a manufactured one, shining on top of a manufactured mountain! It is a big business building a mountain; only, when God Almighty scattered so many ready-made ones about, why take the trouble?" he concluded. "Or so it seems to me," he added, sadly, in due appreciation of the utterly reactionary mood of a man who has been boxed up ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... most of the searchers were back in town and the saloons were doing big business. When Prince drove down the main street of Live-Oaks an hour later, the road was jammed as for a Fourth-of-July celebration. Tired though she was, Lee had not the heart to disappoint these good friends. She went to the picnic ground at Fremont's Grove and was hugged and kissed by all ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... Khusru Kheyl, but if you're satisfied, I am. That was pitched in over the gate-head last night, and I thought we might pull ourselves together and see what was on. Oh, but we're sick with fever here and no mistake! Is this going to be a big business, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... and make the same increase that the one who stood out against all of us has made, our business will thrive so that we can afford to sell goods cheaper still. Until to- night I never knew why it was that he took hold of what seemed to me a big business in his predecessor's territory and doubled it the second year. His success was the triumph of common honesty, and we all shall try his plan, for honesty is right, and nothing beats ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson

... the young lady, "is Grammont. The war whirled me over to Europe on Red Cross work and since the peace I've been settling up things and travelling about Europe. My father is rather a big business man ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... turned over the letter. "Where is it? Oh yes! '... sound financial footing. In fact, our success has been so instantaneous that I have decided to launch out on a really big scale. It is Big Ideas that lead to Big Business. I am contemplating a vast extension of this venture of ours, and in a very short time I shall organize branches in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and all the big cities, each in charge of a manager and each offering as a special feature, in addition to the ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... the first time he had demanded a revolution but, as the depression hit our country and Big Business seemed less and less capable of coping with it, the demand became more understandable and the fight against ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... cut short by the appearance of a drift of houses, and then more and more. From the elevated line on which they ran presently they could look down on block after block of roofs packed close together, or big business structures, as they reached the uptown business sections, and finally Ronicky gasped, as they plunged into utter darkness ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand

... to you, sir, and thank you kindly," the agent said, as he closed his book. "I'll look him up. I'm doing a big business here. Your people don't seem to have had a chance to invest in my line in no ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... civil service, however selected and however trained, would, to succeed, have to be composed of men who were the ablest in their calling, the best educated, and the fittest: in a word, the representatives of what we call "the big business" of the country. Such as they might handle the railroads, the telegraph lines, the food supply, the question of competitive shipping, and finally prices, as we have seen it done, but only on condition that they belonged to the fortunate ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... small drawer in a cabinet, from which he took a letter still in its envelope. It bore a foreign postmark. Glancing over it hastily, his eyes at last became fixed on a concluding paragraph. "I hope," wrote his correspondent, "that even in the rush of your big business you will sometimes look after Barker. Not that I think the dear old chap will ever go wrong—indeed, I often wish I was as certain of myself as of him and his insight; but I am afraid we were more inclined to be merely amused and tolerant ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... was," replied Raffles; "that's at the bottom of the whole thing. He was born into a big business, but he wasn't born a business man. So his partners were jolly glad to buy him out some years ago; and then it was that poor old Garland lashed out into the place where you spent the day, Bunny. It has been his ruin. The price was pretty stiff to start with; you might ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... enough to pay these fines, I'll promise faithfully that you shall have every cent we take in until the full amount is paid back. There isn't any risk, my boy, for we shall certainly do a big business here." ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis

... woman's disturbed and wounded emotions than a little stiff brain work. Richard's letter braced my viny drooping of mind at once and from thinking into the Crag's affairs of sentiment, I turned with masculine vigor to begin to mix into his affairs of finance. However, I wish that the first big business letter I ever got in my life hadn't had to have a strain of love interest running through it! Still Dickie is a trump card in the ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... moreover, to sympathize with his aims, and his splendid determination awoke her admiration. Her idea of the Trust had changed, likewise, for it seemed to be a fair and dignified competitor. She had seen no signs of that conscienceless, grasping policy usually imputed to big business. In regard to Gordon alone, her first conviction had remained unchanged. He was, in truth, as evil as he ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... terror of the proximate issue as this already is revealing itself amongst many peoples. We resent the high estate, purchasable and purchased, of the cynical intriguer and the vulgar profiteer, of the tradesman in "big business," the cheap prophet and the pathetic progeny of "successful men" fast reverting to type. We know our city councils and our state legislatures and our houses of congress, we know our newspapers, their standards ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... get credit from somebody else and pay the jobber or the banker. Then they get more credit from these people and pay the other fellows. People of this kind can do a big business without a cent of capital. In Russia a fellow who pays his bills is called an honest man, but America is miles ahead of Russia. Here you can be the best pay in the world and yet be a crook. You wouldn't say that every man who breathes God's ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... you heard? He's just cleaned up half a million or more,—some new scheme for making refined sugar out of huckleberries. Isn't it amazing what shrewd ideas these big business men get hold of? They say they're unloading the stock at five hundred dollars. It only cost them about five to organize. If only one could get on to one of these things early ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock

... a new side of the state builder, one that was to impress him in all the big business men he met. They might be pleasant socially and bear him a friendly good-will, but when they met to arrange details of a financial plan they always wanted their pound of flesh. Graham drove a hard bargain with him. He tied the ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... midst of the conflict to take up the thread of his narrative. The economic conditions and changes of 1861 to 1865 are therefore treated in connection with the great issues of the seventies and eighties—the protective tariff and "big business." The money question, railway regulation, corruption in public affairs, never absent from our national life, are the chief themes of Professor Paxson's book. But while the motif of the volume is prosperity, business success, and commercial ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... the river looking after business, and pretty big business, too," said Coley, not at all overawed by the ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... hire no men whose general knowledge is not equal to a high school course. Why? Because big business refuses to burden itself with men who are barred from promotion by the lack ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... long hesitation, recognized competition to be impracticable and the acceptance of monopoly as inevitable. As extremes often meet, the view of the industrial trust as a natural evolution is most favored on the one hand by men of "big business," already interested financially in trusts, and on the other hand by the most radical communists (or socialists) whose ideal is the complete monopolization ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter



Words linked to "Big business" :   business sector, business



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