THE RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 263 



method of judging which is beginning to make itself felt in industry. 

 That we have not more generally used such tests hitherto is one of the 

 reasons why broad and intellectually respectable principles have been so 

 slow in gaining control of industrial action, and why it has been so 

 difficult to detect the really capable administrators among the crowd 

 of men who are merely, and perhaps even accidentally, rich. 



The early administrators, living in a highly individualistic and self- 

 confident society, worked out rules of action each man for himself. 

 Many of them were rather builders than administrators, emphasizing 

 the builder's tests of size and growth. They made many mistakes which 

 they could not perceive because, living in a community which had 

 broken sharply with the past, and which had little applicable history of 

 its own, they thought little of lessons drawn from the past. As they 

 were devoted to little else than business, they saw few analogies between 

 the administration of industry and of other forms of social action. 



Being so much in a world of their own creation, they looked upon the 

 administration of the organizations with which they were connected as 

 their own private business. Such organizations were, therefore, in 

 many cases, no more than mere extensions of themselves, incapable of 

 serving as the object of the loyalty of the various classes of persons which 

 might become connected with them. While these men sometimes made 

 notable technical achievements, and claimed the title of super-men, they 

 were, many of them, mere master mechanics, putting men and equip- 

 ment together into corporations in a wooden way and driving them with 

 their individual will power, rather than true administrators with a 

 social sense. 



And so it is that, in spite of the magnificent physical development 

 of industry, and the more noble spirit which now begins to animate it, 

 the conduct of affairs is often thought of as something cold, mechanical, 

 and out of line with the ethical feeling of the time — as a matter of end- 

 less negotiations and compromises and makeshifts which can not bottom 

 themselves on permanent principles. And, because it has received this 

 (reputation, many fine spirits keep clear of it, as they do also from 

 politics. And many others who take part in it do so without making a 

 fair effort to comprehend its possibilities. 



New Conditions 



Since the ranks of the first generation of administrators have begun 

 to be seriously thinned by death, a notable change has been taking place 

 in the character of our industrial leadership and in the conditions under 

 which it is exercised. The natural growth of businesses into units 

 embracing, under a single administration, hundreds and even thousands 

 of stockholders and employees, and which must unite many minds in 

 operations requiring long periods of time for their completion, calls for 



