268 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tion of authority and responsibility, and to formulate the rules of their 

 distribution. He will study the coordination of mutually functioning 

 agencies, and the means of their supervision. He will find need to more 

 precisely determine the basis upon which rests the division of labor be- 

 tween administration and operation, and between principal matters and 

 details. He will concern himself with the meaning and use of standards 

 and sequences and schedules, and will attack the great problem of 

 framing a theory of rewards and punishments adequately adjusted to 

 the moral sense of the time. 



The Fellowship of Administrators 



What the military leader was in the ancient days of constant war, 

 and the statesman in the period of the formation of great empires, the 

 industrial executive may be considered to be in this commercial age. 

 He is the leading exponent of organized action in the world. He should 

 dignify his task, boldly conceiving it on the highest plane of which he 

 is capable. He is the intellectual heir of all the executives of the past, 

 and has resting upon him the mandate not to disgrace the succession. 

 It is open to him to maintain a stimulating communion with his pre- 

 decessors — with all the great military leaders and statesmen and diplo-' 

 mats whose history is preserved for us — and from their experience to 

 gather basic principles of action. Why should not the business execu- 

 tive practise Caesar's leniency, and his art of making common cause with 

 his men, or endeavor whether Napoleon's celerity may not be used in the 

 bloodless battles of economic service ? Why should he not be stinmlated 

 by Eichelieu's example to strive for coolness in analysis, or be moved by 

 Sir Philip Sidney's charm to practise the art of winning friends? 



Brought into contact with the thoughts and deeds of great minds, 

 the business executive need not feel alone in the smallest village or the 

 most distant engineering camp. He will find that before him the great 

 company of the world's executives has had to deal with the same weak- 

 nesses of human nature as those against which he combats, and has 

 relied upon such virtues and employed such methods of organization 

 and administration, in bringing men to effective joint action, as are 

 open equally to him. The fields of leadership ma}', indeed, have been 

 different, but the fundamental principles have been largely the same. 



Viewed thus, work again becomes a challenge. The function of the 

 business executive is seen to lose its isolated and empirical character, and 

 acquire a history, and an intimate relation with all other branches of 

 society's organized effort. It is lifted onto the plane of an intellectual 

 achievement, and so offers a foundation upon which to erect ideals of 

 a professional character. 



