438 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



becoming applied science, for science is systematized knowledge, and 

 systematic knowledge is only to be gained by systematic study. The 

 division of labor now customary in a business of any size is such that 

 a broad experience and knowledge of the business can not be gained 

 from service in a subordinate position. Either there must be unusually 

 favorable promotion from department to department, coupled with out- 

 side study; a plan followed by some of our prominent families in edu- 

 cating their sons, or an appropriate course of study must be arranged 

 in an educational institution, or else we must fall back upon the chance 

 of finding a man of unusual genius. We have in considerable measure 

 been trusting to the most uncertain plan of all, the discovery of the 

 self-made man of genius. As a result we have a tendency to build 

 industrial organizations to undue size, the endeavor being to get im- 

 portant interests under the control of the comparatively small number 

 of men who can be implicitly depended on. Thus we vastly overpay 

 for the exercise of a certain kind of talent and run the risk of many 

 industrial evils with our top-heavy system. 



The tendencies of the industrial system now dominant, as regards 

 the production of managerial ability, are, however, in considerable de- 

 gree, still unrevealed to us because of a generation of remarkable 

 leaders which has not yet passed from the stage of action and which 

 was evoked by the evolution that built up our present magnificent 

 national industries. These men began in the day of small things 

 when a few hundred dollars sufficed to set up a manufactory with 

 costs of production as low as others and with high tariffs and trans- 

 portation rates to protect a market from outsiders. They grew with 

 the industrial system. As their businesses grew their opportunities 

 and experience and power grew by natural and easy stages, and they 

 emerged from a nicely adjusted and progressive evolution knowing 

 their industries from top to bottom. These men show the knowledge 

 of detail due to the day of small beginnings and the even hand in 

 administration due to gradually imposed responsibilities. In the future 

 we can not with any confidence look forward to a succeeding generation 

 recruited in the same way, for the system has changed. Unless the 

 evolution of industry which trained the leaders of to-day can be simu- 

 lated within industrial establishments by a system of apprenticeship 

 broader and more scientific than the old as the new industry is greater 

 than the old, and leading up to the highest administrative duties, then 

 preparation must be arranged outside them in the school and university. 



It needs scarcely to be pointed out that business is carried on pri- 

 marily for the sake of producing wealth and that the machinery and 

 method devised for this purpose is only incidentally of value as a 

 training school for the young. To equip an institution specifically for 

 the purpose it is to serve, whether it be to produce locomotives or cotton 

 cloth, is well enough understood in these days of specialization. So 



