250 W. R. LAWSON 



Americans are very catholic minded. They can go into 

 ecstasies one day over the latest arrived billionaire, the next 

 over a base ball team, and the next over an Admiral Dewey, 

 or a " cowboy president." But he must always be a man, and 

 the most popular sort of man he can be is a great organizer. 

 There can be nothing big without special organization, and 

 though the craze for bigness may be in itself rather laughable, 

 it is also the possible parent of a great virtue. European 

 critics of the American people have perhaps overlooked, or 

 at least underrated, this fact. If they were less active, less 

 ambitious, and less given to rustling, they might better suit 

 our phlegmatic British temperament; but how much would 

 they lose of their practical genius, their gift of generally having 

 the right man for the place, and the proper tool for their work? 



The lieutenant of the captain of industry is the boss. 

 The "boss" is an American institution. Both the term and 

 the thing are transatlantic. When the Americans boast of the 

 large amount of work got out of their workmen they do not 

 often explain how it is done. If they were to do so the boss 

 would figure considerably in the explanation. He is the man 

 who sees that everything is kept running at full speed. A 

 highly organized sj^stem of surveillance covers the whole field 

 of American industry. This may sound incompatible with 

 popular notions of the land of freedom, but it is the fact. 

 And when understood it will be found in the main quite 

 justifiable. In judging a matter of this sort we have to re- 

 member the immense diversity of American labor, — the fact 

 that it has many grades, is of many nationalities, and speaks 

 many tongues. Though highly skilled at the top, the mass 

 of unskilled labor below is enormous. Much of it is not merely 

 unskilled, but ignorant and half civilized. It has to be taught 

 as well as superintended. A sharp eye has to be kept on it 

 all the time, and that is the function of the boss, who occurs 

 in a great variety of forms and characters. 



In American labor the boss is ubiquitous. He corre- 

 sponds to the ganger of a squad of navvies; to the foreman 

 in an engineering shop ; to the head of a department in a city 

 warehouse ; to the shop walker in Oxford street or Holborn ; to 

 the manager of a factory; to the superintendent of a railway 



