Preface 



the trained mind. They are forced to do so. If 

 transactions are much greater than used to be the 

 case, the margin of profit is much smaller. Slight 

 errors give rise to colossal shortages where the 

 volume of business is measured by millions instead 

 of the thousands of our forefathers. We are learn- 

 ing the necessity of clear thinking at the start. The 

 modern cost sheet in industrial enterprise, the 

 chemical knowledge which is essential if waste 

 products are to be recovered and utilised, the 

 separation of command and organisation in war 

 from supply and administrative details, and the re- 

 sulting establishment of the general staff all these 

 are but illustrations of the great lesson of the new 

 era on which we are entering. We are learning that 

 nothing can be accomplished on a large scale with- 

 out the indispensable preliminary of first taking 

 thought. And we are learning that the taking of 

 thought requires at every turn, not only the expert, 

 but the highest type of expert knowledge. Every- 

 where there is manifest a disposition to pay for brain 

 power, if only brain power of sufficient quality is 

 to be bought. The joint-stock company system 

 has relegated the private capitalist, who is a mere 

 owner of capital, to a comparatively feeble position. 

 On the brain worker the iron law of wages does 

 not press, because it turns out to be no true law. 

 The market value of exceptional talent is steadily 

 rising, because there is monopoly of the capital 

 which that talent requires as its instrument. Never 

 before in the history of the world was such a career 

 open to that talent. And so we see a new estimate 



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