Page:Hine (1912) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/19

 with me. Of course, you will have to work out your conclusions for yourself. Remember that I am too old at this teaching game to try always to think for other people. My job is so to state the propositions that you will reach the answers in your own way. Incidentally, the more you think you have discovered for yourself, the greater the credit due your teacher. Men are only boys grown tall. As grown-up children they seem to prefer the misfits of their own manufacture to the hand-me-down assortment from the shelves of stored experience. Too often the employing corporation pays the bill for educating an official for his duties after his promotion and appointment, for the cloth he wastes in selecting unwise patterns of procedure.

Most of our large corporations are still in a stage of industrial feudalism. In the middle ages the feudal baron and his methods were absolutely essential to preserve civilization for society. Without him and his forceful ways the relapse to barbarism would have been rapid. In the earlier periods of the large corporation the industrial baron and his ofttimes lawless audacity were essentials of corporate existence. As these great types die off, their