Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/309

Rh to a greater degree the factors that tend toward economy of production; in that it directs to greater advantage the efforts of a greater number of workers; in that it permits the attainment of profit upon their accumulations by those that contribute to its capital. As these stockholders may be of all ages and sexes, and oftentimes of residence remote from the scene of operation, those chosen to administer the capital, to conduct the operations, assume a trust of great responsibility. It is essential that control be centralized in their hands; for to the utmost rendering of this trust is necessary the most prudent administration of the capital, the exercise of the greatest discretion in the maintenance, repair, and renewal of the plant and appliances, the most efficient direction of the workers, and the most judicious distribution of the product. These results can not be obtained by scattered responsibility and scattered authority.

It is important to note that along with the development of more comprehensive organizations has been the development of the capacity to control such organizations, men of foresight and executive ability, shrewd and resourceful in the attainment and use of money, oftentimes gaining the control of extended operations over a considerable area that, in their absence, would have been conducted by simpler, separate, and scattered organizations. Not only the opportunity for increased revenue, but the ambition of such men to exercise the power incident to the control of extended organizations, is no small factor in their formation.

The great advance in the bending of physical forces to man's aid that began in the early half of this century has caused so many changes in the methods of production and distribution that it seems as though the industrial processes had undergone a radical transformation. But with the settling of the disturbed elements into definite shape it can be perceived that the seemingly newer forms are but the more compact and comprehensive expression of the old; that they are but successive steps in the series of that development which tends toward the betterment of material, economy of production, extension of distribution, and decrease of cost. The use of steam made possible the railways, in the building and operation of which is necessary the co-operation of large numbers of men working under centralized control, and, in connection with the multiplied uses of machinery, has brought the large factories and mills in which great numbers of men work under control likewise centralized. And the ease and rapidity of communication and transportation afforded by the railroad and telegraph have tended still more to concentrate particular industries in localities where conditions are most favorable to their prosecution. All these factors have allied in cheapening production, in serving a community, increasing both in extent and population.