Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/441

Rh result being to make the government of the internal affairs of a business resemble the work of governing states. It enlarged the market also by means of improved means of transportation and communication, and not only brought the entire earth into the field of commercial vision, but threw the new giants of production into such a keen and relentless competition that the utmost precision of knowledge, genius for administration and mental and physical staying-power has been sought after for leadership.

With these changes in progress and partly completed, industry has at once shown an irresistible tendency to come under the sway of science. A new concern of large size now starts with a charter and a plan of internal organization, the work of professional organizers and as carefully drawn as the constitution of a state might be. Eventually the mill architect lays out the plant. The head chemist and consulting engineer take charge of the operative departments; the conditioning laboratory checks off the results of the buyer's work; the credit man rules the selling agencies and compiles his data as systematically as the much-abused charity organization society; and the advertising manager works with a like systematic use of records. Risks are transferred, whenever possible, to insurance companies which study them with all the methods known to statistics. Legal liabilities are attended to by a special corporation attorney. All the records of the activities of the concern are compiled under the direction of the accountant and are periodically examined and certified to by a professional auditor. At every point the business has touched upon a science or a possible science.

This new régime, while it has given to industry such a character of intricacy, has given to its laws such precision, to its processes such rapidity and continuity, and to its leaders such a scope for power that men of systematically trained perceptive faculties and reasoning powers are required for it.

These methods also have already brought into view such a body of systematized experience that it is possible to begin the formulation of the principles of wealth production. And this will provide a subject-matter which can be studied apart from practice, according to the methods of an educational institution, and which will be of practical value because it has grown out of practice and governs it.

In an important sense the advance made by higher commercial education will condition the advance made by the other branches of education preparatory to industry, since the men in the responsible positions in our industry must needs have scientific and commercial training to appreciate its value in the men they employ.

The second reason for higher commercial education lies in the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult for young men to acquire a knowledge of the principles underlying business through engaging in the activities of business. This is true if it is true that industry is