Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/442

438 becoming applied science, for science is systematized knowledge, and systematic knowledge is only to be gained by systematic study. The division of labor now customary in a business of any size is such that a broad experience and knowledge of the business can not be gained from service in a subordinate position. Either there must be unusually favorable promotion from department to department, coupled with outside study; a plan followed by some of our prominent families in educating their sons, or an appropriate course of study must be arranged in an educational institution, or else we must fall back upon the chance of finding a man of unusual genius. We have in considerable measure been trusting to the most uncertain plan of all, the discovery of the self-made man of genius. As a result we have a tendency to build industrial organizations to undue size, the endeavor being to get important interests under the control of the comparatively small number of men who can be implicitly depended on. Thus we vastly overpay for the exercise of a certain kind of talent and run the risk of many industrial evils with our top-heavy system.

The tendencies of the industrial system now dominant, as regards the production of managerial ability, are, however, in considerable degree, still unrevealed to us because of a generation of remarkable leaders which has not yet passed from the stage of action and which was evoked by the evolution that built up our present magnificent national industries. These men began in the day of small things when a few hundred dollars sufficed to set up a manufactory with costs of production as low as others and with high tariffs and transportation rates to protect a market from outsiders. They grew with the industrial system. As their businesses grew their opportunities and experience and power grew by natural and easy stages, and they emerged from a nicely adjusted and progressive evolution knowing their industries from top to bottom. These men show the knowledge of detail due to the day of small beginnings and the even hand in administration due to gradually imposed responsibilities. In the future we can not with any confidence look forward to a succeeding generation recruited in the same way, for the system has changed. Unless the evolution of industry which trained the leaders of to-day can be simulated within industrial establishments by a system of apprenticeship broader and more scientific than the old as the new industry is greater than the old, and leading up to the highest administrative duties, then preparation must be arranged outside them in the school and university.

It needs scarcely to be pointed out that business is carried on primarily for the sake of producing wealth and that the machinery and method devised for this purpose is only incidentally of value as a training school for the young. To equip an institution specifically for the purpose it is to serve, whether it be to produce locomotives or cotton cloth, is well enough understood in these days of specialization. So