Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/443

Rh to equip an institution as to rapidly and surely and economically develop the latent powers of the mind required in business and to impart knowledge of practical value is simply to set about doing an educational work in an equally direct and logical way.

The very precision of organization which makes it so difficult for the subordinate to gain the knowledge and experience necessary for leadership provides the mechanism which most perfectly responds to the entrepreneur and endows him with power never before equaled in industry. Never was the capable manager more in demand than now; never was the hunt for the right man more anxious than it is now. There is not a more important question that can arise within industry than this one of proper management. How shall society insure the perpetuation of adequate leadership? This question is peculiarly pressing for the United States, not so much because of immediate needs as because we are bounding forward rapidly in our industrial evolution, framing greater structures of trade than the world has ever seen before.

Our great country lying in one continuous area, undivided by physical barriers and capable of furnishing every variety of raw material; in the possession of a progressive race with like degree of enterprise and honesty in all sections and employing the same trade usages and laws, possesses a capacity which a like area divided into many small states, although in the possession of an equal population of different races, could not have. No matter how large the industrial unit ultimately required to secure all possible economies of production, here the various raw materials can be secured, here all the branches of the business may be carried on without crossing the boundaries of nations and encountering tariffs and racial and national rivalries. Here business can be transacted with the utmost facility because among people with one language, system of money and weights and measures, and working with the same spirit of alertness and ambition, under one system of laws and customs. The United States may well be the country destined to test to the uttermost the possibilities of organization in industry.

But we shall not be without rivals in the world's trade. Countries which can not match us in resources and population will turn inevitably to more scientific and systematic methods. Already the Germans are applying the same methods to the preparation for commercial war that brought them out from the anarchy into which they fell after their defeat by Napoleon and made them the foremost military nation in Europe. England also is awakening to the necessity of applying education to the preparation for business life. Lord Rosebery, in a speech delivered before the Wolverhampton Chamber of Commerce which has since become celebrated, said, after reviewing the dangers threatening British trade from German and American competition: "What is the remedy for this? What is poor old John Bull to do before he is suppressed and defeated by these newer competitors? If I might say