Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/265

Rh and busy contented women. Into the enjoyment of the fruits of their labors we have all of us entered.

The second industrial movement of the period we are considering centered upon the task of providing an adequate mechanical equipment. Its purpose was to develop inanimate sources of power, by means of which the burden of physical toil could be, to some extent, lifted from human shoulders.

Accordingly, the second act transfers the scene of industry from the field to the factory. The first billet of Bessemer steel was produced in America in a little furnace at Wyandotte, near Detroit, in 1864. The first band-saw was brought from Paris to New York in 1869. The first middlings purifier was built in Minneapolis in 1870. The twine-binder was invented in 1874. In the wonderful Centennial year of 1876, there was given to the country the telephone, the incandescent light, the typewriter and the first steel-frame building. Since those years, the American farmer has come into the possession of a well-nigh perfect equipment of agricultural implements. Our factories have been filled with machinery, our offices with appliances, and our stores with furnishings, until it is generally conceded that no people of the world excel the Americans in the use of mechanical facilities.

And now that these achievements are no longer in their origins, and the issues called up by them are recognized as virtually settled, and there is no longer any opposition to try men's souls in establishing and defending them, a third great industrial problem can be seen to emerge and become the center of interest. This is the question of administration. Upon this generation is laid the task of discovering, testing and establishing in general use those methods of organization and management by which the great productive agencies now within the possession of industry can be united, subjected to proper control, stimulated, guided, inspected, instructed and rewarded, to the end that they may serve society with efficiency. In short, the problem is that of originating and formulating a science of administration which shall comprise those basic principles and practical policies required for the guidance of great affairs.

This administrative phase of our industrial evolution has, of course, already a history of value, and this history is concerned with the doings of a very interesting generation of men. For years the United States, with its enormous domestic market, its ample capital, its freedom from tradition and its colossal daring, has been perhaps the most favorable