Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/266

262 spot in the world for trying out new ideas of organization and management.

The men who first took advantage of these conditions were, for the most part, self-made men. We often refer to them as captains of industry. The majority of them were individuals of motor temperament, endowed with exceptional talents, who fought their way upward and gained eminence, through a rough-and-ready struggle for the survival of the fittest.

These men seized leadership by right of ability, but, technically speaking, they secured it as the perquisite or privilege arising from the ownership of great fortunes. They lived in a day when men generally managed their own capital. In most cases they were the first to build up institutions of great size in the lines of industry with which they were connected. These circumstances involve the point that had not these men built up fortunes they could not, individually, have become administrators. The price of their economic power was to make everything bend to the getting of money. In other words, they had to create the kingdoms over which they later ruled.

Their policies were, therefore, like those of most conquerors, simple, often crude and sometimes morally abominable. They were often drive-masters, and not infrequently they resorted to the intellectually contemptible methods of unfair trade. Yet we do not withhold admiration for the splendid independence and energy which they exhibited. They generally possessed a thorough knowledge of details, due to the small beginnings from which they had started. They had the ease and speed of decision due to long experience and gradually imposed responsibility. The names of the leaders of this generation of giants will long remain household words in America.

If we pause to consider broadly this introductory period of administration, we can see that it was marked by strenuous rather than finely calculated action, and by physical rather than intellectual tests. Most important of all, it was characterized by a confusion or conflict between the principles of the true art of administration and the requirements of the process of amassing a fortune. We are so accustomed to measure mastership in industry by the increase of the wealth of the individual, that it is difficult to perceive that there can be any such thing as an independent art, with principles and ideals of its own. If we turn to politics we are able to see that a man's record for efficiency as a mayor of a city does not depend upon his getting rich in office. Neither do we measure the skill of our military leaders by their strategy in gathering private booty, nor the capacity of our statesmen by their ability to insure tranquillity and prosperity to themselves, rather than their country. In all of these cases we have the conception of the requirements of an art or polity. The standards of judgment are entirely distinct from the state of the private fortune of the administrator. It is this