Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/271

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Great leaders come in response to great issues. When the school can present to its students a stimulating view of life, a superior raw material is attracted to it as by a lodestone. In the struggles of life men are inspired to great exertions when new ideals become vivid to them. War produces capable generals, intellectual conflict breeds a generation of acute thinkers, prophets arise to preach new gospels. It matters little what difficulties there are. "Truth," says Nietzsche, "does not find fewest champions when it is dangerous to speak it, but when it is dull." Industry insists upon efficiency, but efficiency may be chiefly insured by discovering great inspiring tasks.

The old ambition to build up big business units, and to accumulate great fortunes, is now no longer quite as fresh and full of zest as it once was. It does not get the response, and call out the best men, as in the old dramatic buccaneering days. To simply repeat what the last generation did in the way of piling up fortunes, and to do it on the same intellectual and ethical and esthetic plane, but without the novelty of being the first to do it, nor the freedom of action of the day of laissez faire, is not to set forth a very exciting aim. In the sphere of the intellect there is nothing especially notable about doing it. The hungry intelligence of industry is asking for great new objectives worthy of effort, like the opening of the continent or the building of the railroads. A new and larger conception of the function of industrial leadership is called for. The great resources of the country subdued by the pioneers, and the elaborate equipment provided by the engineers, combine to set the stage for a high statesmanship and for a fine diplomacy to begin to play their role in industry. Since it inherits ample physical equipment, the new generation can be less material in its aim, and give itself to providing an intellectual equipment. As we live in a more advanced stage of society, the thought of the administrator should be less of equipment than of policies governing operations, less of operations than of ultimate ends, less of his own part in those ends than of the harmony of the ends themselves with the aspirations and constructive tendencies of society. The result of this can be nothing less, ultimately, than a body of broad, permanent, and socially beneficent principles of action, to which superior minds, forming an aristocracy in industrial affairs, will swear allegiance.

The administrator who is willing to take part in this movement will find himself upon an intellectual frontier, with the opportunity opened before him, as before his forefathers, to become a pioneer. It is not now a frontier of axe and plow, nor of engines and machinery, but of principles and policies. The administrative problems awaiting solution are almost innumerable. The executive who carries the scientific spirit into his work will find an opportunity to make more clear the