Page:The engineers and the price system (IA cu31924013939149).pdf/62



more than one respect the industrial system of today is notably different from anything that has gone before. It is eminently a system, self-balanced and comprehensive; and it is a system of interlocking mechanical processes, rather than of skilful manipulation, It is mechanical rather than manual. It is an organization of mechanical powers and material resources, rather than of skilled craftsmen and tools; although the skilled workmen and tools are also an indispensable part of its comprehensive mechanism. It is of an impersonal] nature, after the fashion of the material sciences, on which it constantly draws. It runs to “quantity production” of specialized and standardized goods and services. For all these reasons it lends itself to systematic control under the direction of industrial experts, skilled technologists, who may be called “production engineers,” for want of a better term.

This industrial system runs on as an inclusive organization of many and diverse interlocking me-