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WORKS MANAGEMENT LIBRARY 
 
 BUSINESS 
 ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ITS MODELS IN WAR, STATECRAFT, 
 AND SCIENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDW. D. JONES 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE ENGINEERING MAGAZINE CO. 
 
 1914 
 
r' 
 
 
 Copyright, 1913 
 By The Engineering Magazine Co. 
 
 Copyright, 1914 
 By The Engineering Magazine Co. 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little A Ives Co. 
 
 New York 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Confident that administration of manufacturing 
 and operating companies under modern conditions is 
 developing into a new profession, Professor Jones 
 has sought its scientific principles by a remarkable 
 study of the older professions with which it is most 
 closely allied. His argument is, briefly: 
 
 First — That success in dealing with men and 
 affairs depends upon certain basic propositions and 
 laws which can be discovered by studying the work 
 of successful administrators; 
 
 Second — That the rules and methods followed by 
 masters of business and finance are usually deliber- 
 ately hidden, and there are no records throwing 
 clear, full light on their lives and acts; 
 
 Third — That leaders in statecraft, war, and science, 
 on the contrary, are figures of world interest whose 
 careers and practice are illuminated fully and search- 
 ingly by public and private records, correspondence, 
 personal reminiscences, and even petty gossip. From 
 such data Professor Jones has analyzed definite pri- 
 mary principles of administration. In history and 
 the biographies of military conquerors, diplomats, 
 and scientists, he finds the elementary rules of 
 success. 
 
 Close systematic study of scientific management 
 has expended its first force on machines and proc- 
 esses. For its larger successes administration must 
 work as great generals and statesmen have worked 
 iii 
 
IV INTRODUCTION 
 
 — with the human factor. It must work as great 
 scientists have worked — with universal laws. Pro- 
 fessor Jones advances no narrow specialized system, 
 but searches the best thought of the world to bring 
 its choicest fruit to the service of thinking workers 
 in modern industry. 
 
 This attitude toward and this treatment of the 
 subject indeed raise administration to the high plane 
 of the professions among which Professor Jones con- 
 tends it must be classed. And beyond this, the book 
 now completed (the outgrowth of a much shorter 
 study originally published serially in the pages of 
 The Engineering Magazine) proves that industrial 
 philosophy and practical doctrine may be set forth 
 in English so luminous, by logic so triumphant, and 
 with inspiration so uplifting, that they win the right 
 to a place in pure literature and show that letters 
 may be made a co-worker with science to the lasting 
 advantage of mankind. 
 
 Charles Buxton Going. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I. The Rise of a New Profession p Aaa 
 
 An introductory explanation showing the facts 
 and relations that rank business administration 
 with the higher civil and military professions of 
 the historic period. 1 
 
 THE ADMINISTRATOR AS GENERAL 
 Chapter II. The Utility of the Study of History 
 
 Organization older than history — Evolution of 
 administration traced through the family, the 
 clan and the state — The wealth of accumulated 
 experience — Possibilities of drawing on this store 
 by analytical study — The methods which such 
 study must follow — Dearth of direct records of 
 business administration — Abundance of material 
 in military and political fields — Relationship be- 
 tween military and commercial leadership — How 
 the methods of a conqueror may by analogy fur- 
 nish a model for the business executive. 27 
 
 Chapter III. Military History 
 
 The great periods of militarism and their 
 ideals — Roman remains — The Byzantine Empire 
 — The Middle Ages — Frederick the Great — Na- 
 poleon — Modern conditions. 43 
 
 Chapter IV. Administrative Principles 
 
 An enumeration of the qualities discovered in 
 the foregoing studies — Decision — Initiative — Pre- 
 liminary planning — Subordination of detail — Dis- 
 cipline — Concentration to secure success. 61 
 
VI CONTENTS 
 
 THE ADMINISTRATOR AS SCIENTIST PAOB 
 
 Chapter V. The Pioneers of Science 
 
 Administration as thinking — The problem of 
 origins — The science of Greece — The Alexandrine 
 Era — The Renaissance — The pioneers of science 
 — Requisites of creative thinking. 77 
 
 Chapter VI. System-Makers of Science 
 
 How one science contributes to all others — 
 Leaders in scientific theory — Exploded theories 
 — Theories in practical affairs. 103 
 
 Chapter VII. The Application of Science 
 
 The union of pure and applied science — Diffi- 
 culties of applied science — Theory versus prac- 
 tice — Science as a phase of vital living. 119 
 
 Chapter VIII. The Principles of Mental Effi- 
 ciency 
 
 Economy of means — The wide range of the 
 practical — Follow the lead of the subject-mat- 
 ter — Open-in indedness — Explanations of fallacies 
 reveal new laws — Thoroughness — Methods more 
 valuable than results. 131 
 
 Chapter IX. The Principles of Mental Effi- 
 ciency (Continued) 
 
 The fertility of a new point of view — Unity 
 of principles in variety of form — Co-operation — 
 Persistent thinking as the universal solvent — 
 Intellectual courage. 157 
 
 THE ADMINISTRATOR AS DIPLOMAT 
 
 Chapter X. History of the Gentleman Adminis- 
 trator 
 
 Administration and human nature — History of 
 ideal types — The pagan hero — Pagan and Chris- 
 tian elements of chivalry — Results of chivalry — 
 The courtier — The gentleman — Present need of 
 leadership — The captain of industry. 179 
 
CONTENTS Vll 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Chapter XI. The Methods of the Gentleman 
 Administrator 
 
 The study of human nature — Elements of effi- 
 ciency — Due form — Courtesy — Compromise — Just 
 proportion. 213 
 
 Chapter XII. The Ideals of the Gentleman Ad- 
 ministrator 
 
 The evils of separating one department of life 
 from another — Industry and order — An adminis- 
 trative creed — Conclusion. 237 
 
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 A NEW PROFESSION 
 
 Chapter I 
 
 THE RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 
 
 TF we consider the industrial history of the 
 •*■ United States, for the span of a long gen- 
 eration, dating backwards from this year of 
 grace to about 1840, we can distinguish at 
 least three great movements which have occu- 
 pied the minds of men in industry. 
 
 THE AGE OF THE PIONEER 
 
 The first period was still engaged in the 
 process of settling the country, as previous 
 decades had been. In section after section of 
 the newly-open West there was required that 
 basic equipment which is the foundation of 
 modern civilized life. 
 
 In 1840 Boston was not yet connected with 
 Albany by rail, nor Albany with Buffalo. 
 1 
 
&••«'• BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 The grain elevator had not yet been devised ; 
 and coke ovens did not yet exist in the Con- 
 nellsville region. The first steamboat had 
 just been seen at the Soo ; and in Iowa they 
 were plowing a furrow from the Mississippi 
 river westward for one hundred miles, to 
 guide the settlers. A few pioneers were be- 
 ginning to pass over the Oregon trail; and 
 Fremont was describing Utah in the papers. 
 It was not until 1845 that copper was pro- 
 duced in Upper Michigan. It was only in 
 1852 that Chicago was connected with the 
 East by railway. The locomotive did not 
 reach the Missouri river until 1859, nor the 
 Pacific coast until ten years later. 
 
 The mention of the pioneers calls for a 
 word of tribute. Our nation's first industrial 
 task was the stupendous one of clearing the 
 farms, and of building the common roads, 
 and of establishing villages and cities, and of 
 opening outlets for the marketing of surplus 
 products. Perhaps, indeed, the history of the 
 pioneer is but "the short and simple annals 
 of the poor/' Carlyle dismissed America 
 with the contemptuous summary, "Hitherto 
 She but plows and hammers.' ' To the set- 
 tlers, plowing and hammering was the first 
 necessity. But to the civilization of the en- 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 3 
 
 tire world the prompt and thorough occupa- 
 tion of the fairest portion of the American 
 continent by a superior race, with European 
 culture, was an achievement of the first im- 
 portance. Nor was this work of the settler 
 like the hopeless toil of the English agricul- 
 tural laborer, or the cramped grind of the 
 manufacturing towns of Scotland, with which 
 Carlyle was familiar. The pioneers partook 
 somewhat of the nature of the explorers. 
 Their advance westward had much of the 
 stirring quality of a military reconnaissance 
 directed against the hostile forces of Nature 
 entrenched in the wilderness. The victory 
 was not to mere parsimony and patience, and 
 the weaker economic virtues, but to industry 
 animated with boldness, planning touched 
 with imagination, and sacrifice sustained by 
 a vision of a new State and a fairer civiliza- 
 tion. The pioneers were rugged self-reliant 
 men and busy contented women. Into the en- 
 joyment of the fruits of their labors we have 
 all of us entered. 
 
 THE AGE OF MECHANISM 
 
 The second industrial movement, of the pe- 
 riod we are considering, centered upon the 
 task of providing an adequate mechanical 
 
4 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 equipment. Its characteristic achievement 
 was to develop inanimate sources of power, 
 and apply them in a thousand new ways to 
 lift the burden of physical toil from human 
 shoulders. 
 
 Accordingly, the second act transfers the 
 scene of chief significance 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, essential to the modern milling proc- 
 ess, 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 in- 
 candescent light, the typewriter, and the first 
 steel-frame building. In the middle years of 
 the seventies the hermetical sealing and the 
 refrigeration of fruits and meats was 
 achieved, so that a great additional range 
 was possible for the dietary of the nation. 
 
 Since those years, the American farmer 
 has come into the possession of a well-nigh 
 perfect equipment of agricultural imple- 
 ments. Our factories have been filled with 
 machinery, our offices with appliances, and 
 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 5 
 
 our stores with furnishings, until it is gener- 
 ally conceded that no people of the world ex- 
 cel the Americans in the use of mechanical 
 facilities. 
 
 THE AGE OF ADMINISTRATION 
 
 And now that these achievements are no 
 longer in their origins, and that the issues 
 called up by them are recognized as virtually 
 settled, and as there is no longer any threat- 
 ening opposition to try men's souls in the 
 process of 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 business administra- 
 tion. 
 
 Upon this generation is laid the task of 
 discovering, testing, and establishing in gen- 
 eral use, those methods of organization and 
 management by which the great productive 
 agencies now within the possession of indus- 
 try can be united, subjected to proper con- 
 trol, stimulated, guided, inspected, instructed, 
 and rewarded, to the end that they may serve 
 society with efficiency. In short, the domi- 
 nant problem now is one of originating and 
 formulating a science of administration, 
 which shall comprise those basic principles 
 
6 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 and practical policies required for the guid- 
 ance of great affairs. 
 
 SELF-MADE MEN 
 
 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 
 spot in the world for trying out new ideas of 
 organization and management. 
 
 The executives who first took advantage of 
 these conditions were, for the most part, self- 
 made men. We often refer to the more noted 
 of them as Captains of Industry. The ma- 
 jority were individuals of pronounced motor 
 temperament, and endowed with exceptional 
 talents; men capable of fighting their way 
 upward and of gaining the advantage in a 
 rough-and-ready struggle for the survival of 
 the fittest. 
 
 These men seized leadership by right of 
 ability but, technically speaking, they se- 
 cured it as the perquisite or privilege arising 
 from the ownership of great fortunes. They 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 7 
 
 lived in a day when men generally managed 
 their own capital. In many cases they were 
 the first to build np institutions of great size 
 in the lines of industry with which they were 
 connected. These circumstances involve the 
 point that, had not these men accumulated 
 private fortunes, they could not, individually, 
 have become conspicuous as administrators. 
 The price of their economic power was to 
 make their activities bend to the getting of 
 money. In other words, they had to create 
 the kingdoms over which they later ruled. 
 
 Their policies were like those of most con- 
 querors; direct, simple, and intensely per- 
 sonal. Living in a highly individualistic and 
 self-confident society, they worked out rules 
 of action, each man for himself. As the at- 
 tention of a new community naturally centers 
 strongly upon the process of growth, many of 
 them were builders rather than administra- 
 tors; more comfortable with tests of excel- 
 lence which were physical rather than intel- 
 lectual, private rather than social. As their 
 communities had broken sharply with Euro- 
 pean traditions, and had as yet little appli- 
 cable history of their own, they entertained 
 a poor opinion of lessons drawn from the 
 past. As they were devoted to little else than 
 
8 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 industry, they saw few analogies between the 
 administration of business affairs and the 
 administration of other forms of social ac- 
 tion. 
 
 Being so much in a world of their own 
 creation, they looked upon the administration 
 of industrial enterprises purely as a process 
 of each man minding his own business. Their 
 organizations were, therefore, mere exten- 
 sions of themselves, usually bearing their 
 names, and ruled as -their households might 
 be. Enterprises so conceived were incapable 
 of serving as a rallying point for the loyalty 
 of the various classes of persons who might 
 become connected with them. The owner 
 alone was fully energized. He carried stag- 
 gering loads of responsibility, driving affairs 
 forward by individual energy rather than by 
 the true administrative process of evoking 
 and guiding the energies of others. 
 
 Whatever reservations have to be made in 
 praise, the courage and independence of these 
 men must be recognized as splendid. They 
 possessed a thorough mastery of details, as a 
 result of the small beginnings from which 
 they started. They had the ease and speed 
 of decision due to technical mastery, and 
 early imposed responsibility. They were 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 9 
 
 preserved from errors of theory by a whole- 
 some and intimate sense of reality. The 
 names of the leaders of this generation of 
 giants will long remain household words in 
 America. 
 
 The era of the Captains of Industry has 
 been thus far marked by the lack of a suffi- 
 ciently clear distinction between the necessi- 
 ties of the process of amassing a fortune, 
 and the requirements of the principles of the 
 true art of administration. We are so ac- 
 customed to measure mastership in industry 
 by the tangible property which happens to 
 remain in the hands of the executive, that it 
 is difficult to perceive that there can be any 
 such thing as an impersonal social standard, 
 set by the intelligence of the age, and taking 
 into account all the social costs and utilities 
 associated with a man's actions. 
 
 If we turn to politics, we can see clearly 
 enough that a man's record for efficiency, as 
 the mayor of a city, does not depend upon 
 his getting rich in office. Neither do we mea- 
 sure the skill of our military leaders by their 
 strategy in gathering private booty, nor the 
 capacity of our statesmen by the architecture 
 of their private fortunes. In these cases we 
 recognize the existence of an art or polity, 
 
10 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 and we are able to judge the quality of the 
 action itself, regardless of the personal re- 
 ward which may have been received by the 
 individual for his action. 
 
 This method of judging is now being intro- 
 duced into industry, and it is bringing into 
 view a new world of possible efficiencies. 
 That we have not more generally used such 
 a test, hitherto, is one of the reasons why 
 broad and intellectually respectable princi- 
 ples have been so slow in gaining control of 
 industrial action; and why it has been so 
 difficult to detect the really capable adminis- 
 trators among the crowd of men who are 
 merely, and perhaps even accidentally, rich. 
 
 NEW CONDITIONS 
 
 Since the ranks of the first generation of 
 administrators have begun to be seriously 
 thinned by death, a notable change has been 
 taking place in the character of our industrial 
 leadership, and in the conditions under which 
 it is exercised. The growth of business into 
 units embracing, under a single administra- 
 tion, hundreds and even thousands of stock- 
 holders and employees, and uniting many 
 minds in operations which require long peri- 
 ods of time for their completion, call for 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 11 
 
 searching tests of performance, and exact 
 and just methods of apportioning rewards, 
 so that the wills of many persons can be 
 brought into energetic concurrence. 
 
 The use of the corporate form of organi- 
 zation, by which the business unit is made 
 the dependent creature of the State, coupled 
 with the increasing sensitiveness of public 
 opinion to the probity of the financing plans, 
 and the humanity of the operative policies 
 employed, unite to require a more skilful 
 diplomacy, and methods which will bear pub- 
 lic inspection. 
 
 These changes are transforming the busi- 
 ness administrator from a mere owner of 
 private property into a responsible agent, ex- 
 ercising delegated authority. They increase 
 the element of trust or responsibility or serv- 
 ice, for the measurement and valuation of 
 which a new outfit of standards is urgently 
 needed. 
 
 ADMINISTRATIVE HELPS 
 
 There are various helps destined to play 
 an increasing role as the handmaids of the 
 new administration. In the first place, the 
 physical sciences are being applied in indus- 
 trial operations in a new way. Formerly 
 
12 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 thought of as the source of mechanism for 
 supplementing or relieving the operative, 
 they are now the source of agencies for sup- 
 plementing and relieving the executive as 
 well. They assist in the testing of materials, 
 the refining of productive processes, the pres- 
 ervation of the operatives ' health, the sharp- 
 ening of technical standards, the separate 
 measurement of the essential elements of 
 performance, and the provision of new forces 
 and instrumentalities generally. 
 
 A second class of aids includes greatly im- 
 proved systems of accounting and cost ac- 
 counting, and a rapidly developing theory of 
 valuation, which concerns itself with the more 
 subtle and immaterial forms of property. 
 These are the administrator's chief instru- 
 ments of precision, where problems of value 
 rather than problems of physical processes 
 or of human nature are concerned. 
 
 A third aid is the swiftly forming science 
 of psychology which now enters, supplement- 
 ing experience, dissolving the ancient antag- 
 onism between humanity and efficiency, and 
 making it possible for industry to respond 
 intelligently, and even profitably, to the de- 
 mands of a more enlightened public con- 
 science. 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 13 
 
 A fourth aid is what is commonly called 
 "system": a somewhat indefinite mass of 
 rules of procedure, together with appropriate 
 equipments, relating particularly to office 
 work, and representing the accumulated ex- 
 perience of innumerable official minds. 
 
 The first tentative synthesis of these vari- 
 ous hilfeswissenschaften into a code of rules 
 for the business executive is involved in the 
 movement known as "scientific manage- 
 ment. ' ' This manifestation of a new order of 
 accurate and systematic thinking in industry, 
 so significant of the times, took its rise as a 
 philosophy of the shop, but has culminated 
 in the enunciation of a group of principles 
 constituting an encouraging earnest of a 
 forthcoming more fully developed science of 
 administration. 
 
 THE PROFESSIONAL ADMINISTRATOR 
 
 The large individual enterprises now re- 
 quired to meet society's need must work with 
 the money of hundreds and even thousands of 
 investors, so that individual or family dom 
 ination, resting upon ownership, must decline 
 as a system. Between the multitude of stock- 
 and bond-holders constituting the proprie- 
 tors, on the one side, and the still greater 
 
14 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 multitude of employees, on the other, there is 
 being created a central strategic position to 
 be occupied by the professional adminis- 
 trator. 
 
 The occupant of this position will be the 
 central pivot upon which a vast number of 
 human relationships will turn. Upon these 
 men will rest a sort of trusteeship to pre- 
 serve the property intrusted to them, and a 
 demand of leadership to guide and guard 
 their employees. Upon them will also rest a 
 general responsibility to the public to help 
 this day to live its life, and this generation to 
 make its contribution to progress. The whole 
 situation conspires to create an opportunity 
 for a new race of executives, which shall 
 justly appreciate the various classes of re- 
 sponsibility resting upon it. 
 
 Wanted, therefore, a body of leaders for 
 industry, who shall unite with native talent, 
 trained and liberal minds: men who believe 
 that the sea of affairs can be charted, and 
 can be sailed by the aid of permanent worthy 
 principles and a fine exact technique of dip- 
 lomatic and humane methods, and who shall 
 be as zealous for the ennoblement of their 
 art as they are active for their own advance- 
 ment. 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 15 
 
 TRANSITIONAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 The new order always evolves out of the 
 old with pain and misunderstanding. The 
 new is long looked upon from the inadequate 
 viewpoint of the old. The exigencies of the 
 new situation are always upon us before the 
 teachings of the old have been sufficiently de- 
 liberated upon to yield a reliable philosophy 
 of action. 
 
 It is not surprising that this generation 
 should be embarrassed, in the task of finding 
 new maxims and ideals appropriate to its new 
 conditions, while it is yet blinded by the bril- 
 liant achievements of the age of the Captains 
 of Industry. The shadow of the great foun- 
 der still falls upon the present-day executive 
 in many forms. In one case it is a collection 
 of conceptions and tests, once considered ade- 
 quate, and a tradition of methods exalted by 
 the prestige of many successes. In another, 
 it is an incompetent heir, invested with an es- 
 tate, and the glamor of a prominent name, 
 and set, as an amateur, to rule over experts. 
 Again, the shadow of the departing order 
 takes the form of a vast enterprise which 
 was, perhaps, originally builded with enthu- 
 siasm and many hopes to great size and 
 power, but which is now a hollow shell con- 
 
16 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 taining many a sheltered nook within, where 
 weak men may vegetate as clerks, perpetually 
 shirking responsibility by referring matters 
 from one to another in an endless round of 
 red tape, or where strong men are lulled by 
 a sense of security to relax effort and trust 
 to the defense of "the impulse of an early 
 start," or to "interlocking directorates," or 
 "banking control," or "dominating influ- 
 ence in the trade, ' ' or the repulsive tactics of 
 "predatory competition," or to anything else 
 than service. 
 
 Perhaps the chief hindrance to the develop- 
 ment of administration in American industry, 
 in the next few years, will prove to be what 
 we may call the danger of the intrenched po- 
 sition. The significance of this danger was 
 long ago pointed out by Machiavelli, who 
 warned his ideal prince of the harm wrought 
 by strong fortresses. His words, written 
 about 1513, still represent human nature, and 
 are full of significance. He said, 
 
 Whenever either princes or republics are afraid lest 
 their subjects should revolt, it results mainly from the 
 hatred of the subjects on account of the bad treatment 
 experienced from those who govern them; and this comes 
 either from the belief that they can best be controlled by 
 force, or from lack of sound judgment in governing them. 
 And one of the things that induce the belief that they 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 
 
 lfV 
 
 can be controlled by force is the possession of fortresses 
 with which to menace them; and thus the ill treatment 
 that engenders hatred in the subjects arises in great 
 measure from the fact that the prince or republic hold the 
 fortresses which (if this be true) are therefore by far 
 more injurious than useful. For, in the first instance, they 
 cause you to be more violent and audacious towards your 
 subjects; and next, they do not afford the security which 
 you imagine. 
 
 And further he says : 
 
 A good and wise prince, desirous of maintaining that 
 character, and to avoid giving the opportunity to his sons 
 to become oppressive, will never build fortresses, so that 
 they may place their reliance upon the good will of their 
 subjects, and not upon the strength of citadels." 
 
 \/ THE FUTURE SUPPLY 
 
 In this day of large and permanent under- 
 takings industry cannot afford the risk of 
 administrators who, being ignorant of princi- 
 ples, must govern by extempore decrees. Nor 
 can it endure to educate those who will be- 
 come wise only through the experience of 
 disasters. Society is no longer satisfied to 
 prepare its physicians and lawyers and engi- 
 neers by an unregulated process of learning 
 through experience. If administration is an 
 intellectual pursuit, it is not sufficient to trust 
 to such processes for administrators. 
 
 Furthermore, business experiences now 
 
18 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 less than formerly offer themselves as an 
 educational ladder, apt for the upward climb- 
 ing of the growing mind. It is only in the 
 world of small independent businesses that 
 responsibility increases gradually and pari 
 passu with ability. The typical captain of 
 industry, of the recent past, advanced step by 
 step. As his powers of mind and experience 
 grew, his business increased. His responsi- 
 bilities were enlarged by almost impercepti- 
 ble increments. In the end he emerged, as a 
 scholar might finish in a carefully graded 
 school, having passed through a finely gradu- 
 ated scale of functions, extending from the 
 simplest to the most difficult things. Busi- 
 ness experience less and less offers this en- 
 couraging educational aspect of a series of 
 functions in which each performance pre- 
 pares for the next. Superior minds are as 
 much wanted as ever, but they are wanted al- 
 ready grounded in those general principles 
 which the last generation of leaders distilled 
 only from a prolonged experience. Young 
 men must now expect to enter some depart- 
 ment of an organization which is already 
 large, and expect to remain for long periods 
 engaged in highly specialized functions. Such 
 upward advances as they make are likely to 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 19 
 
 be by sudden leaps to new responsibilities, 
 which test their latent talents to the utmost. 
 Conditions of this order can best be mastered 
 by those who first of all, by systematic pre- 
 liminary study, attain a firm grasp upon 
 basic administrative policies, and who then 
 use practical experience to instruct them in 
 the niceties of particular applications. 
 
 The late Mr. Dill once said that he could 
 secure a million dollars ten times while he 
 was finding a man with the capacity to ad- 
 minister the affairs representing a million 
 dollars at work. One of the reasons which 
 has been assigned for the excessive concen- 
 tration of administrative control in Ameri- 
 can business is the small number of reliable 
 executives. And this is also, doubtless, one 
 of the reasons why we overload good men, 
 and wear them out so rapidly. This dearth 
 of administrators is not a dearth of bold and 
 energetic men, but of men who are firmly 
 grounded in general principles. 
 
 What natural processes fail to supply us 
 must be produced by specific agencies, that is 
 to say, by educational agencies. But to make 
 education effective, knowledge must be re- 
 duced from empirical to systematic form, by 
 establishing, in the world of the intellect, 
 
20 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 those principles and policies which are to be 
 mastered, so that training may form the mind 
 of the executive more certainly, more rapidly, 
 and more thoroughly than unregulated expe- 
 rience can do. 
 
 NEW CONCEPTIONS 
 
 Genius in leadership, as contrasted with 
 talent, comes not in response to comfortable 
 helps, nor reliable educational agencies, but 
 is awakened in unexpected places by great 
 issues. It comes, as if in response to a call, 
 whenever new ideals take strong hold upon 
 men. War produces capable generals. Intel- 
 lectual conflict breeds seers and philosophers. 
 Prophets arise to preach new gospels. It 
 matters little that there are difficulties. 
 1 ' Truth, ' ' says Nietzsche, ' ' does not find few- 
 est champions when it is dangerous to speak 
 it, but when it is dull. ' p Industry insists upon 
 efficiency, but efficiency may often be best in- 
 sured indirectly, by setting forth that in in- 
 dustry which is inspiring, and which will 
 most thoroughly awaken mind and heart. 
 
 The old ambition to build up big business 
 units, and to accumulate great fortunes, is 
 now no longer so fresh and full of zest as it 
 once was. It does not get the response, and 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 21 
 
 call out the best men, as in the old dramatic, 
 careless, buccaneering days. To simply re- 
 peat what the last generation did in the way 
 of piling up fortunes, and to do it on the 
 same intellectual and aesthetic and ethical 
 plane, but without the novelty of being the 
 first to do it, nor the excuse that first comes 
 bread and then the higher things of life, and 
 without even the freedom of action and the 
 general applause of the days of laissez faire, 
 is not to set forth a very moving aim. The 
 hungry intelligence of industry is asking for 
 great new objectives worthy of great efforts. 
 It asks for tasks as noble for us now as the 
 opening of the continent, or the building of 
 the railroads were for a past generation. A 
 new and larger conception of the function of 
 industrial leadership is called for. 
 
 The great resources of the country, sub- 
 dued by the pioneers, and the elaborate equip- 
 ment 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 so much 
 physical equipment, the new generation can 
 be less material in its aim, and give itself 
 more largely to providing an intellectual 
 equipment. As we live in a more advanced 
 
22 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 stage of society, the thought of the adminis- 
 trator may be less of equipment than of poli- 
 cies 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 constructive tenden- 
 cies and aspirations of society. What is 
 wanted for immediate guidance is a body of 
 broad, permanent, and socially beneficent 
 principles of industrial action, to which supe- 
 rior minds, forming an aristocracy in indus- 
 trial affairs, may swear allegiance, and which 
 they may carry forth, as on a crusade, to es- 
 tablish as realities in the world. 
 
 The administrator who is willing to take 
 part in this movement will find himself, as 
 were his ancestors, upon a frontier, with the 
 opportunity opening before him, as it did 
 before them, to become a pioneer. The fron- 
 tier will not now be one of axe and plow, nor 
 of engines and machinery, but of principles 
 and policies, and ultimate aims, and final 
 tests. 
 
 The administrative problems awaiting so- 
 lution are almost innumerable. The execu- 
 tive who carries the scientific method into his 
 work will find an opportunity to make more 
 clear the conception of authority and respon- 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 23 
 
 sibility, and to formulate the rules of their 
 distribution. He will study the co-ordination 
 of mutually functioning agencies, and the 
 means of their supervision. He will find need 
 to determine more precisely the basis upon 
 which rests the division of labor between ad- 
 ministration and operation, and between 
 principal matters and details. He will con- 
 cern himself with the meaning and use of 
 standards and sequences and schedules, and 
 will attack the great problem of framing a 
 theory of rewards and punishments ade- 
 quately adjusted to the moral sense of the 
 time. He will discover how, within the limits 
 of established costs and market prices, the 
 life of labor may be made, for the lowest nec- 
 essary ranks of persons, a life of health and 
 decency and mental growth. He will show 
 how the resources of an industrial organiza- 
 tion, assembled and operated primarily to 
 produce certain goods or render certain serv- 
 ices for the market, may be fully exploited 
 for human welfare — fully and completely ex- 
 ploited for the first time — in uplifting and en- 
 riching the lives of the associated individuals, 
 by serving them as an educational agency, as 
 an expert consul tive staff, as a joint buying 
 power, as a recreation and consumption 
 
24 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 group, and otherwise in many charming ways 
 yet to be discovered by those who have faith. 
 
 THE FELLOWSHIP OF ADMINISTRATORS 
 
 What the military leader was in the an- 
 cient days of constant war, and the states- 
 man in the period of the formation of great 
 States, the industrial executive is in this com- 
 mercial age. He is~the leading exponent of 
 organized action in the world. He should 
 dignify his tasks, boldly conceiving them on 
 the highest plane of which he is capable. He 
 is the intellectual heir of all the various kinds 
 of executives of the past, and there rests upon 
 him the mandate not to disgrace the succes- 
 sion. 
 
 It is open to him to maintain a stimulating 
 communion with his predecessors — with all 
 the great military leaders and statesmen and 
 diplomats whose history is preserved for us 
 — and from their experience to gather prin- 
 ciples of action. Why should not the busi- 
 ness executive practice Caesar's leniency, and 
 his art of making common cause with his 
 men, or endeavor whether Napoleon's celer- 
 ity may not be used in the bloodless battles 
 of economic service f Why should he not be 
 stimulated by Eichelieu's example to strive 
 
RISE OF A NEW PROFESSION 25 
 
 for coolness of analysis, or be moved by Sir 
 Philip Sidney's charm to practice the art of 
 winning friends f 
 
 Brought into contact with the thoughts and 
 deeds of great minds, the business executive 
 need not feel alone in the smallest village, or 
 the most distant engineering camp. He will 
 find that before him the great company of the 
 world's executives has had to deal with the 
 same weaknesses of human nature as those 
 against which he combats, and has relied 
 upon the same virtues, and employed such 
 methods of organization and administration, 
 in bringing men to effective joint action, as 
 are equally open to him. The field of his 
 leadership may, indeed, be different from 
 theirs, but the fundamental principles by 
 which his action should be animated and con- 
 trolled are largely the same. 
 
 Viewed thus, in proper relation to the his- 
 tory which is logically its own, the work of 
 the business executive loses its isolated, sor- 
 did, and empirical character. It acquires a 
 tradition, and multiplies the relations which 
 knit it together with the other portions of 
 society's organized effort. It gains a thou- 
 sand new enthusiasms and sources of sig- 
 
26 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 nificance, and becomes a promising founda- 
 tion upon which to erect ideals of a profes- 
 sional character. 
 
 THE OUTLOOK 
 
 A previous age witnessed the Industrial 
 Bevolution, which introduced the machine, 
 and through it worked the entire reconstruc- 
 tion of society. Now a second industrial 
 revolution is in progress, which aims to lay 
 a foundation of administrative principles un- 
 derneath business practice, and which, if it 
 succeeds, will inaugurate a new era of prog- 
 ress. 
 
 It lies within the power of this generation 
 to end much of the drudgery and antagonism 
 from which the operative classes suffer, by 
 devising more just and flexible methods of 
 partnership between the productive factors, 
 and by harmonizing operative methods with 
 the requirements of human nature. It will be 
 possible also to unlock much of the energy of 
 administrative circles, and of staff ranks, 
 which is at present dormant because of the 
 absence of professional pride and of objects 
 worthy of profound enthusiasm. It will be 
 possible to raise the general tone of industry 
 by setting forth new ideals of efficiency, dis- 
 tributive justice and democracy. 
 
THE ADMINISTRATOR AS A 
 GENERAL 
 
 Chapter II 
 
 THE UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF 
 HISTORY 
 
 THE art of administration is as old as 
 the human race. Even the leading 
 wolf of a pack is an administrator. Organ- 
 ization is older than history, for the earliest 
 documents, such as the code of Hammurabi, 
 show the evidences of many generations of 
 systematized social life. The real pioneers 
 are the unknown promoters of the stone age, 
 and the system-makers of the bronze age. 
 Long ago almost every conceivable experi- 
 ment in organization was first made. The 
 records of history tell us of large units and 
 small ones, of great and slight differentia- 
 tion of functions, of extreme division and 
 extreme concentration of authority, of mild 
 and severe sanctions, of appeal to system 
 27 
 
28 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 and appeal to passion, of trust in numbers 
 and trust in leadership. Of the vast variety 
 of units of organization through which 
 human intelligence has worked, and through 
 which human purposes have been achieved, 
 or thwarted, the greater part has passed 
 away ; and the names of them, even have been 
 forgotten. 
 
 In politics, the evolution has passed 
 through the horde, the patriarchal family, 
 the clan, and the classical city State. 
 Nations have tried despotisms, oligarchies 
 and theocracies, absolute and constitutional 
 monarchies, and republics. In military mat- 
 ters the phalanx gave way to the legion 
 and cohort, and these, in turn, to the di- 
 vision, brigade, regiment, battalion, and 
 company. Throughout history, the survival 
 of the fittest, as between nations, has been 
 fought out, in part, on the basis of the ability 
 to use organized and co-operative methods 
 of action. What a wealth of experience has 
 been gained — and lost! How many times, 
 in the long journey of history, have underly- 
 ing administrative principles been, with en- 
 thusiasm, discovered, — and rediscovered ! 
 
 And yet we seem to have accumulated but a 
 small reserve stock of knowledge on this im- 
 
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY 29 
 
 portant subject. We are still eagerly search- 
 ing for the most elementary principles of 
 administration. With countless generations 
 of experience, in the conduct of affairs, be- 
 hind us, the individual business executive of 
 today is feverishly trying to broaden and in- 
 tensify his personal experience — to live fast 
 and hard, so that, in the short span of his 
 life, he may discover de novo, for himself, 
 the principles and policies required in the 
 government of the complicated economic or- 
 ganizations of the present day. 
 
 Since a knowledge of the principles of 
 administration is now of so great import- 
 ance, we should add to the agencies now 
 being established for the study of current 
 performance a provision for the systematic 
 review of the history of administration. An 
 analogy exists between the present needs of 
 the American business executive, into whose 
 hands in a generation a great increase in 
 power has come, and the needs of the Ger- 
 man army officers before the development 
 of that splendid system which made Germany 
 the leading military power of the world. A 
 hint may, therefore, be gained from their 
 experience. The Prussian General Staff and 
 War College were organized to gather all 
 
30 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 engineering, topographic, and other technical 
 knowledge, which could be made of nse in 
 war. But, especially, there was entrusted to 
 them the function of reviewing military his- 
 tory in a scientifically thorough manner, to 
 obtain from it the maxims and principles 
 which possess validity for future operations. 
 In the hands of general historians, history 
 is worthless for military guidance; but to 
 Scharnhorst, von Clausewitz, von der Goltz, 
 von Moltke, and the other students of the 
 General Staff, is due the credit of having so 
 sifted their facts, and so brought them to 
 bear in the criticism of principles, that they 
 have made them a firm foundation for the 
 scientific conduct of war. Nor have they 
 confined their attention to military affairs 
 alone; the entire history of administration 
 has been laid under tribute. The suggestion 
 we would offer is that a similar study of ad- 
 ministrative history should now be made in 
 the interest of the business executive. 
 
 This study, to be fruitful, must be strictly 
 scientific in its character. Many men of 
 affairs are much prejudiced against the in- 
 vasion of business by science and theory. 
 They conceive of these things as something 
 new and untried, and something opposed to 
 
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY 31 
 
 experience. A certain excuse for this view 
 exists in the fact that the scientific method 
 has, thus far since its discovery, been ap- 
 plied most prominently to facts which or- 
 dinary experience does not furnish, but 
 which are attainable only through the some- 
 what rigid and refined methods of the labor- 
 atory. Many persons have concluded from 
 this that the method can not be applied to the 
 facts of ordinary experience. 
 
 Again, the results of science which have 
 come forth from the laboratories, in the form 
 of theories, have often presented themselves 
 in the guise of something new and not pre- 
 viously heard of, and something requiring 
 the most suspicious treatment before being 
 admitted to any part in practical affairs. 
 And so again, a conflict between new and old, 
 between "theory" and "practice," has 
 seemed to exist. 
 
 He would be a rash man, in this day of 
 grace, who would deny that laboratory 
 science has gloriously triumphed, and made 
 contributions of incalculable worth to the ad- 
 vancement of the human race. This triumph 
 is a demonstration of the efficiency of the 
 scientific method. It certainly establishes a 
 presumption that its application to bodies of 
 
32 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 fact which arise outside the laboratory will 
 also be attended by valuable results. It may 
 be safely affirmed that the way by which a 
 maximum utilization of experience can be at- 
 tained is through the application of the 
 scientific method. Only in the delicate scales 
 of science can the complicated conditions of 
 practical affairs be accurately weighed, and 
 the various factors contributing to success or 
 failure be disentangled and separately ap- 
 praised. Through its careful method of 
 study alone, can we be sure that the part 
 which accident and favor have played has 
 been reasonably allowed for. This much the 
 application of science to the recording and 
 measuring of current performance is now 
 demonstrating. The riches of past exper- 
 ience still constitute a great unutilized op- 
 portunity for science to render service. 
 
 The fundamental bases upon which the 
 scientific method rests are two. The first is 
 that all parts of truth are in harmony with 
 all other parts. If there is not a rational 
 order in the world, the mind of man is in- 
 capable of understanding the universe in 
 which it is placed. The second basis is that 
 any truth possesses equal validity for every 
 normally constituted mind. On these two 
 
THE LESSONS OP HISTORY 33 
 
 bases the scientific method proceeds. This 
 method is not different in kind from the 
 methods of ordinary observation and think- 
 ing; it rather differs from these in degree. 
 Briefly characterized, it is an orderly, per- 
 sistent, and thorough use of the mind. More 
 fully stated, the scientific method is the 
 analysis of problems into their elements; an 
 extensive and thoroughly adequate collection 
 of data; an exact and truthful classification 
 of facts on the basis of their nature ; such an 
 arrangement and grouping of them as will 
 best reveal agreements, differences, and con- 
 comitant variations between them; and the 
 making of inferences, or the discovery of 
 new facts, by means of induction, deduction, 
 and analogy. The new truths, or inductions, 
 are then subject to criticism and test in 
 every possible way. The scientific method 
 calls for the eradication of prejudice which 
 may interfere with the just estimate of any 
 facts; and it requires open-mindedness, or 
 willingness to receive new facts at any time, 
 and to make such revisions in conclusions 
 as may be required. 
 
 This method is universal in its applica- 
 bility. It can be set at work upon the or- 
 ganizations of which we find records in 
 
34 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 history, as well as upon the fossil remains 
 of organisms in the earth's strata. It can 
 work upon data which are the product of 
 the most haphazard, partial, or impassioned 
 of experiences, as it can upon the exactly 
 controlled processes of a laboratory exper- 
 iment. The results obtained will, of course, 
 depend upon the quality of the materials 
 furnished to it, and upon the degree to which 
 the material can be controlled to compel 
 it to reveal its true nature completely and 
 clearly. 
 
 When, now, we turn to the practical con- 
 sideration of the study of the history of 
 administration, various objections interpose 
 themselves. For one thing, there is very 
 little history of private business administra- 
 tion available. Many men prominent in 
 industry and commerce, in the past, have left 
 us no records. Some of them, no doubt, 
 made their way by tact, or overmastering 
 personal energy, in spite of defective ad- 
 ministration; some have preferred darkness 
 because their deeds were evil. Many ex- 
 cellent administrators have never formu- 
 lated their ideas far enough, dressing away 
 the incidents of time and place, to enable 
 them to observe that there were permanent 
 
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY 35 
 
 principles underlying their actions. Com- 
 petition has often spread a mantle of secrecy 
 over the essential facts. 
 
 Some of these forces, which have re- 
 pressed economic facts from the record of 
 history, may be seen at work in America to- 
 day. A generation of great leaders, which 
 developed with the progress of the country's 
 industry, and has come up from the day of 
 small things to an exercise of power rival- 
 ling that of the rulers of kingdoms, is now 
 passing off the stage of action. With rare 
 exceptions, these men vanish away mute, 
 leaving no autobiographies. Examine a 
 British book list and you will find that 
 every month some diplomat, or officer of 
 state, or traveler, or colonial governor has, 
 in the evening of life, set down whatever 
 may be of permanent value in his experience, 
 and published his reminiscences. In no 
 country of the world have greater things 
 been done, during the last generation, than 
 in America; but our doers of them are in- 
 articulate. Conscious enough that the tang- 
 ible things they have wrought will quickly 
 crumble, they yet fail to round out the pur- 
 pose of life, and distill a final essence of 
 principles and policies which might pos- 
 
36 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 sess lasting utility. Their estates are 
 scarcely distributed before the question, 
 "How did they achieve their success V is 
 given up forever. 
 
 In this dilemma we may turn to the his- 
 tory of political and military institutions, 
 and find ample materials for the study of 
 administration. These lines of activity have 
 swept together millions of people into single 
 organizations, and have made the leaders 
 the cynosures of innumerable eyes. If 
 Crassus, at one time the richest man in 
 Rome, is little more than a name to us, we 
 know of his contemporary, Caesar, the 
 private life, the motives and methods, the 
 hesitations and resolves. If there is but an 
 odd book or two of colorless record of 
 Mayer Bauer, the Napoleon of Finance of 
 the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
 and the founder of the house of Rothschild, 
 we have of his contemporary, the Emperor 
 Napoleon, an enormous literature, con- 
 tributed to not only by the great men who 
 either aided or opposed him, but by his 
 valet and the palace ladies-in-waiting. Thus 
 there has been insured, in certain depart- 
 ments of administration, at least, searching 
 publicity, and an abundant record. 
 
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY 37 
 
 - But another difficulty will doubtless be 
 urged, namely, that industry is neither war 
 nor politics, so that the study of the admin- 
 istrative methods used in those fields will 
 not yield results which can be applied to 
 the conduct of industry. The usages of 
 common speech indicate, however, that we 
 constantly observe the similarity between 
 the forces and conditions in these fields of 
 activity. We commonly speak of " captains 
 of industry/ ' of the " strategy* ' of great 
 business, and of " tactics' ' and " cam- 
 paigns/ ' and "line" and "staff." Ar- 
 gument from analogy is one of the valid 
 forms of reasoning. It is the method of 
 homologous series, which rests upon the as- 
 sumption that what is true of one set of 
 circumstances is likely to be true, in some 
 degree, of similar sets of circumstances. It 
 fastens upon a resemblance between two 
 sets of relations, by which each case is made 
 to reveal more fully the nature of the other. 
 As a means of gaining insight, analogy 
 has been used since the dawn of wisdom. 
 In the Bible we find the deepest spiritual 
 truths suggested by analogies from nature, 
 and from the simple relations of the house- 
 hold and the crafts. In the parable of the 
 
38 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 sower, we review the various types of 
 human nature. By means of the porter, 
 commanded to watch lest his lord, returning 
 suddenly, find him sleeping, and by the man 
 trying to serve two masters, we learn of 
 surprise tests, and indefinite responsibility. 
 In the case of the house divided against 
 itself we see the evil of faction, and of de- 
 partmental rivalries. In the piece of new 
 cloth sewed onto an old garment, and the 
 new wine put into old skins, we learn the 
 law of harmonious co-ordination of agencies. 
 The strictness of an analogy depends upon 
 the similarity of the subject matters in- 
 volved. If we compare organizations for 
 war and politics with those for industry, 
 we shall find the conditions vital to 
 administrative success markedly similar. 
 There is the same human nature, with 
 its equipment of physical and mental 
 faculties. The same protection is re- 
 quired against carelessness, laziness, jeal- 
 ousy, fear, and selfishness; the same re- 
 liance can be placed upon generosity, in- 
 telligence, energy and loyalty. There are 
 always the unchangeable factors of time, 
 space, and the properties of matter and 
 force, presenting themselves in different de- 
 
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY 39 
 
 grees of importance. Some of the factors 
 change in their nature, though gradually; 
 knowledge increases, and the state of the 
 arts progresses; so also do the customs of 
 society, and the moral standards which 
 must be observed. For these changes al- 
 lowance can be made, and should be made 
 with the greatest care. 
 
 The peculiar value of analogy is that by 
 it certain cases, in which relations are clear 
 and conspicuous, are used to familiarize the 
 mind with the nature of the relation, iso 
 that, when similar phenomena, differently 
 grouped, are studied, we are able to detect 
 the relationship, even though it be subtle 
 and partly hidden in its new form. We 
 know that when once a figure in a picture- 
 puzzle has been pointed out it seems so 
 prominent that we wonder how we could 
 have previously overlooked it. One hears 
 a note in a chord distinctly, when it has 
 been previously sounded separately. So the 
 analogy aids us by familiarizing us with the 
 idea of the relationship for which we seek. 
 When we know intimately the 'character- 
 istic signs of a thing, we are able to de- 
 tect its presence or absence confidently and 
 readily. 
 
40 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 The greatest body of valuable data on 
 any particular subject is likely to be found 
 where circumstances have made the element 
 of performance, in which we are interested, 
 of unusual importance, or where a force 
 has triumphed over unusual opposition, or 
 where a man of unusual capacity has ob- 
 tained the authority and resources to do 
 things. We should seek for the circum- 
 stances which have specially emphasized or 
 stressed the thing we would study, for there 
 the principles of which we are in search are 
 so developed and magnified as to make 
 their study easy. An administrator who 
 desires to follow this rule will, for example, 
 turn to military operations to observe how 
 leadership has been exercised when res- 
 ponsibilities are terrifying, and the great- 
 est resource of soul is required to make 
 decisions. Or in diplomacy, he will find 
 circumstances which emphasize harmony and 
 balance of character, and respect for cus- 
 tom. If one would study preliminary prep- 
 aration, he may examine Nansen's remark- 
 able preparation for his journey in the 
 Fram; if one desires to study economy of 
 time he may advantageously begin with a 
 city fire department. A knowledge of the 
 
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY 41 
 
 military manual of arms would be a sugges- 
 tive preliminary to motion study, and an ex- 
 amination of the national mints would sug- 
 gest methods of preventing waste. 
 
 In the study of the extreme case, the thing 
 sought is presented distinctly and emphat- 
 ically to the attention. And this is a 
 great advantage, for all perceptions tend 
 to fuse in the mind into a general impres- 
 sion, unless forcibly prevented by the ex- 
 penditure of the energy necessary to effect 
 their analysis and separate consideration. 
 
 This suggests the value, to the student of 
 administration, of giving himself free range 
 over the entire field of administration, not 
 confining himself to industrial administra- 
 tion alone ; for only by wide comparisons will 
 he be able to select the type of cases which 
 most clearly reveals to him the workings of 
 the force he desires to study. The person 
 who cuts himself off from subjects analo- 
 gous to his own loses something of the force 
 of the contrasts and similarities of the facts 
 with which he deals. To refuse the com- 
 prehensive and flexible service of analogy 
 is to rob oneself of much of the resource 
 by which the probability, or improbability, 
 of all forms of conclusions is established. 
 
Chapter III 
 MILITARY HISTORY 
 
 TV/TILITARY HISTORY divides itself 
 *■**- broadly into great periods, in each of 
 which certain definite ideals and enthu- 
 siasms have m,oved the minds of men, seek- 
 ing embodiment in appropriate military 
 units and authorities, and finding expression 
 in characteristic movements of strategy and 
 tactics. Let us briefly glance at the lead- 
 ing characteristics of some of these periods, 
 with a view to suggesting analogies which 
 have interest from their bearing upon the 
 administration of industrial enterprises. 
 
 ROMAN ARMS 
 
 The Roman military unit was the legion 
 of from 4,000 to 6,000 men, divided into 
 ten cohorts. The strength of Roman arms 
 lay in three things. The first of these was 
 a careful selection of men from among such 
 citizens as were practiced in arms. The 
 second dependence was upon discipline. 
 Warlike youths were accustomed to the use 
 of arms as a recreation, so that it was said 
 that their sports were battles without blood- 
 43 
 
44 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 shed, and their battles bloody sports. The 
 third point was the prompt adoption of all 
 improvements suggested by the experience 
 of foreign wars. The Koman legion was 
 practically never defeated, so long as these 
 three principles remained in force. The 
 secret of its strength was the spirit of the 
 men who, in their perfect discipline, ex- 
 pressed their glory in Rome, and their con- 
 fidence in themselves. 
 
 The most brilliant achievements of this 
 military instrument were attained by Caesar, 
 who aroused the devotion of his troops to 
 the highest point by making common cause 
 with them in the pursuit of valor. As 
 Plutarch says, "He showed them that he 
 did not heap up wealth from the wars for 
 his own luxury, or the gratifying of his pri- 
 vate pleasures, but that all he received was 
 but a public fund laid by for the reward and 
 encouragement of valor." 
 
 Defeat came to Eoman arms only when 
 numerous wars had made it necessary to 
 sweep together heterogeneous classes, which 
 did not feel the old confidence in each other, 
 and to introduce barbarians who did not 
 feel enthusiasm for Roman triumphs. Rome 
 fell, furthermore, because it became a house 
 
MILITARY PRECEDENTS 45 
 
 divided against itself. The civil wars made 
 it no longer Rome for which the troops 
 fought, but the triumph of a faction. The 
 leaders of factions being disinclined to dis- 
 band their armies, the civilian troops dis- 
 appeared, and in their place came bands 
 of paid professional fighters. 
 
 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE 
 
 After the decline of Rome, the center of 
 the world's military progress was, for seven 
 or eight centuries, transferred to the Greek 
 empire. Constantinople ruled elements of 
 a much less homogeneous nature than 
 Rome, in her prime,, had depended upon. 
 There was less loyalty to the central rule 
 there, and far less liberty under it. 
 
 The decisive military fact of the East was, 
 however, that Byzantium had to contend 
 against overwhelming numerical superiority 
 in its enemies. South of it, from the Indies 
 to the Atlantic, was the Saracen empire, 
 burning with the zeal of a new religion. 
 To the east were the Seljuk Turks, while 
 to the north were the Bulgarians, and the 
 Slavonian and Hunic tribes. 
 
 Against such odds it was useless simply 
 to match man for man. The military lead- 
 ers of the empire were full of military 
 
46 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 spirit, and took keen delight in war as a 
 game; but they were the descendants of 
 Ulysses, and they made of war a game of 
 finesse and cleverness — in short, a war of 
 wits. They had the greatest contempt for 
 the reckless hard-hitters of the West who 
 plunged into battle without ensuring to 
 themselves every possible advantage. The 
 strategists of the East, by their spying 
 and bribes, by stirring up treason in the 
 enemies ' camp, by surprises, simulated re- 
 treats, and ambush, illustrated the saying 
 of Bacon that stratagem is a weaker kind 
 of policy, used by those who are not strong 
 enough to win by fairer methods. 
 
 The Byzantine empire, weakened by the 
 destruction of its patriotic middle classes, 
 and robbed of the protection of buffer States 
 through its own folly, was finished by the 
 marauding expedition called the Fourth Cru- 
 sade; and it broke into fragments. 
 
 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 When the Eoman empire became a shadow, 
 and the Church was the one remaining bond 
 of Western Christendom, political rule in 
 Europe was scattered into the hands of 
 numerous feudal lords. Military operations 
 were carried on then by small bands of 
 
MILITARY PRECEDENTS 47 
 
 aristocratic mounted men in armor, who 
 followed the banners of their over-lords 
 through fealty. The Koman troops were 
 originally infantry, but the mounted plunder- 
 ing hordes of eastern Germans and Hun- 
 garians had already, in later Eoman times, 
 forced some of the legions to mount, in 
 order to gain in speed. For western Europe, 
 the call to horse was given by the terrify- 
 ing raids of the Vikings. Armor was nec- 
 essary because of the introduction of the 
 long bow and cross-bow, the pike, the two- 
 handed sword, and the axe. 
 
 In armor and in the fortification of towns 
 the defensive gained, during the Middle 
 Ages, a temporary advantage over the 
 offensive, with consequent disintegration 
 into small military units. Armor and for- 
 tifications were, however, but negative meas- 
 ures, so that when the Viking raids be- 
 came more frequent and extended, and were 
 followed by permanent settlements, it be- 
 came necessary to increase the power of 
 the offensive, by combination into larger 
 units. Loyalty to local lords gave way, 
 therefore, to loyalty to the king. The royal 
 armies, which, at first, were small shabby 
 bands of mercenaries, received additions of 
 
48 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 superior quality from the nobility. This 
 movement toward concentration was has- 
 tened and completed by the introduction of 
 firearms, which took away the superiority 
 of the aristocratic professional fighter, and 
 enabled the fortifications of castles and 
 cities to be speedily battered down. 
 
 FREDERICK THE GREAT 
 
 The crowning example of a royal army, 
 used as the personal weapon of a sovereign 
 who united in his hands absolute political 
 rule and the powers of a commander-in- 
 chief, is the army of Frederick the Great. 
 The way was prepared for this great Prus- 
 sian genius by a thrifty father who built 
 up an army and a treasury for him. As 
 an administrator, the father stands in much 
 the same relation to him that a Benjamin 
 Franklin, expounding maxims of thrift, 
 would bear to a dashing organizer like E. 
 H. Harriman. 
 
 Frederick was an intensely active, highly 
 capable, strong-willed and self-reliant com- 
 mander. He concentrated all power in his 
 own hands, reducing his ministers to clerical 
 work, and his generals to the duties of per- 
 sonal lieutenants. Below him the Prussian 
 
 , 
 
MILITARY PRECEDENTS 49 
 
 administration was a thing of stiff and me- 
 chanical obedience, lacking in initiative and 
 individuality. Several of Frederick's mil- 
 itary losses were due to the fact that he 
 gave his generals such minute orders, and 
 was so severe in case of disregard of in- 
 structions, that they did not dare to use 
 their own judgment, when unforeseen con- 
 ditions presented themselves. He person- 
 ally foresaw and provided for everything; 
 he inspected frequently and thoroughly, and 
 his sharp eyes saw everything. His dis- 
 cipline was severe and knew neither grati- 
 tude nor resentment. His calculations were 
 accurate and his plans were limited to what 
 was possible. His movements, which were 
 skillfully disguised, were rapid. So su- 
 perior was Frederick to his opponents in 
 strategy that they were obliged for safety 
 to keep their troops in concentrated form, 
 and dared not give themselves sufficient 
 space for effective manoeuvres. To him 
 was due the invention of the oblique order, 
 a system of concentrating upon one point 
 in the enemy's line by means of attack at 
 an angle. He was more capable in march- 
 ing and manoeuvre than in battle; more 
 capable in battle than in siege. It was his 
 
50 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 practice to follow success with vigorous pur- 
 suit, but in defeat, like Hannibal, lie be- 
 came only the more active and dangerous. 
 
 His great defect as an administrator lay 
 in the fact that he dwarfed the growth of 
 those below him, and so educated no tal- 
 ented corps to bear the political and mil- 
 itary burdens of the State, when he should 
 be obliged to lay them down. He ap- 
 parently could do things only through him- 
 self. Having a supreme contempt for the 
 capacities of most mortals, he had no mind 
 to make experiments which might have 
 changed his opinions. Although he knew, 
 for many years, that his successor was to 
 be a man without ability, he handed down 
 to him a system which required a Fred- 
 erick. We may say that he brilliantly ad- 
 ministered a system which was badly organ- 
 ized. 
 
 After his death, the prestige of his name 
 and deeds was so great that it was con- 
 sidered blasphemy to suggest that any 
 change could improve the Prussian army. 
 Its methods could, therefore, suffer no al- 
 teration, except a refinement of punctilios, 
 such as drill and uniforms. This army 
 which had gloriously finished the seven 
 
MILITARY PRECEDENTS 51 
 
 years' war in 1763, against the united force 
 of nearly the whole of the Continent, was 
 utterly routed by hesitating and divided 
 leadership when it met Napoleon at Jena, 
 in 1806, twenty years after Frederick's 
 death. 
 
 NAPOLEON 
 
 Napoleon and Frederick resemble one 
 another, in many ways, as administrators. 
 The aims of the two men were, however, 
 entirely different. While Frederick was de- 
 voted wholly to the advancement of Prussia, 
 identifying himself completely with his peo- 
 ple, Napoleon desired power as a means 
 of personal aggrandizement, and was at the 
 bottom selfish and vain. 
 
 As military leaders the great difference 
 between the two men lies in the fact that 
 while Frederick's army was a small pro- 
 fessional one of recruits hired whenever 
 they could be secured, Napoleon had the 
 leadership of civilian armies enormously 
 larger than any ever before put in the field. 
 The French Eevolution awakened the pas- 
 sions of the common people of France so 
 that, when the monarchs of Europe com- 
 bined in an attempt to force royalty back 
 upon them, they flocked in great numbers 
 
52 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 to the national standards. These men were 
 animated by a terrible intensity of spirit 
 and purpose, and willingly met deprivations 
 in the field. The officers dispensed with the 
 camp luxuries characteristic of the other 
 armies of Europe; and the men marched 
 with light knapsacks, so that they surprised 
 the world by their rapidity of movement. 
 When, in the later Napoleonic campaigns, 
 conscription took the place of volunteering, 
 and a war of defense of a republic changed 
 into one of offense for an empire, Napoleon 
 knew how to arouse in the breasts of his 
 men the love of glory as a mainspring of 
 action. 
 
 The leading military principles pf Na- 
 poleon were to seize the initiative by con- 
 centrating his forces from marching into 
 fighting order as quickly as possible, and, 
 having massed the troops as compactly as 
 effective action would permit, to attack 
 swiftly. 
 
 This attack must be made upon a portion 
 only of the enemy's army, and the weight 
 of one's whole force must be crowded in, 
 so that at the point of action a decided su- 
 periority is attained. This theory of action 
 he often explained to his generals. Moreau, 
 
MILITARY PRECEDENTS 53 
 
 in conversation with Napoleon in 1799, re- 
 marked that it was always the greater 
 numbers that won. To which Napoleon re- 
 plied: "You are right. When, with in- 
 ferior forces, I had a large army before me, 
 I concentrated mine rapidly, and fell like 
 lightning upon one of the enemy's wings 
 and routed it. Then I took advantage of 
 the confusion which this manoeuvre never 
 failed to produce in the opposing army to 
 attack it on another point, but always with 
 my whole force. Thus I beat it in detail, 
 and the victory which was the result was al- 
 ways, as you see, the triumph of the larger 
 over the lesser.' ' 
 
 In one way Napoleon possessed a defect 
 similar to that of Frederick. He provided 
 no adequate staff to relieve himself of de- 
 tails. During his early years he made up 
 for this lack by remarkable physical activity, 
 but when still in early middle age his 
 energies began to decline. He allowed him- 
 self ease and luxury, and showed an in- 
 creasing dislike for the hardships of the 
 field at a time when his enterprises were 
 growing rapidly in size, and were passing 
 into a serious stage. The lack of staff was 
 not from inability to create the necessary 
 
54 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 administrative machinery, and insure its 
 efficient working, for he maintained a spy 
 system which rivaled that of Cardinal 
 Eichelieu. It is more likely that his in- 
 tense desire to stand alone, in order to re- 
 ceive all the credit for what was done, was 
 the secret of his action. 
 
 This brings us to the chief defect of his 
 character. Although undoubtedly the great- 
 est military genius that ever lived, he over- 
 reached himself. This is shown in a single 
 enterprise like the Eussian campaign; but it 
 is shown in his life as a whole. He could 
 probably have accomplished the anomaly, 
 with the mercurial French, of founding a 
 personal dynasty upon the French Eevolu- 
 tion which beheaded royalty and announced 
 the rights of man; but when he attempted 
 to remake the map of Europe he reckoned 
 beyond his power. He realized that the 
 armies of the Eepublic had been animated 
 by a passion for liberty, equality and fra- 
 ternity, but he could not understand that his 
 aggressions upon other countries deprived 
 his armies of this moral force, and im- 
 planted it in his enemies; and that no skill 
 in strategy and tactics could long withstand 
 it. He would not permit a group of great 
 
MILITARY PRECEDENTS 55 
 
 administrators and military leaders to share 
 his honors, and form around him a cabinet, 
 which might have protected him against 
 himself. And so he plunged forward, unad- 
 vised, and talking of his star and destiny, 
 to his Waterloo. 
 
 MODERN CONDITIONS 
 
 The new features appearing in modern 
 war are the vast increase in the size of 
 armies and the deadly power of firearms. 
 In preliminary mobilization the chief ad- 
 vantage to be gained is speed. To this end, 
 and because the conditions of mobilization 
 can be largely foreseen and controlled, the 
 solution which is applied is detailed pre- 
 liminary planning. Duties are carefully as- 
 signed to separate individuals, in such a 
 manner as to effect the utmost speed, 
 through a smooth co-ordination of move- 
 ments, without overloading any one person. 
 
 The first great master of modern prelim- 
 inary planning of mobilization was Von 
 Moltke. In his description of the mobiliza- 
 tion for the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, 
 he thus criticizes the advance of the French 
 army. "The regiments had marched out 
 of quarters incomplete as to numbers, and 
 
56 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 insufficiently equipped. Meanwhile the re- 
 serves called out to fill their place had 
 choked the railway traffic; they crowded the 
 depots, and filled the railway stations. The 
 progress to their destination was delayed, 
 for it was often unknown at the railway 
 stations where the regiments to which the 
 reserves were to be sent were at the time 
 encamped. "When they at last joined, they 
 were without the most necessary articles of 
 equipment. The corps and divisions had 
 no artillery or baggage, no ambulance, and 
 only a very insufficient number of officers. 
 No magazines had been established before- 
 hand, and the troops were to depend on the 
 fortresses. These were but ill-supplied, for 
 in the assured expectation that the armies 
 would be almost immediately sent on into 
 the enemy's country, they had been neg- 
 lected. In the same way the staff-officers 
 had been provided with maps of Germany, 
 but not of their own provinces. 
 
 "When the Emperor arrived at Metz, a 
 week after the declaration of war, the reg- 
 iments were not yet complete, and it was 
 not even exactly known where whole di- 
 visions were at that time encamped. The 
 Emperor ordered the troops to advance, but 
 
 
MILITARY PRECEDENTS 57 
 
 his marshals declared that the condition of 
 the troops made this impossible for the time 
 being.' ' And so, we may add, the effort to 
 carry the war onto German territory failed. 
 
 The advance of the Prussian army is thus 
 described by Von Moltke: 
 
 "The means of mobilizing the North 
 German army had been reviewed year by 
 year, in view of any changes in the mil- 
 itary or political situation, by the Staff, in 
 conjunction with the ministry of war. Every 
 branch of the administration throughout the 
 country had been kept informed of all it 
 ought to know of these matters. The orders 
 for marching, and travelling by rail or boat, 
 were worked out for each division of the 
 army, together with the most minute direc- 
 tions as to their different starting points, the 
 day and hour of departure, the duration of 
 the journey, the refreshment stations and 
 place of destination. At the meeting-point 
 cantonments were assigned to each corps and 
 division, stores and magazines were estab- 
 lished, and thus, when war was declared, it 
 needed only the royal signature to set the 
 entire apparatus in motion with undisturbed 
 precision. There was nothing to be changed 
 in the directions originally given; it sufficed 
 
58 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 to carry out the plans prearranged and pre- 
 pared.' ' 
 
 In strategy, which includes the general 
 movements of a campaign, preliminary plan- 
 ning is of course impossible. The distances 
 separating the several divisions of a great 
 army, the time which would be required to 
 make voluminous reports to headquarters 
 and to receive back detailed instructions, and 
 the innumerable local conditions which can- 
 not be adequately grasped by one at a dis- 
 tance, make it impossible that highly central- 
 ized control should exist. 
 
 Here the flexibility of the German army 
 system is shown. In contrast to the rigid 
 plan of mobilization imposed by central au- 
 thority, when the campaign is once under 
 way and changing and uncertain conditions 
 have to be dealt with, the headquarters be- 
 comes responsible only for the general fea- 
 tures of the plan of operations. 
 
 Authority immediately passes down the 
 line to army commanders, and regimental and 
 company officers, lodging as close as possible 
 to the time, place, and agencies of specific 
 action. The army then becomes, not a mech- 
 anism under the thumb of a single leader, 
 but an organism with great liberty of action, 
 
MILITARY PRECEDENTS 59 
 
 and corresponding responsibility resting 
 upon the parts. 
 
 It is reputed that Von Moltke once said 
 that nothing should be ordered which it was 
 conceivable could be carried out by the 
 proper officers without orders. Certain it is 
 that the orders from headquarters in the 
 Austrian and Franco-Prussian wars were 
 very few in number, and composed of but a 
 few sentences each. Passing from higher to 
 lower units, orders from the leaders of sep- 
 arate armies, corps orders, and division or- 
 ders, were, of course, progressively firmer 
 and more detailed. 
 
 In the modern tactics of engagement, a 
 similar rule as to the location of authority is 
 followed. While each army headquarters re- 
 tains sufficient control to insure harmony of 
 plan, details of execution are intrusted 
 largely to the officers on the field, and in di- 
 rect command of the minor divisions of 
 troops. The old ramrod drill movements of 
 troops on the field of battle are no longer 
 possible. Discipline is now interpreted 
 broadly that each individual shall apply 
 sound principles in every emergency, re- 
 maining as continuously in touch with au- 
 thority as this will permit. The fear of 
 
60 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 minor mistakes is as nothing, with modern 
 military administrators, in comparison with 
 the fear of crushing out the spirit and energy 
 of troops and lower officers by unduly sup- 
 pressing initiative. 
 
 All this manifestly calls for a superior 
 class of executives of all ranks, adequately 
 prepared for their duties. To provide such 
 officers, Germany has perfected her War Col- 
 lege and General Staff with every educa- 
 tional and scientific agency which human in- 
 genuity can devise. To these institutions 
 the flower of the regimental officers is drawn 
 for training, and to assist in the solution of 
 the problems upon which the Staff works. 
 From these institutions they soon return to 
 the regiments. A constant transfusion of 
 talent is taking place between the regimental 
 line and the General Staff. Thus is insured 
 to the commander-in-chief a body of capable 
 officers familiar with each element of service, 
 and trained to intelligent co-ordination of ef- 
 forts. 
 
 When shall the great affairs of a country's 
 industry be administered with equal enlight- 
 enment with this business of destruction and 
 bloodshed? 
 
Chapter IV 
 ADMINISTRATIVE PRINCIPLES 
 
 TN comparing the administration of mili- 
 •*■ tary and business affairs, I do not wish 
 to create the impression that business should 
 be run exactly as an army is commanded; 
 much less to imply that a defense for any- 
 thing harsh and brutal in business can be 
 found in considering it as a kind of warfare. 
 When Sherman once made a celebrated re- 
 mark about what war was, he referred only 
 to the immediate results, and not to the ulti- 
 mate purpose. It may be said that the suf- 
 ferings of a just war lead to the joys of a 
 nobler peace, as the drudgery of industry 
 leads to economic well-being. The nature of 
 these activities is to purchase a desired good 
 through suffering. 
 
 No doubt the harshness of the immediate 
 purpose of one tinges its methods in a way 
 wholly unjustified in the other. In one the 
 tests of efficiency of the executive are few 
 and irregular, inexact, and darkly confused 
 by uncertain knowledge; but they are of 
 61 
 
62 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 enormous importance, so that an early fail- 
 ure seldom permits a retrieval. Industry en- 
 joys the advantage of frequently recurring, 
 easily measured tests, so capable of classifi- 
 cation that a gradual growth in responsibil- 
 ity is possible as individual capacity is 
 proved. In the one case, costs are almost 
 ignored; in the other, they are a large part 
 of the essence of victory. In one the issues 
 are striking, and naturally stir the soul of 
 m,an ; while in the other, insight of interpre- 
 tation is needed to perceive that, under a 
 prosaic exterior, the results are of the na- 
 ture of life itself. 
 
 The purpose of comparing the two with 
 respect to administrative procedure is to 
 make each illuminate the real nature of the 
 other, for each simply clothes in concrete 
 forms the workings of general principles 
 which are based upon the ways of human na- 
 ture and the material world. 
 
 DECISION 
 
 "War presents to us cases where the word 
 of a commander-in-chief will mean the death 
 of thousands of men in a few hours. So 
 clearly does this show the harrowing anx- 
 iety which must rest upon the mind of the 
 
ADMINISTRATIVE PRINCIPLES 63 
 
 military leader, that we can see, through this 
 emphasized case, that it is doubt and anxiety 
 which are the great enemies to be conquered 
 by the executive who would assume responsi- 
 bility. Napoleon said at St. Helena : ' * Peo- 
 ple rarely have an idea of the strength of 
 soul it requires to deliver, after full reflec- 
 tion on its results, one of those great battles 
 on which depends the fate of an army, or a 
 country, or the possession of a throne. 
 And," he added, "few generals are diligent 
 in seeking battle, although without it no de- 
 cisive results can be gained. ' ' 
 
 Great leaders have always shown facility 
 in passing over the deadline which separates 
 deliberation from action. Frederick the 
 Great, in the earliest work assigned to him, 
 in his twenty-third year, showed great power 
 of making up his mind clearly and definitely. 
 Wellington, in the most anxious weeks of his 
 life at Brussels, showed a decision following 
 so instantly upon perception, that his mind 
 was unembarrassed and perfectly at ease. 
 Caesar is recorded to have hesitated at the 
 point of decision only once, and then but for 
 a few hours on the banks of the Eubicon ; and 
 this may have been to test his generals. 
 
 The executive must have the power to con- 
 
64 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 centrate attention, to think things through 
 to conclusion, and to master and extermi- 
 nate doubt. Then, by act of will, he must 
 decide; and show that his shoulders are 
 broad enough to bear the responsibility. The 
 first requisite in the executive, therefore, is 
 the power of decision. 
 
 INITIATIVE 
 
 Decision insured, the next question is the 
 proper time for it. There is much to be 
 found in the literature of war in favor of 
 taking the initiative, and forcing the opposi- 
 tion to a course of action which it might not 
 otherwise have freely chosen. As we have 
 seen, Napoleon's plan was to concentrate, 
 and strike, before the enemy was prepared. 
 Jomini, who first formulated Napoleon's 
 practice into a system, says : "If the art of 
 war consists in throwing the masses upon 
 the decisive points, to do this it will be nec- 
 essary to take the initiative. The attacking 
 party knows what he is doing, and what he 
 desires to do; and he leads his masses to 
 the point where he desires to strike. He who 
 awaits the attack is everywhere anticipated; 
 the enemy fall with large force upon frac- 
 tions of his force; he neither knows where 
 
ADMINISTRATIVE PRINCIPLES 65 
 
 his adversary proposes to attack him, nor in 
 what manner to repel him. ,, 
 
 The party which takes the initiative can 
 make specific preliminary preparation for 
 what is next to happen; while the party 
 which is on the defensive cannot do so. The 
 initiative brings one to the decisive point 
 under the moral headway of an affirmative 
 state of mind, and with the consciousness of 
 being committed. The cultivation of the in- 
 itiative stimulates activity. As the late Pro- 
 fessor James might have said, by acting as if 
 one possessed courage, courage is produced. 
 
 It was the historian Livy who first ob- 
 served what many a military writer has since 
 repeated: "People's apprehensions are 
 greater in proportion as things are un- 
 known.'' The initiative lessens apprehen- 
 sion and makes the decision easy in two ways 
 — it gives us other occupation than forebod- 
 ing and it reveals in the true state of things 
 a situation better than that imagined. Ac- 
 tive initiative develops the habit of decision ; 
 and the results of it yield us the greatest 
 variety of experience, not only of others, but 
 of ourselves as well. 
 
 One of the chief advantages of the policy 
 of taking the initiative is that it permits the 
 
66 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 utilization of the strategic moment. The first 
 operation which raised Napoleon to fame in- 
 volved the strategic moment. He was be- 
 sieging Mantua, and the Austrians, sending 
 a relieving army south from the Tyrol, made 
 the mistake of dividing it, sending a column 
 on either side of Lake Garda. The lightning 
 is not quicker than was Napoleon to seize the 
 advantage offered him. He abandoned the 
 siege of Mantua, and attacked first one and 
 then the other of the separated armies, be- 
 fore they could unite, driving them with 
 great loss back into the Tyrol. He who takes 
 the initiative has, in a measure, the choice of 
 the place, the time, and many of the circum- 
 stances of action. 
 
 PRELIMINARY PLANNING 
 
 Preliminary planning is a form of taking 
 the initiative; it is distinguishable from it 
 only by the length of time involved, and by 
 the degree of probability that what is done 
 will eventually apply. It co-ordinates itself 
 perfectly with the policy of taking the initia- 
 tive, for, as we have seen, only that can be 
 specifically anticipated, and prepared for, 
 which one himself initiates. 
 
 As the current power of an organization, 
 
ADMINISTRATIVE PRINCIPLES 67 
 
 as of an individual, has a limit, preliminary 
 preparation is a means of increasing force; 
 for by it energy, or the results of energy, 
 may be stored up, ready for concentrated de- 
 livery at the desired moment. It makes 
 action more decisive by giving a sort of 
 strength different from that of initiative ; for 
 it provides what cannot be prepared later, 
 together with what can as well be prepared 
 in advance. 
 
 The most scientific preparation now made 
 for any form of human activity is probably 
 that made for war by the German War Acad- 
 emy and the General Staff. The Academy 
 admits young officers, on efficiency tests, and 
 completes their military training. It covers 
 not only the subject of war, in all its 
 branches, but science and modern languages. 
 Formal studies are supplemented by con- 
 stant field exercises in collecting informa- 
 tion, and in the solution of practical prob- 
 lems, and by exercise with "war games.' ' 
 
 The Staff is recruited from the best men 
 who pass through the Academy. Its func- 
 tions are to gather information about all 
 countries, to make topographical surveys, to 
 test new arms, rations, and equipments, to 
 standardize camp and supply methods, to 
 
68 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 compile the official military history, to plan 
 mobilization, and, generally, to serve as the 
 inventing, organizing, and inspecting author- 
 ity of the army. 
 
 The results of German wars show whether 
 these agencies are efficient or not. In the 
 case of the Austrian war of 1866, in fourteen 
 days from the declaration of hostilities, 
 Prussia was in possession of Hanover, 
 Hesse-Cassel, and Saxony. In nineteen days 
 the battle of Koniggratz, which decided the 
 war, was fought. It was all over in seven 
 weeks. Likewise in the war of 1870-71, al- 
 though France confidently expected to invade 
 Germany, she found herself in a few days 
 fighting an invasion. The armies of France 
 were promptly separated, and all the decisive 
 work was over again in seven weeks. In that 
 war the standardizations were so accurate 
 on the German side, and the agencies of cor- 
 relation were so adequate, that there was no 
 failure of the center to keep in touch with 
 the outposts. There was no failure of am- 
 munition at a critical time, and cases were 
 rare of troops suffering deprivation from 
 lack of food or supplies. 
 
 These institutions are the embodiment of 
 two comparatively simple, but exceedingly 
 
ADMINISTRATIVE PRINCIPLES 69 
 
 fundamental, principles of efficiency. The 
 first is vocational training for all persons 
 placed in important positions; the second is 
 the compilation of all useful knowledge 
 which can be better gained in advance, by 
 experts, through study, than later, by gen- 
 eral executives, through action. These two 
 institutions, so successful in making Germany 
 the leading military nation of the world, 
 could be duplicated by us, in America, as in- 
 dustrial institutions, for a tithe of the waste 
 they would save, and would exercise the most 
 beneficent effects upon the general welfare. 
 
 SUBORDINATION OF DETAIL 
 
 Military history has passed through the 
 stage in which the affairs of a standard-sized 
 army can be controlled in matters of detail, 
 as well as in matters of general plan, by any 
 one person, even though he be an all-around 
 genius. Frederick's kingdom was of such 
 small size that he could keep his fingers upon 
 everything, even the daily culinary arrange- 
 ments of the royal household. Napoleon, 
 with matchless celerity in work, confessed 
 that he fully controlled his affairs only in 
 the short period of his prime. Occasionally 
 a rare mind like that of Frederick or of Na- 
 
70 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 poleon will show equal facility in the most 
 extensive plans or in the minutest details, 
 but most minds lack the force and flexibility 
 to sustain fresh and vigorous action on so 
 many planes. In war the day of piling up 
 tasks in such an indiscriminate manner at 
 headquarters that only a heaven-sent genius 
 can insure success, passed when the Germans 
 began the application of the principles of 
 administration to military matters. 
 
 It is clear that for the lodging of any ad- 
 ministrative function, and the resting of the 
 corresponding responsibility, there must be a 
 certain ideal point in the administrative 
 hierarchy of any organization. This point is 
 where the problem of keeping in touch with 
 the specific details of the agencies of the ac- 
 tion controlled is approximately equal in dif- 
 ficulty to the problem of keeping in touch 
 with the general plan of which that action is 
 a part. To move a function from this point 
 towards headquarters is to lose touch with 
 specific conditions; to move it closer to the 
 agencies of performance is to lose touch with 
 the general plan. 
 
 As organizations grow, one function after 
 another should take its departure from head- 
 quarters and pass down the line of adminis- 
 
ADMINISTRATIVE PRINCIPLES 71 
 
 tration, drawn to lower levels by the neces- 
 sity of keeping in touch with local condi- 
 tions. The definition of what constitutes de- 
 tail for an officer, in a growing organization, 
 expands. Headquarters gradually change 
 from a directing into a co-ordinating agency. 
 
 From the point of view of a superior offi- 
 cer, this sifting of everything to its proper 
 level is the problem of the subordination of 
 detail. The man of capacity often errs by 
 working with energy rather than intelli- 
 gence; not seeing that efficiency does not 
 mean alone to do a great deal, and do it well, 
 but means also to be constantly engaged 
 upon tasks of one's calibre. If an organiza- 
 tion is not large enough to keep a man of 
 talent at his maximum work, the permanent 
 solution is not to allow the individual tb add 
 lower functions, and shade out the subordi- 
 nate executives, but to use this surplus talent 
 for attacking the most important difficulties 
 which restrain growth, so that with the in- 
 crease in the size of the organization there 
 will come abundance of the proper kind of 
 work. 
 
 It is undoubtedly a fact that very many or- 
 ganizations are in a state of being strangled 
 by undue concentration of work at headquar- 
 
72 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ters, while the subordinate ranks are soldier- 
 ing. The proper place for deliberation, and 
 even leisure, is where the far-reaching deci- 
 sions are being made. 
 
 From the point of view of the minor offi- 
 cial, the proper division of administrative 
 functions means dignifying him in the eyes 
 of those over whom he is set. Stimulus 
 comes from the opportunity to do a task 
 large enough to arouse the interest ; and effi- 
 ciency, from the freedom to bring one's per- 
 sonality to bear in a manner harmonious 
 with its nature. Well scattered responsibil- 
 ity sobers and settles a force of executives, 
 and develops and seasons their talents; for 
 individual character is not developed by im- 
 agining responsibility, but by actually carry- 
 ing it. 
 
 In conclusion, it is good policy to push de- 
 centralization and discriminating deputizing 
 somewhat ahead of the needs of the imme- 
 diate situation, with a view to the advance 
 preparation of those agencies which growth 
 will require. The progress of an organiza- 
 tion is largely due to the ambitious upward 
 pressure of the ranks below. Judicious lib- 
 erty will increase this pressure, and form a 
 prime means of insuring the future. 
 
ADMINISTRATIVE PRINCIPLES 73 
 
 DISCIPLINE 
 
 The preceding discussion may suggest the 
 fear that freedom of individual action will 
 destroy discipline. The object of discipline 
 is concert of action. The efficiency of it de- 
 pends upon developing in a body of men such 
 confidence on the part of each individual that 
 every other person will play his part, that 
 expenditure of energy to make sure of this is 
 saved, and the full force of each is free to be 
 expended in doing his own work. 
 
 The amount of freedom which is com- 
 patible with discipline depends not only upon 
 preliminary practice, and action made sec- 
 ond nature, as in the drill of the parade 
 ground, but it depends upon the quality of 
 the human material involved. Upon this de- 
 pends what will appeal, and so what means 
 must be used to make harmony of action 
 doubly secure. 
 
 On its lowest plane, discipline is a train- 
 ing of instinct which insures a step-by-step 
 compliance with a series of acts, which are 
 means to an unexplained end. On its highest 
 plane, it is such enthusiasm for the end, that 
 the full use of the powers of each individual, 
 in choosing the wisest steps to attain it, may 
 be depended upon. The great point is that 
 
74 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 these different planes tend to be mutually 
 exclusive; so that it is of the greatest mo- 
 ment to choose that form of discipline which 
 best agrees with the nature of the circum- 
 stances, and of the end in view. 
 
 CONCENTRATION TO SECURE SUCCESS 
 
 An analogy is suggested between Napole- 
 on's practice of concentrating the masses of 
 his troops to attain superiority at the point 
 of contact with the enemy, and similar poli- 
 cies in industrial affairs. This rule of at- 
 tacking the opposition piecemeal, with one's 
 full force, is described by Mr. F. W. Taylor 
 in his "Shop Management. ' ' He says (p. 
 144) : "It is of the utmost importance that 
 the first combined application of time study, 
 slide rules, instruction cards, functional 
 foremanship, and a premium for a large 
 daily task should prove a success, both for 
 the workmen and for the company, and for 
 this reason a simple class of work should be 
 chosen for a start. The entire efforts of the 
 new management should be centered on one 
 point, and continued there until unqualified 
 success has been attained.' f . . . "Thus," 
 continued Napoleon, ' 1 1 beat it in detail, and 
 the victory which was the result was always, 
 
ADMINISTRATIVE PRINCIPLES ?5 
 
 as you see, the triumph of the larger over 
 the lesser. " 
 
 Nor must the effect of success upon the 
 spirit of resolve in the individual, and upon 
 the morale of a group, be forgotten. To in- 
 duce a body of human beings to exert their 
 powers, in combined action, with some degree 
 of completeness, the aims must be worthy, 
 they must be joint aims, in which all share, 
 the relation between the work of each and 
 the realization of the aims must be clear, and 
 there must be faith that success will be 
 achieved. 
 
 It may be said that the more precarious 
 the prospects of an organization are, the 
 more essential it is that a series of successes 
 should be achieved, even though it be com- 
 posed of very small ones. The position of a 
 captain of industry, who has but a slight hold 
 upon the public through advertising, and 
 who must deal with an unstable body of 
 stockholders, is somewhat similar to the po- 
 sition of Wellington in Spain, who dared not 
 run any avoidable risks for fear a defeat 
 would cost him the support of the govern- 
 ment at home. 
 
THE ADMINISTRATOR AS A 
 SCIENTIST 
 
 Chapter V 
 THE PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 
 
 THOUGHT and action should be closely- 
 connected in every sound program of 
 life. It is true that they have been called 
 opposite and even antagonistic forms of self- 
 expression, as when Goethe said, "Thought 
 expands, but lames ; action animates, but nar- 
 rows/ ' The same idea, with poetical embel- 
 lishments, appears when Hamlet says : 
 
 Conscience does make cowards of us all; 
 And thus the native hue of resolution 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment, 
 With this regard, their currents turn awry, 
 And lose the name of action. 
 
 These expressions emphasize the difficulty 
 of maintaining a just balance between the 
 
 77 
 
78 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 two things. But when neither is allowed to 
 become nnduly dominant, they exert upon 
 each other a mutually developmental and 
 mutually corrective influence. In reality, 
 thought and action are different phases or 
 stages of one complete act of self-expression. 
 Great men of action have usually been 
 strong thinkers. Their action has been 
 known because it has been performed in pub- 
 lic; their thinking has been in private. In 
 the few short months during which Julius 
 Caesar possessed supreme power at Kome, 
 he introduced so many and such far-reaching 
 and skilfully co-ordinated changes in the mili- 
 tary, political, and religious administration 
 of the Empire, as to make it morally certain 
 that he had spent much time, during his 
 Gallic campaigns, in deep thinking on future 
 problems. The great administrator is able to 
 unlimber and deploy his mental resources 
 promptly, at the critical moment, because he 
 has them well classified, and under good dis- 
 cipline. He acts with full energy because he 
 has driven his mental processes through to 
 a thoroughly established and firmly believed 
 conclusion. This deep and firm conclusion 
 may be said to give him the unanimous con- 
 sent of all his faculties to the proposed ac- 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 79 
 
 tion — and thus he puts all of himself into 
 what he does. 
 
 Administration as Thinking 
 
 If administration can be denned as the art 
 of controlling the joint actions of a group of 
 reasoning beings, by means of the systematic 
 communication of certain thoughts and states 
 of mind from one to another, it is obvious 
 that it is chiefly a matter of mental labor. 
 The root of the administrator's power is that 
 he compels other men to think certain 
 thoughts after him. He paralyzes their ac- 
 tion in certain directions, not by orders, — 
 that is, not fundamentally by orders, — but by 
 compelling them to think shame and futility 
 connected with those lines of conduct. He 
 energizes them in other directions by making 
 them think of opportunity, reward, happi- 
 ness, and honor. The executive who can get 
 only eye-service or hand-service, while the 
 minds of his co-workers are alienated from 
 him, is a failure. Administration is a think- 
 ing job. The heart of it is clear-cut, force- 
 ful thinking. 
 
 It is essential, therefore, that administra- 
 tors, and such as aspire to be administrators, 
 should inquire as to the principles of effi- 
 
80 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ciency in thinking. How is it that some men 
 have managed to collect evidence on matters 
 which have eluded the observation of others 
 throughout all history? How have some 
 men managed to express themselves so that 
 no intelligent person can mistake their mean- 
 ing, and so that others separated from them 
 by time and distance have been able to build 
 upon their work with perfect security of un- 
 derstanding? How have they attained to 
 originality, not by flashes only, but uni- 
 formly? How have they contrived to make 
 even failures teach them, so that failures 
 have been transformed into installments of 
 success ? 
 
 Science as Thinking 
 
 If industry is the chief exponent of mod- 
 ern action, it is without question that science 
 is the leading exponent of modern thought. 
 What results may be expected for the human 
 race when these two things shall work to- 
 gether harmoniously and intimately ! Science 
 has devised the most rigid known tests of 
 validity, has perfected an accurate terminol- 
 ogy for recording its results, and has given 
 to its treasures the most systematic arrange- 
 ment for revealing the significance of the 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 81 
 
 ideas. Science has devised the thought- 
 sequences most efficient in investigation, and 
 has discovered the most salutary safeguards 
 and warnings for avoiding error. The his- 
 tory of science, therefore, offers a field of 
 study rich in significance for the student of 
 administration. 
 
 Business men think of science in various 
 ways. To one it means, chiefly, laboratories 
 full of complicated apparatus for delicate and 
 accurate physical manipulations, and alto- 
 gether too slow and expensive for use in 
 commercial production. Another thinks of 
 science as a system of text-books and teach- 
 ers and teaching, having a place somewhere 
 in high-school and university programs, to 
 convince young people that things do not 
 happen without a cause. Another is re- 
 minded of various striking results of re- 
 search which, from time to time, have stirred 
 popular imagination, such as the X-ray, or 
 artificial rubies, or the idea of the progress 
 of the solar system through the heavens. 
 One may, perhaps, venture to say that the 
 usual significance of science to the business 
 executive is a more or less uncertain and im- 
 practical kind of investigation which, from 
 time to time, hits upon a new raw material 
 
82 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 of value, or devises a new process of physi- 
 cal manipulation, or a new instrument of 
 precision, capable, with much modification, 
 of being used in business. Without belittling 
 any one of the above mentioned aspects, it 
 can be emphatically asserted that the signifi- 
 cance of science to the modern administrator 
 lies overwhelmingly in its record of mental 
 methods — in the light which it can throw 
 upon the principles of efficient thinking. 
 
 Let us examine this history very briefly, 
 looking at it from a special point of view. 
 Let us consider it as a record of ways and 
 means, or as a test of brains, rather than as 
 a mass of results ; trusting that if a few sug- 
 gestions of value can be found, the reader 
 may be induced to continue the study for 
 himself, to the end that, in this study, he 
 may find a means of developing the power of 
 judging thought processes, as one, through 
 shop training, develops the power of judging 
 the fitness of physical processes. 
 
 The Problem of Origins 
 
 "When we take up the history of science, a 
 question of the first importance at once con- 
 fronts us. What first started men to think 
 in the accurate, searching fashion essential 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 83 
 
 to the construction of science! Can we, 
 through the study of the origins of science, 
 discover the conditions which must be pro- 
 vided, if we wish an individual, or an indus- 
 try, or a neighborhood, to attain the efficiency 
 of science in its productive activities? 
 
 The record of science covers only some 
 seven hundred years of the six thousand or 
 more of recorded history. In those centuries 
 it concerns but a minute fraction of the hu- 
 man race then existing. It has, therefore, to 
 do with a rare and exceptional kind of hu- 
 man activity. The history is strangely di- 
 vided into two periods, with eighteen hun- 
 dred years lying between. The first division 
 of it is the story of the Greek mind, from 
 600 to 300 B. C, the second extends from the 
 sixteenth century to the present time. We 
 have, therefore, two origins to examine, and 
 to bring into comparison. 
 
 The Science of Greece 
 
 In the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. 
 that most keen-witted and audacious of an- 
 cient peoples, the Hellenes, founded many 
 colonies, and spread themselves out so wide- 
 ly along the shores of the Mediterranean that, 
 in maintaining intercourse, the arts of navi- 
 
84 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 gation became considerably improved, and 
 trade was enlarged and systematized. As a 
 result of the enslavement of less powerful 
 peoples, and of the accumulation of wealth 
 in the chief cities, the upper classes were 
 gradually relieved from the pressure of ne- 
 cessity, and given the leisure to think. 
 Travel, and the exchange of reports concern- 
 ing different countries and peoples, broad- 
 ened the intellectual horizon of these favored 
 city-dwellers; while the practice of making 
 comparisons stimulated them to consider at- 
 tentively points of similarity and difference. 
 The contact with Egypt was particularly sig- 
 nificant to them, for it revealed the surpris- 
 ing fact that an orderly history, completely 
 under human control, and free from super- 
 natural occurrences, had there been recorded 
 during the ages when Greek mythology as- 
 serted that the world was overrun with gods 
 and goddesses. This revelation produced a 
 keen interest in travel, and in descriptions 
 of the geography, manners, and customs of 
 foreign countries. An attitude of suspicion 
 was developed toward inherited beliefs, which 
 finally led inquiring minds to make a clean 
 sweep of legendary and traditional explana- 
 tions of the universe, and to seek, by means 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 85 
 
 of observation and reasoning, to construct a 
 new and more adequate explanation of na- 
 ture, and of the forces governing conduct. 
 
 The wars which the Greek cities waged 
 constantly among themselves compelled them 
 to study human nature incessantly ; while the 
 ever-present uncertainty of fortune made 
 talent and sound leadership highly prized, 
 and emphasized the value of courage and 
 strenuous activity. Whenever, as a result of 
 class struggles, it happened that tyrants rose 
 to power, amassed fortunes, and strove, by 
 luxury and the lavish patronage of the arts, 
 to make men forget their humble origins, the 
 examples thus created served only to stir 
 envy and arouse ambition. These successes 
 of individuals furnished proof of the control 
 man could exercise over destiny. In this dra- 
 matic and ever-changing life, conventional 
 interpretations were continually breaking 
 down. Inquiring minds were continually 
 thrown upon their own resources, and taught 
 to confront the unknown universe of forces 
 around them with something of the same 
 boldness and aggressiveness which men used 
 in dealing with each other. 
 
 And so it happened that there arose, even- 
 tually, about 650 B. C, a man who, through 
 
86 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 extensive travel and a long life as merchant, 
 statesman, engineer, mathematician, and as- 
 tronomer, gathered a rich store of knowledge. 
 By somewhat systematizing his ideas, and 
 persistently communicating them to others, 
 this man became the father of science. Such 
 was Thales. And so also, shortly after him, 
 Anaximander, a subtle observer of analogies, 
 and the first maker of maps, was led to set 
 down in writing his observations on nature, 
 and to bring into existence the first Greek 
 manuscript on science. 
 
 The sixth century was like the seventh, still 
 a period of origins. Pythagoras studied the 
 length and pitch of musical strings, and 
 formulated a somewhat mystical theory of 
 numbers. Hecataeus was the first of a long 
 line of writers to throw doubt upon the 
 myths of history. 
 
 The fifth century saw the climax of Greek 
 learning. In it Herodotus,*' the Father of 
 History, carried forward the work of sifting 
 tradition, while Thucydides, who followed 
 him, tested with care the facts he used, and 
 looked upon history in a very modern way, 
 not as the story of gods and heroes, but as 
 the record of natural forces and human pas- 
 sions. Heraclitus, who led the way in philo- 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 87 
 
 sophical criticism, groped vaguely toward the 
 conception of a universal reign of law, while 
 Democritus, his scholar, hit upon the theory 
 of matter as composed of atoms in a state of^ 
 ceaseless motion. To this age belongs, also, 
 Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, and the 
 leader of a band of practitioners who, under 
 the impulse of high professional ideals, were 
 investigators as well, and in their writings 
 were not ashamed to record their failures as 
 well as their successes. The manuscripts left 
 by these men upon the muscles and the joints, 
 and upon medicines, diet, and specific dis- 
 eases, form collectively the most systematic 
 body of scientific knowledge bequeathed by 
 Greece to later generations. These thinkers, 
 and many others, adorned an age the central 
 figure of which was Socrates, the bare-footed 
 questioning sage of the market-places of 
 Athens. This great and good man contin- 
 ually sought practice in the art of reasoning, 
 debating quietly and candidly with all who 
 would participate with him. With an ever- 
 burning enthusiasm for truth and virtue, Soc- 
 rates seized every occasion to teach those 
 about him how to give words definite mean- 
 ings, and how to make their concepts clear. 
 He endeavored to train men in reasoning, be- 
 
88 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 cause he believed that whoever could think 
 clearly would ultimately arrive at a knowl- 
 edge of the superiority of right actions. 
 
 The intellectual activities of Athens, at its 
 best period, under Pericles, possessed a truly 
 remarkable range. Everywhere knowledge 
 and technical skill was in demand. Geogra- 
 phy and astronomy, natural history and agri- 
 culture were studied, architecture and city 
 planning were improved, physical culture 
 was reduced to system, grammar and rhet- 
 oric had their origins, oratory was made an 
 essential of a public career, and the art of 
 war was given new rules. Science became 
 the vogue with crowds of persons who de- 
 manded superficial learning as a social asset. 
 
 The fourth century was both an advance 
 and a decline. In it Plato composed the fa- 
 mous Dialogs, in which he elaborated with 
 poetical power the different phases of the 
 teachings of Socrates. Toward the close of 
 this century, Aristotle, the greatest mind of 
 antiquity, and the one whom Dante has called, 
 "The Master of Those Who Know," passed 
 in review everything which had been done. 
 Bringing philosophy and science together, he 
 gave to them the most systematic form then 
 possible. "The Aristotelian element in 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 89 
 
 thought and knowledge,' ' says Sir Alex. 
 Grant, "may, perhaps, be summed up as ana- 
 lytic insight; and this insight arises out of 
 concentration of the mind upon the subject 
 in hand, marshalling together all the facts 
 and opinions attainable upon it, and dwell- 
 ing on these, and scrutinizing and comparing 
 them till a light flashes on the whole sub- 
 ject. Such is the procedure which may be 
 learnt by imitation from Aristotle." Not 
 only did Aristotle describe and practice in- 
 duction, but he gave in his writings so per- 
 fect a description of deductive reasoning, 
 that little of importance has since been added 
 to it. 
 
 The fourth century, however, ignored the 
 emphasis placed by Aristotle upon experi- 
 ence and observation. The great demand for 
 popular knowledge led to the rise of a class 
 of professional teachers, called Sophists, 
 which preferred brilliant superficial generali- 
 zation to the drudgery of examining facts. 
 The Greek mind (always prone to sweeping 
 conclusions and rhetorical embellishments), 
 when it lost its simplicity and seriousness of 
 purpose, soon entangled itself in the meshes 
 of unprofitable metaphysical speculation. 
 This was illustrated, after the middle of the 
 
90 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 fourth century, by the disputes of the Stoics 
 and Epicureans. 
 
 There were, however, other reasons why 
 the light of science died out. With the rise 
 of the Macedonian empire, the Greek cities 
 lost their freedom, and with it their courage 
 and independence of thinking. The great 
 empire conquered by Alexander in the east 
 opened opportunities for enterprising per- 
 sons to make their fortunes as administra- 
 tors, military leaders, or teachers. The more 
 active individuals became scattered through 
 these vast eastern domains, and lost the 
 touch with each other which was necessary 
 to continue the construction of a systematic 
 body of knowledge. The Athenian schools 
 were abandoned, and the nucleus of thinking 
 was destroyed. With the founding of Alex- 
 andria, Athens lost her place as the leading 
 intellectual city of the world. 
 
 Alexandrine Era 
 
 A word may be said to bridge the transi- 
 tion from ancient to modern science. It was 
 in many ways fortunate that Alexander scat- 
 tered Greek culture over Asia Minor and into 
 Egypt, for by so doing he prepared the way 
 for the Eoman empire of the East. And, 
 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 91 
 
 furthermore, since Europe was soon to be 
 made hostile to " pagan' ' learning, by the 
 rise of Christianity, and to be thrown back 
 into a primitive state of culture by the bar- 
 barian invasions, Alexander, by spreading 
 what was known of mathematics and astron- 
 omy and medicine through eastern and south- 
 ern countries, brought this knowledge to the 
 attention of the keen Hebrew mind, and threw 
 it in the way of the Mohammedan invaders. 
 These races, prizing the precious heritage, 
 carried it with them across northern Africa 
 and into Spain, and preserved it during the 
 Middle Ages, until the awakening of the six- 
 teenth century permitted its introduction into 
 Christian Europe. 
 
 The Middle Ages were absorbed in civiliz- 
 ing the barbarians. They were full of the 
 turbulence incident to the establishing of 
 governments. Their thought was dominated 
 by tradition, as represented by the Church 
 and the Holy Eoman Empire. The doctrine 
 of human depravity, drilled into studious 
 minds by the Church, dampened the ardor 
 of those gifted persons who might have led 
 their age. They learned to look upon human 
 nature and the natural world with contempt 
 and despair, as the abiding places of evil. 
 
92 business administration 
 
 Renaissance 
 The Middle Ages were brought to an end, 
 and modern history was inaugurated, by a 
 gradual increase in the restlessness and bold- 
 ness of thinking. The fermentation of ideas 
 became general with the dissemination of the 
 knowledge carried into Europe by the return- 
 ing crusaders. It was promoted by the po- 
 litical contests in which political rulers began 
 to cast off the control of the church, and by 
 which the rising spirit of nationality repudi- 
 ated the idea of subordination to a universal 
 empire. It made itself felt in everyday af- 
 fairs when the merchants of the northern 
 cities demanded freedom and protection for 
 trade, and opposed experience to dogma in 
 refuting the Church's condemnation of inter- 
 est-taking. When thus the foundations of 
 thought were already loosened, there came to 
 Europe, in the fifteenth century, from the 
 west, the news of the dramatic episodes of 
 the geographical discoveries. All minds 
 were thrilled. At the same time, there came 
 from the east (brought with the scholars 
 driven out when Constantinople fell into the 
 hands of the Turks), the brave thoughts of 
 the classical writers of Greece and Eome. 
 Under this double spur, with the mysterious 
 
PIONEERS OP SCIENCE 93 
 
 new world beckoning men of action, and the 
 no less mysterious treasures of the past beck- 
 oning men of scholarly inclination, the new 
 spirit of freedom at last burst all restraining 
 bonds. Liberated from narrow ideas, as from 
 a prison, men dared again to look upon the 
 world as a home given the human race to 
 subdue and enjoy, and upon human nature as 
 a thing with a noble history and inspiring 
 possibilities. 
 
 To the generation which, at the close of 
 the Middle Ages, was just emerging from 
 a long bondage to priest and prince, to 
 authority and dogma, the long-lost record of 
 the ancient nations was a powerful tonic. 
 This rediscovered learning displayed the full 
 record of human heroism and achievement, 
 for the first time, to the men of the Kenais- 
 sance. It was a call to freedom; a demand 
 for intellectual elbow-room; a reassertion of 
 the right to think. It aroused in them a de- 
 termination to emulate the past, and become 
 the masters of their own destinies. The vast 
 stretches of the newly-discovered continents, 
 meantime, served as a fit stage for any mag- 
 nificent drama the imagination could con- 
 struct. These things gave to man a new 
 dignity. They revealed the arts and sciences 
 
94 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 as the beneficent handmaids of culture, and 
 they affirmed that noble living was as much 
 the bringing of the Kingdom of God on earth, 
 as the laying up of treasures in Heaven. The 
 new spirit created a human sentiment which 
 destroyed old customs and created new ones. 
 It issued in a transformed literature and a 
 new architecture and art. By turning in- 
 quiry upon religious creeds, it brought on, 
 at length, the Reformation and the Counter- 
 reformation. 
 
 It is not surprising that an age which 
 looked into everything with such fresh and 
 fearless eyes, which realized that gunpowder 
 had made a new equality among men, which 
 in the spread of new ideas had a constant 
 illustration of the value of the discovery of 
 printing, and which saw new continents dis- 
 covered, should have beheld the physical 
 earth with a new respect, and have turned 
 with a new attentiveness toward the study 
 of nature's laws. 
 
 The Pioneebs op Science 
 
 Scientific study was taken up where Ptol- 
 emy the astronomer, and Galen the physi- 
 cian, and Archimedes the mechanic had left 
 it. The collecting of manuscripts was re- 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 95 
 
 sumed where the scholars of Alexandria had 
 dropped it when their great library was 
 burned in 640 A. D. The experiments in 
 chemistry were resumed where the alchemists 
 had abandoned them in their fruitless search 
 for gold. In the sciences having to do with 
 human conduct, Machiavelli sought for rules 
 of government in the writings of Livy. Gro- 
 tius resumed the work of the Eoman jurists, 
 as did also Vico, when he asked why there 
 was not a science of history analogous to the 
 science of nature. 
 
 The events which led to the re-inaugura- 
 tion of scientific study by no means made 
 it safe or easy; they simply aroused certain 
 courageous souls to brave the difficulties ly- 
 ing in the way. One of these difficulties was 
 the mixture of good and evil in the liberating 
 movement itself. All reforms suffer from 
 those who destroy balance and proportion by 
 excess, as well as from those who destroy it 
 by deficiency. The Eenaissance in many 
 ways discredited itself. It not only revived 
 the knowledge of pagan nations, but it 
 brought into practice again many of their 
 vices and brutalities. It soon produced, also, 
 a group of servile imitators of the ancient 
 writers who, like the Greek sophists, smoth- 
 
96 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ered learning in pedantry, and offered to the 
 hungry intelligence of the age a spurious 
 product, elegant but inane. 
 
 Another hindrance to science, which was 
 much increased by this weakness, was the 
 perplexity of mind and anguish of soul into 
 which all were plunged who had the temerity 
 to move on, in their thinking, in advance of 
 their times. The legend of Faust typifies the 
 struggle of those pioneers of science who 
 alternated between hours of passionate as- 
 piration after truth, and periods of con- 
 science-stricken doubt as to the sanity and 
 morality of their own actions in defying con- 
 stituted authority. When chemistry was yet 
 alchemy, and astronomy had not yet distin- 
 guished itself from astrology, to possess un- 
 usual knowledge of nature, or to be able to 
 do things not easily explained, meant, to the 
 majority of men, to be in criminal league with 
 the powers of darkness. The mixture of fear 
 and scorn in which the pioneers of science 
 were held prolonged and intensified the 
 mental struggles through which they were 
 called to pass ; for no man can entirely resist 
 viewing himself in the light in which he is 
 conscious that the community in general con- 
 siders him. 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 97 
 
 But there were other dangers of a more 
 palpable nature threatening the pioneers of 
 independent thinking. So long as the new 
 movement of ideas concerned itself with liter- 
 ature and the arts, with manuscripts and 
 manners, the conservative forces of society 
 looked upon it with indulgence, and even with 
 sympathy. But when it began to question 
 the earth's primacy among the heavenly bod- 
 ies, and so indirectly to attack the idea that 
 the earth is the chief concern of the Deity; 
 and when it began to announce, as facts, mat- 
 ters which could not be harmonized with the 
 account of creation given in Genesis, the revo- 
 lutionary nature of the new inquiries was 
 perceived by princes spiritual and temporal, 
 and preparations were made to stop them. 
 The ecclesiastical hierarchy and the Inquisi- 
 tion, backed as they were in most countries 
 by the political authorities, possessed the 
 power to make a man a moral leper in his 
 community, by pronouncing him a heretic, 
 and to thrust his works into despised ob- 
 livion by means of the Index Expurgatorius. 
 And, if these means were not sufficient, there \ 
 were the rack, the prison, and the stake, as 
 the ultimate weapons. The Kenaissance be- 
 gan as a spring-time of joyous awakening, 
 
98 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 but it brought at last not peace but a sword, 
 and employed it in persecution as well as 
 in warfare. 
 
 And so we find a record of heroism — the 
 usual price paid for a precious liberty. Roger 
 Bacon, a man born long out of time, spent 
 twenty-five years of his life in prison, to 
 atone for his researches in chemistry. Co- 
 pernicus, the Polish priest-astronomer, for- 
 bidden to speak in public upon science, hid 
 his discoveries for thirty-six years, fearing 
 the charge of heresy. Only upon his death- 
 bed did he see a copy of the book, in the 
 preparation of which his life had been spent. 
 Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome, in 
 the year 1600, for his views of nature. It 
 was not until 1611 that the last man was 
 burned on English soil for independent think- 
 ing. Galileo was compelled, by threat of the 
 rack, to recant ; and was kept, during the lat- 
 ter part of his life, in seclusion and semi- 
 imprisonment. Grotius, the father of inter- 
 national law, was condemned to life imprison- 
 ment. He escaped his jailors only through 
 the strategy of his wife, who smuggled him 
 out in a box of books. Lavoisier was guillo- 
 tined in 1794 by a government which said it 
 had no use for scientists. And in the same 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 99 
 
 year, Priestley was driven by persecution 
 from England to America. 
 
 To the age of the pioneers belong, in as- 
 tronomy, Copernicus, who asserted that the 
 sun and not the earth is the center of the 
 solar system; Tycho Brahe, the eccentric 
 Danish nobleman who, with royal patronage, 
 inaugurated modern observatory methods on 
 a grand scale ; Kepler, who had the patience 
 to test his brilliant theories by years of 
 mathematical drudgery; and Galileo, who 
 mapped the heavens with a telescope which 
 would now excite the ridicule of a county 
 fair. In physics and chemistry, the pioneers 
 include Paracelsus, the physician-scientist, 
 who in youth wandered over Europe in 
 search of knowledge, and in old age in search 
 of bread and protection; Becher, the discov- 
 erer of boracic acid; Boyle, half alchemist, 
 half chemist, the first Englishman to follow 
 Bacon's method; Hooke, pupil of Boyle, who 
 enunciated the undulatory theory of light, 
 and almost anticipated Newton's discovery 
 of universal gravitation ; and Priestley who, 
 with apparatus made of wash-tubs and 
 kitchen utensils, discovered oxygen, and iso- 
 lated more gases than all his predecessors 
 put together. 
 
100 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 In the sciences having to do with human 
 behavior, new pathways were opened some- 
 what later than in the case of the physical 
 sciences. Machiavelli made an unrivaled an- 
 alysis of the art of the political despot, but 
 so isolated politics from ethics as to earn 
 almost universal condemnation. Bodin be- 
 came the first modern to rival Aristotle in 
 the study of government. Locke began again 
 the analysis of human consciousness. Mon- 
 tesquieu definitely transferred the idea of law 
 from the natural to the social sciences, by 
 revealing political institutions as the natural 
 products of the conditions of each country. 
 Adam Smith traced the workings of the force 
 of self-interest in the general economic move- 
 ments of society, and produced a book which 
 changed the policies of nations. Beccaria 
 showed the futility of the barbarous punish- 
 ments of his day, which rested on ignorance 
 of human nature. 
 
 Eequisites of Creative Thinking 
 
 Let us for a moment, in conclusion, sum- 
 marize the significance of these two great be- 
 ginnings in science — the origin in Greece, and 
 the re-awakening in western Europe. Among 
 the elements in the story which have acted 
 
PIONEERS OF SCIENCE 101 
 
 as encouragements to thinking, we find leis- 
 ure, courage, a dramatic break with the past, 
 alluring opportunity, and sound ethical mo- 
 tives. Two things may, perhaps, be selected 
 as basic in setting the human mind at its 
 best work : striking events to shake the force 
 of tradition, and brave men fit to play the 
 role of pioneers. The administrator who 
 would revolutionize the methods of his or- 
 ganization, must, therefore, break the force 
 of the mental inertia expressed by the well- 
 known phrase, ' ' It has always been done that 
 way here"; and he must so generously share 
 opportunities as to enlist the interest and fire 
 the imagination of his men. Having done 
 this, it remains to discover the minds of in- 
 quisitive and courageous nature, which re- 
 veal themselves in response to the conditions, 
 and to give to such gifted individuals special 
 encouragement. 
 
Chapter VI 
 SYSTEM-MAKEES OF SCIENCE 
 
 npHE age of the pioneers, in any province 
 * of science, is normally succeeded by 
 that of the systematizers. System involves 
 the ordering of details in conformity to a 
 general plan. A general plan of necessity 
 rests upon general concepts or principles, de- 
 rived from the study of groups of specific 
 facts. When, therefore, the period of sys- 
 tematization comes in scientific thinking, 
 there appear in most conspicuous form those 
 special bugbears of the practical man, name- 
 ly, theories and theorizers. As the work of 
 fact collection proceeds in any branch of 
 science, and the amount of knowledge on any 
 group of subjects becomes at length consid- 
 erable, an unwieldiness or confusion mani- 
 fests itself, owing to the lack of comprehen- 
 sive conceptions and basic principles, by 
 which the general drift and bearing of the 
 innumerable specific facts may be grasped. 
 In short, the woods cannot be seen for the 
 trees. The suggestion then comes quite na- 
 turally that, as small collections of facts have 
 permitted minor principles and local and lim- 
 103 
 
104 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ited tendencies to be fixed, so, if facts can be 
 compared in larger bodies, group with group 
 and class with class, general laws and ten- 
 dencies will be discovered. 
 
 To the scientist, a law or principle is the 
 description of a tendency or general charac- 
 teristic of a series of facts. It is an account 
 of sequences which tend, from the nature of 
 things, to be self -enforcing. It has been de- 
 fined as, "A description in the simplest pos- 
 sible terms of the widest possible range of 
 phenomena.' ' In all forms of mental work 
 the use of principles and types is indispens- 
 able. The beginning of reasoning is to at- 
 tain a conception of general facts, such as a 
 law or a system of laws, to begin the process 
 of grouping general facts into conveniently 
 handled types or standards, and to form the 
 habit of judging specific instances by compar- 
 ing them with the standards. 
 
 The advantage of this habit lies in its econ- 
 omy of effort. William James has said: 
 
 The best possible sort of system into which to weave an 
 object, mentally, is a rational system, or what is called a 
 "science." Place the thing in its pigeon-hole in a classi- 
 ficatory series; explain it logically by its causes, and deduce 
 from it its necessary effects ; find out of what natural law it 
 is an instance — and you then know it in the best of all pos- 
 sible ways. A "science" is thus the greatest of labor-sav- 
 
 
SYSTEM-MAKERS OF SCIENCE 105 
 
 ing contrivances. It relieves the memory of an immense 
 number of details, replacing, as it does, merely contiguous 
 associations by the logical ones of identity, similarity, or 
 analogy. If you know a "law," you may discharge your 
 memory of masses of particular instances, for the law will 
 reproduce them for you whenever you require them. 
 
 The person who thinks over his experi- 
 ences, and deduces principles from them, 
 soon raises himself, therefore, above depend- 
 ence upon mere retentive memory. Such a 
 man does not need to crowd his mind with 
 specific instances, to be protected from the 
 danger of going against the teachings of ex- 
 perience, for in his principles he has the con- 
 centrated extract of experience. His mind 
 is liberated from timid subserviency to tra- 
 dition or precedent, for it has the guidance 
 of a deeper and surer rule. 
 
 The work of bringing together the de- 
 tached results of isolated observers, and of 
 submitting them to systematic arrangement 
 and comparison, became a somewhat notable 
 tendency in the natural sciences, in the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century and the first 
 part of the nineteenth. It centered first upon 
 the mathematical sciences and later upon the 
 biological group. 
 
 It was the work of the system-makers to 
 articulate the frame-work of those sciences 
 
106 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 which were sufficiently advanced to permit it, 
 and to make comprehensible the bearing of 
 each section or subdivision of knowledge 
 upon the others. By thus bringing parts of 
 sciences and families of sciences into com- 
 parison, many apparent contradictions have 
 been explained. The light afforded by dis- 
 coveries in one subject has served to illumi- 
 nate the dark places of neighboring subjects. 
 The very endeavor to make a comprehensive 
 survey revealed the fact that certain im- 
 portant subjects had been overlooked and un- 
 studied. The comparison of ways of work- 
 ing caused simplification and standardiza- 
 tion. It insured also the application of each 
 method to all investigations for which it is 
 the best, regardless of the kind of work in 
 which the method itself originated. Stand- 
 ardization of methods immensely decreased 
 cost, improved instruction, and facilitated the 
 comprehension, comparison, and final proof 
 of results. 
 
 An example of the good effect of carrying 
 the data of one science into the field of an- 
 other is afforded by the history of spectrum 
 analysis. Not only did the minerals fur- 
 nished by the chemist, and given a character- 
 istic spectrum by the physicist, enable the as- 
 
SYSTEM-MAKERS OP SCIENCE 107 
 
 tronomer to show that the stars are made 
 of the same substances as the earth, but the 
 unexplained lines in the spectrum of the stars 
 suggested to the chemist the existence of un- 
 known minerals. Another illustration is the 
 theory of geology, as stated by Hutton and 
 completed by Lyell; namely, that the earth's 
 surface has been brought to its present con- 
 dition through the operation of no other 
 forces than those now existing. When this 
 conclusion was brought to the attention of 
 biologists, it cast doubt upon the accepted be- 
 lief that each species of animal and plant was 
 the result of a special act of creation. If all 
 unusual and cataclysmic processes, and all 
 special acts of creation, were found to be un- 
 necessary in accounting for inorganic forms, 
 such as the continents and seas, it seemed ir- 
 rational to rely upon them in accounting for 
 organic forms. This doubt redoubled the en- 
 ergy of the search for a simple and natural 
 process which could be considered adequate 
 to explain the existence of the variety of ex- 
 tinct and existing forms of life on the earth. 
 The search resulted in the Darwinian theory 
 of evolution. This theory, in its construc- 
 tion, beautifully illustrates the value of 
 carrying ideas from one science to another, 
 
108 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 for it is composed of elements brought from 
 many different sources. The original con- 
 ception of an all-inclusive process of evolu- 
 tionary change came from philosophy, the 
 theory that this change was caused by the 
 normal exercise of forces now existing was 
 transferred from geology, the observation of 
 spontaneous variation was first made by the 
 animal breeders of England, and the concep- 
 tion of a struggle for existence, involving the 
 destruction of the unfit, was found by Darwin 
 in the economic writings of Eobert Malthus. 
 
 Leaders in Scientific Theory 
 
 We can mention but a few names among 
 the many which hold an honorable place in 
 the history of scientific system-making. A 
 man of the very highest genius was Laplace, 
 frequently called the Newton of France. He 
 was an important connecting link in astron- 
 omy. On the one hand he closed a chapter 
 of research by his contributions to celestial 
 mechanics, and on the other, he opened a new 
 lead with his nebular hypothesis, which an- 
 nounced a general process of change in the 
 universe. In geology the first to correlate 
 the mass of observations of rocks was the 
 Scotchman, James Hutton. He arranged his 
 
 
SYSTEM-MAKERS OF SCIENCE 109 
 
 facts into a luminous and coherent theory, in 
 which the process of deposition of rocks on 
 the sea bottom, of elevation and folding to 
 form the land masses, and of wearing down 
 by atmospheric agencies, all found their logi- 
 cal places. 
 
 Turning to the biological sciences, we find 
 five systematizers whose work is closely 
 linked together. The first is Linnaeus, the 
 namer or Adam of science, and undoubtedly 
 the greatest natural classifier that science 
 has ever known. It has been said that he 
 found biology a chaos and left it a cosmos. 
 He did so by introducing the idea of a stair- 
 way or scale of nature, composed of a suc- 
 cession of living forms arranged in a single 
 series of steps of ascending complexity. This 
 system of classification was perfected by La- 
 marck who, however, based the arrangement 
 of genera and species not upon superficial 
 characteristics, but upon organic structure. 
 He formulated a number of laws of organic 
 change, which will bear study by the admin- 
 istrator. One of these became famous, name- 
 ly, that evolution proceeds through the in- 
 heritance of acquired characteristics. It was 
 the work of Cuvier to show that organisms 
 could not be considered as related to each 
 
110 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 other in a single series, but that they must 
 be conceived as diverging from certain primi- 
 tive types, as the branches of a tree spread 
 out from the trunk. Finally Darwin, whose 
 theory has already been mentioned, sup- 
 planted the Lamarckian theory, by showing 
 that organic evolution is not caused by the 
 inheritance of acquired characteristics, but 
 is the result of spontaneous variation, and of 
 a struggle for existence in which the fittest 
 types alone survive. The last great step in 
 the elaboration of the doctrine of evolution 
 was taken by Herbert Spencer. The central 
 idea of his comprehensive system is the ap- 
 plication of this law to the mind of man, and 
 to the phenomena of human society. In 
 working out this idea, Spencer became the 
 first to attempt a strictly inductive or scien- 
 tific system of philosophy. 
 
 Exploded Theories 
 
 The system-makers have had difficulties to 
 overcome as truly as the pioneers. It has 
 been their task to build an insecure structure 
 of hypotheses out from the known toward the 
 unknown, like bridge-builders who could not 
 know what the span was to be until the far- 
 ther pier was reached. When their hy- 
 
SYSTEM-MAKERS OF SCIENCE 111 
 
 potheses failed to be confirmed as principles, 
 and their systems fell in ruins, they earned 
 the title of ' ' nature-philosophers ' ' ; a phrase 
 intended to exclude them entirely from the 
 brotherhood of scientists. And even when 
 their work was sound, and later confirmed, 
 they often received the grudging recognition 
 of the word " premature. ' ' 
 
 The favorite gibe of outsiders against 
 science is "exploded theories"; as if the re- 
 tort "obsolete methods" were not at hand. 
 With every wreck of a theory there arise 
 those critics, so wise after the event, who 
 timidly shudder at the hazard of error in 
 speculation, but without showing how the 
 work of science (or any other great work 
 in the world), can go on, except with the free 
 and bold use of tentative conclusions. As a 
 matter of fact, most "exploded theories" 
 have been useful in their time. A theory 
 does not need to be the ultimate truth to be 
 of value. It is helpful if it substitutes a 
 conception more like the truth than that 
 which it has displaced, for by so doing it 
 facilitates the transition to the truth, mak- 
 ing the individual steps toward it shorter 
 and easier. The human mind does not leap to 
 the greater truths at a single bound, but 
 
112 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 builds up to them by degrees, as the increase 
 of knowledge permits, reaching them by a 
 series of approximations, or through a pro- 
 cess of corrections. "Erroneous observa- 
 tions,' ' said Darwin, "are in the highest de- 
 gree injurious to the progress of science, 
 since they often persist for a long time. But 
 erroneous theories, when they are supported 
 by facts, do little harm, since every one takes 
 a healthy pleasure in proving their falsity.' ' 
 The history of science amply proves that even 
 when the scaffolding of theory has been in- 
 adequate, and has been torn down, it has 
 usually served in its day to advance the con- 
 struction of the permanent edifice of truth. 
 
 Theories in Practical Affairs 
 
 The place and function of theory has thus 
 been denned by Mr. E. Bay Lankester, in his 
 description of the scientific method : 
 
 First, accuracy in the observation and statement of a 
 fact and, secondly, the formation of often far-reaching 
 guesses in explanation of the fact, suggested by a knowledge 
 of other well-ascertained facts; [third] the guess being 
 then tested, and so either established or discarded by 
 means of experiment, or by further observation, or by 
 logical reference to ascertained facts. 
 
 It is a very widespread opinion that prac- 
 tical reasoning differs from scientific reason- 
 
SYSTEM-MAKERS OF SCIENCE 113 
 
 ing chiefly in the second step of Prof. Lan- 
 kester 's definition ; that is to say, in the use 
 of "guesses" or of theories or hypotheses. 
 There is, however, much ground for saying 
 that it is precisely at this point that the 
 greatest similarity between the two kinds of 
 reasoning lies. The true difference is to be 
 found in the first and third steps, namely, in 
 the accuracy and completeness as to facts, 
 and in the care with which conclusions are 
 tested before being accepted. 
 
 Theories are probably as plentiful in prac- 
 tical affairs as they are in science. The dif- 
 ference in the use is that men of affairs (if 
 they have not had scientific training) use the- 
 ories for the most part unconsciously, and 
 distinguish them imperfectly from matters 
 of established fact. This carelessness keeps 
 alive a crop of natural fallacies which, 
 though periodically slaughtered on the field 
 of scientific debate, springs up afresh in the 
 minds of every new generation. It keeps 
 afloat, also, a sort of scientific wreckage com- 
 posed of survivals of old systems of thought, 
 now abandoned by contemporary thinkers; 
 and fragments of scientific views, misunder- 
 stood because popularized apart from their 
 proper interpreting accompaniments. 
 
114 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 As an example of an unconscious theory 
 at work, we may point to the starvation of 
 administrative and service departments of 
 industrial organizations, by reason of the in- 
 fluence of the unfortunate phrase, "unpro- 
 ductive expenditure. ' ' The natural fallacy 
 may be illustrated by the idea that invention 
 will be promoted by concentrating capable 
 men upon the particular process or mechan- 
 ism to be improved, rather than by increas- 
 ing the range and variety of study, so as to 
 bring about a cross-fertilization of ideas. An 
 example of a theory torn out of its natural 
 place, and misapplied, is the idea that since, 
 in the days of small owner-managers, the 
 chief executives represented capital interests 
 exclusively, such a policy is suitable for 
 large-scale enterprises of the present day, 
 with absentee stockholders, staff-conscious- 
 ness, organized labor, and active public con- 
 trol. Incongruous elements may be seen 
 joined together in the speech of those who, at 
 one time, speak of the economy of high 
 wages, and at another, of protection to equal- 
 ize labor costs. Obsolete issues may be 
 found doing duty in establishments where 
 the continual thought is equipment rather 
 than men ; as if we were still in the seventies, 
 
SYSTEM-MAKERS OF SCIENCE 115 
 
 with poor mechanism and splendid men, in- 
 stead of being in a time of splendid equip- 
 ment, but unawakened and inefficient oper- 
 atives. Men of affairs often ridicule science 
 because of their own poor success with the- 
 ories, although it is precisely in science that 
 theories are used with intelligence and made 
 to yield efficient results. 
 
 Theories are indispensable tools of sys- 
 tematic thinking, and are therefore essential 
 to efficient action under the complicated con- 
 ditions of modern industry. The slow-mov- 
 ing pedestrian may be able to make some 
 progress by creeping along, with lantern in 
 hand, lighting the road a few steps at a time ; 
 but the automobile driver requires powerful 
 lamps. Small bodies can turn quickly, but 
 where large momentum is involved the road 
 must be seen far in advance to allow for ob- 
 stacles. By means of these analogies we 
 may approach a rule of administration, 
 namely, the more rapidly affairs move, and 
 the greater the interests involved in single 
 transactions, the greater is the need for the- 
 ories of action deduced from specific facts, 
 and for such a calculus of probabilities as 
 hypotheses alone afford. Theories are dan- 
 gerous, of course — all complex, highly-pro- 
 
116 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ductive agencies are so. They must be 
 formed and applied by men of trained intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 Those great business executives who be- 
 come specially noted as leaders of men are 
 usually men of imagination or, as the phrase 
 goes, of " large ideas.' ' A theory opens the 
 road in advance of action, and in so doing 
 quickens and intensifies action. To arouse 
 men to exert themselves, a view or belief is 
 needed which absorbs the past into the pres- 
 ent event, and projects both into the future, 
 forming a program or course of conduct. The 
 first event gains in significance as it leads to 
 something else; and this, in turn, is illumi- 
 nated by the charm of a still more remote 
 good. Thus a vista is opened, — a way of 
 life, — along which progress seems worth 
 while. And so men are awakened, and their 
 energies unlocked. "Even false views of 
 things,' ' said Cardinal Newman, "have more 
 influence, and inspire more respect than no 
 views at all. Men who fancy they see what 
 is not are more energetic, and make their 
 way better than those who see nothing.' ' Cer- 
 tainly those men are best able to evoke the 
 enthusiasm and support of others who can 
 present far-reaching and significant ideas, — 
 
SYSTEM-MAKERS OF SCIENCE 117 
 
 ideas which touch upon and illuminate many- 
 things with a new significance, and which 
 fire the imagination by their implications and 
 consequences. 
 
 The latest scientific advance seems always 
 to be more or less a fabric of dreams, for 
 it stands at first uninterpreted into popular 
 terms, and is as yet unassociated with fa- 
 miliar things. On the other hand, the earlier 
 advances of theory, which appeared so bold 
 in their day, are now condensed into popular 
 proverbs, and clothed with the details of daily 
 practice, so that they seem never to have 
 been theories, but merely the natural prod- 
 ucts of common sense. This argues that we 
 should draw, from the successes of men of 
 vision, courage to think of the present in the 
 splendid, broad, heroic way which its oppor- 
 tunities deserve. The bravely imagined 
 dreams of one generation, as bravely tested, 
 become the common property and common 
 sense of the next generation. 
 

Chapter VII 
 THE APPLICATION OF SCIENCE 
 
 'T S HE first epoch of science, treated of in 
 * the chapter on the Pioneers of Science, 
 exhibited the difficulty of shaking the mind 
 loose from traditional views. The chapter 
 on the System-Makers was devoted to the 
 period in which the great masses of human 
 knowledge were organized and bound to- 
 gether by threading them through with a con- 
 nective tissue of fundamental principles. 
 
 The most recent period of science has, as 
 one of its dominating characteristics, the 
 widespread application of the knowledge al- 
 ready accumulated. Its special task has been 
 to bring controlling truths down out of the 
 skies of theory to the earth of specific in- 
 stances, and to render them simple enough 
 and flexible enough to control daily problems. 
 By this it is not meant to imply that pioneer- 
 ing and systematizing are no longer required. 
 The pioneers are now waging a warfare 
 against tradition in the domain of psychology 
 and the social sciences. The systematizers 
 are completing their work in the biological 
 sciences, without further theological opposi- 
 119 
 
120 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 tion. What is meant is that the distinctive 
 feature of the latest period of science is a 
 new emphasis on social welfare. There has 
 come into the world of affairs a generation 
 of young men trained in the world of science. 
 These men desire to bring the two worlds 
 into harmonious adjustment with each other. 
 Animated by the vision of a new earth, in 
 which shall dwell not only righteousness but 
 efficiency, they often find themselves in col- 
 lision with traditional methods and vested 
 interests. 
 
 Thus the full cycle of science stands at last 
 revealed — knowledge is first gathered by ob- 
 servation and experiment ; it is then system- 
 atized into harmonious bodies of principles ; 
 and finally, by means of inventions and new 
 processes, by policies and programs, it 
 reaches down again into and controls the 
 world of individual instances out of which 
 it originally sprang. The order of intellec- 
 tual progress is, first, pure science, as the ex- 
 plorer and pioneer in a new country, and, 
 second, the practical arts, as the settlers 
 moving in to cultivate the domain, and build 
 human habitations. First comes the change 
 of ideas, and then the change of methods and 
 institutions. As Wendell Phillips said, "In- 
 
APPLICATION OF SCIENCE 121 
 
 surrection of thought always precedes insur- 
 rection of arms." 
 
 In bringing science and practice into con- 
 tact, the circulation of nourishing ideas in 
 society is made complete. Science gives to 
 practice its laws. Practice, by attaining a 
 new precision and productivity, yields to 
 science a more exact and generous supply of 
 materials for study, and provides increas- 
 ingly for its support. Apart from science, 
 practice is the slave of tradition and ad- 
 vances with the timid groping steps of ex- 
 perience. Divorced from practice, science 
 becomes narrow, speculative, unbalanced and, 
 (deprived of its final test of validity), even 
 inconclusive. In the work of making the 
 world a comfortable home for man, one of 
 these spheres of activity is as necessary as 
 the other. 
 
 Union of Pube and Applied Science 
 
 In mechanics, Black's discovery of latent 
 heat was a laboratory fact until his pupil, 
 Watt, applied it by condensing the steam of 
 an engine outside the cylinder. The laws of 
 Boyle, Charles, Eegnault, Joule, and Carnot 
 are known to the world chiefly because of 
 
122 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 their application in the steam engine. Gal- 
 vanic experiments upon frog's legs, with 
 electricity, are important because they ended 
 in the Atlantic cables. The electric arc might 
 have flashed in vain in Davy's laboratory in 
 1801, and the curiously wound wires might in 
 vain have turned in the field of Faraday's 
 hand magnet, had not a succession of keen 
 minds labored to bring out of them the mod- 
 ern arc light and the electric dynamo. Oer- 
 sted's discovery that a magnet sets itself at 
 right angles to the direction of a current 
 fruited, fifteen years later, across the At- 
 lantic, in Henry's mind, in the form of a re- 
 ceiver for the electric telegraph. 
 
 In chemistry we remember Davy's segre- 
 gation of sodium and potassium with the 
 Voltaic pile in 1807, and Wohler 's production 
 of aluminum by electrolysis in 1827 ; but we 
 have forgotten the names of the many in- 
 ventors and chemists, engineers and admin- 
 istrators, whose applied science went into the 
 making of the modern electro-chemical in- 
 dustry. All honor to the crude beginnings 
 of Liebig in agricultural chemistry ; but it re- 
 quired dozens of experiment stations to per- 
 fect the subject for use. The few simple ex- 
 periments made by that American of ro- 
 
 
APPLICATION OP SCIENCE 123 
 
 mantic career, Count Rumford, in the chem- 
 istry of combustion, were far from bringing 
 into existence the modern smokeless furnace. 
 The same might be said of the researches of 
 Runge and Hofmann, with reference to coal- 
 tar. Scheele 's discovery of chlorine, in 1774, 
 was followed by the purposeful work of 
 Berthollet and Watt, in 1785 and 1786, in 
 revolutionizing bleaching. Schonbein's dis- 
 covery of gun-cotton, in 1846, started studies 
 to a definite end, which was reached in 
 Nobel 's invention of dynamite in 1867. A 
 similar story might be told of the effective 
 bringing of new ideas to bear in dyeing, in 
 iron and steel manufacture, in food preserva- 
 tion, in brewing, photography, tanning, etc. 
 
 Difficulties of Applied Science 
 
 Inasmuch as the endeavor practically to 
 apply knowledge sets out with a definite goal, 
 and purposefully rejects all results but those 
 which lead to the one end, it demands saga- 
 cious directing and large patience. It is no- 
 torious that the first idea of most inventions 
 is crude, and can be made of practical value 
 only by tedious and expensive adaptation and 
 simplification. The same is true of crude 
 scientific ideas. 
 
124 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 One of the difficulties of applying scientific 
 knowledge lies in the fact that problems of 
 application are complex. They are so for the 
 reason that the solution aimed at must sat- 
 isfy tests of divers character Not only must 
 the principles of the sciences from which the 
 knowledge is drawn be regarded, but the prac- 
 tices of those arts in which it is to be applied 
 must be observed as well. As all practical 
 affairs are mixed of many elements, the lim- 
 its and standards applying to them are 
 equally numerous. A mechanism must not 
 only be sound mechanically, but it must be 
 easily produced, adjusted, repaired, cleaned, 
 learned, and operated. An executive policy 
 must not only conform to the principles of 
 psychology, but its agencies must be on a 
 scale commensurate with the enterprise to 
 be controlled, the cost must not unduly in- 
 crease administrative expense, and the plan 
 must be capable of gradual introduction and 
 easy modification. 
 
 Work of a practical character takes on 
 usually the nature of a compromise. It re- 
 quires the type of mind capable of keeping 
 many things in view at once, and of balanc- 
 ing opposing considerations. Eesults come 
 by means of a slow and tedious succession 
 
APPLICATION OF SCIENCE 125 
 
 of approximations, rather than by the more 
 simple and satisfying method of going the 
 limit regardless. 
 
 Again, the solutions of applied science are 
 discouragingly temporary. Where there are 
 so many determining factors, it is to be ex- 
 pected that some of them will quickly change, 
 and in so doing will start the process of ob- 
 solescence. 
 
 Theory versus Practice 
 
 To the necessary and inherent difficulties 
 of work in applied science, there are to be 
 added unnecessary ones arising from the dis- 
 trust and antagonism with which the follow- 
 ers of pure research and men of affairs re- 
 gard each other. Those who endeavor to 
 adapt science to the needs of practice some- 
 times have the ungrateful task of interme- 
 diaries, misunderstood by both sides. On the 
 one side we hear the phrase, i ' Science for its 
 own sake," and on the other, "No imprac- 
 tical theories"; and these slogans are ut- 
 tered in a sententious manner as though they 
 represented a true issue. 
 
 The scientific point of view is to follow the 
 lead of the subject-matter. This means that 
 when the aim of any piece of work is com- 
 
126 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 plete knowledge of a given subject, it is not 
 intelligent to complicate the problem by add- 
 ing the question of the use to which the 
 knowledge is to be put after it is attained. 
 This is simply following the rule of having 
 a properly circumscribed aim ; a practice the 
 value of which all administrators understand. 
 
 On the other hand, the practical problem 
 begins by setting a specific goal, such as a 
 desired substance or process. It inquires the 
 most expeditious means of attaining this re- 
 sult. In such a case, to investigate those 
 aspects of things which obviously have no 
 connection with the problem, on the ground 
 that the stock of human knowledge will be 
 increased by so doing, is to forget what one 
 is about. The scientist and the practical man 
 both give themselves immense credit for fol- 
 lowing precisely the same rule, — that of the 
 division of labor. 
 
 To the "practical" man, the scientist in- 
 cubates inefficiently, because he does not 
 check up vigorously enough with himself. 
 And this arises from his hazy philosophy of 
 not knowing exactly what he wants, or the 
 probable value of it all. The scientist some- 
 times gives an unjustifiable extension to the 
 rule of his work which is expressed by the 
 
APPLICATION OP SCIENCE 127 
 
 phrases: "Truth for Truths Sake," and 
 ' ' Art for Art 's Sake. ' f This is a minor rule of 
 thinking, essential within its proper sphere, 
 but it is limited in validity and in appropri- 
 ate application by the force of the greater 
 rule of life, — Truth and Art for Man's Sake. 
 To the scientist, the - ' practical ' ' man does 
 not even know the wide range of the practi- 
 cal. By impatiently applying to intermediate 
 productive steps the tests which are appro- 
 priate only for final results, he cuts himself 
 off from many indirect but highly profitable 
 chains of productive effort. That science and 
 practice are different is not a reason for an- 
 tagonism, but for co-operation. Each may 
 exercise a corrective influence upon the other. 
 "We may hope," said Huxley, "that, at last, 
 the weary misunderstanding between the 
 practical men, who professed to despise 
 science, and the high and dry philosophers, 
 who professed to despise practical results, is 
 at an end." 
 
 Science as a Phase of Vital Living 
 
 Men of affairs often make the mistake of 
 conceiving scientists as a nervous, scholastic 
 type of men, rather puny in physique, and 
 inclined to be wandering and loosely co-ordi- 
 
128 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 nated in mind. Nothing could be further 
 from the truth. Eesults do not come from 
 men who have not their energies under effec- 
 tive control; and certainly the results of the 
 last three hundred years of science are an 
 evidence of energy. Science has been a re- 
 volt against tradition; a fight for liberty to 
 go to the bottom of things. It has displayed 
 the enterprise of the discoverer, curiosity to 
 think the Creator's thoughts after Him, a 
 love of conquering difficulties, and a deter- 
 mination to rule the forces of nature rather 
 than be ruled by them. In short, it is in 
 every way positive and aggressive, and is, 
 therefore, the expression of men with energy 
 plus. 
 
 Among scientists we find ability of every 
 type; there are men of prodigious energy, 
 like Galileo and Bunsen ; men of enthusiasm 
 and vivid imagination, like Kepler, Haeckel, 
 Werner and Laplace; men of rapid and ac- 
 curate observation like Johann Miiller; men 
 with the power of clear, deep reasoning like 
 Newton, Henry Cavendish, and Boerhaave; 
 and men of great breadth of interest like 
 Descartes, Adam Smith, and Diderot. There 
 have been men of early precocity like Gro- 
 tius, Thomas Young, Sir William Hamilton, 
 
APPLICATION OP SCIENCE 129 
 
 and John Fiske ; and men who combined suc- 
 cess as administrators with success as scien- 
 tists, like Turgot, Bunsen, Cuvier, Leibnitz, 
 and Wilhelm Humboldt. After making a 
 study of the lives of eminent men of science 
 in England, Francis Galton wrote: 
 
 Leading scientific men are generally endowed with great 
 energy; many of the most successful among them have 
 labored as earnest amateurs in extra-professional hours, 
 working far into the night. They have climbed the long 
 and steep ascent from the lower to the upper ranks of 
 life; they have learned where the opportunities for learn- 
 ing were few; they have built up fortunes by perseverance 
 and intelligence, and at the same time have distinguished 
 themselves as original investigators in non-remunerative 
 branches of science. There are other scientific men who 
 possess what is sometimes called quiet energy; their vital 
 engine is powerful, but the steam is rarely turned fully on. 
 Again, there are others who have fine intellects, without 
 much energy; but these latter classes are quite in the 
 minority. The typical man of science has been at full work 
 from boyhood to old age, and has exuberant spirits and 
 love of adventure. 
 
 Another mistake of men of affairs has been 
 to assume that science is a field apart; a 
 world with the ferment of whose ideas they 
 need not concern themselves, except as new 
 materials or processes are occasionally 
 handed over to industry by the scientist. The 
 principal ihing about science is not itsre=_ 
 suits, but its method, its point of view, and 
 
130 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 its spirit. These are constantly spreading 
 into and controlling new fields. The intellec- 
 tual awakening which began with the Renais- 
 sance revolutionized our conceptions of the 
 physical world in which we live. It con- 
 cerned itself much, at first, with the struggle 
 for freedom from the tyranny of dogma. It 
 laid a new foundation for political institu- 
 tions, and the result was revolutions and con- 
 stitutions. It pursued the study of nature, 
 and the result was a revolution of technique. 
 It is now focusing attention upon economic 
 and social policies. The modern man is de- 
 termined to bring everything to the bar of 
 reason and, with his intelligence, to institute 
 a new survival of the fittest among social in- 
 stitutions, and among industries, administra- 
 tive policies, and leaders. Everywhere men 
 are making inquiry concerning the justifica- 
 tion of current practices, and are demanding 
 exact measurement and solid proof of their 
 appropriateness, efficiency, justice, and hu- 
 manity. We may rest assured that no corner 
 of industry will long remain unexplored, un- 
 judged, and unrevolutionized. 
 
Chapter VIII 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF MENTAL 
 EFFICIENCY 
 
 npHE periods of the history of science 
 A which we have considered in the pre- 
 ceding articles have emphasized three 
 things; the bravery of original thinking, the 
 practical nature of theories, and the fact that 
 "beauty underlies each form of use." There 
 are a number of principles of efficiency in 
 mental work which are either directly in- 
 volved in the scientific method itself, or are 
 corollaries or logical extensions of it. These 
 principles have been at work in each of the 
 epochs of science, and consequently cannot 
 be properly placed in any one period in an 
 historical review. Let us take up some of the 
 more important of these principles, and en- 
 deavor to find their bearing upon the work 
 of administrators of industrial enterprises. 
 
 Economy of Means 
 
 Many an executive officer, after introduc- 
 ing changes urged upon him as improve- 
 ments, has awakened to find his affairs suf- 
 fering from a remedy worse than the dis- 
 131 
 
132 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ease, and his business unsystematized by 
 over-elaborated system. Such a one has, per- 
 haps, exclaimed in his wrath : 1 1 No more fine- 
 spun theories; I want practical facts," and 
 in so doing has imagined himself taking a 
 practical and common-sense attitude quite un- 
 known to the scientist. He has felt resent- 
 ment against science and system-makers, 
 much as a man who has cut himself with a 
 razor might blame the barber who had honed 
 it for him. 
 
 The principle which is made apparent, 
 wherever red-tape is discovered, may be 
 stated as follows: perfect efficiency requires 
 that the means employed for the accomplish- 
 ment of a result shall be neither more nor 
 less in quality, quantity, or cost than is just 
 sufficient for the purpose. The use of ex- 
 cessive means is only less unworkmanly than 
 the use of insufficient means. Either case 
 violates the ideal of economy of means, 
 
 With this ideal scientists have long been 
 familiar. For its sake some of them suffered 
 from the wrath of an enraged public opinion 
 long before most of the problems of the mod- 
 ern industrial executive came into existence. 
 To cite a celebrated instance, to which refer- 
 ence has already been made, the rise of the 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 133 
 
 theory of evolution in geology produced the 
 belief that the stratification of rocks, and all 
 topographic features of the earth, were 
 brought about by the operation of known 
 forces, acting in a normal way, through a 
 long period of time. This explanation was 
 opposed to the popular notion, and to the 
 official theological view that the earth was 
 created in six days by the direct use of dra- 
 matic and awe-inspiring force on the part of 
 the Creator. It was thought that the tradi- 
 tional account of creation proved the primacy 
 of the earth among the heavenly bodies, and 
 testified eloquently to the supreme value of 
 man in the created universe. When, there- 
 fore, it was asserted by scientists that the 
 rocks were produced by familiar forces, act- 
 ing in a simple mechanical way, the new 
 theory was denounced as an effort to do 
 away with the splendid drama of creation, 
 and to introduce a vulgar and sacrilegious 
 economy of effort. The contest through 
 which geology passed in establishing its view 
 served to fix firmly a general scientific prin- 
 ciple, namely, no result should be attributed 
 to more numerous or more powerful causes 
 than the minimum which it is conceivable 
 could account for it. 
 
134 "business administration 
 
 The struggle of the man of affairs to ac- 
 complish results with minimum agencies is 
 perfectly in harmony with the effort of the 
 scientific mind to establish an economy of 
 nature, by means of the doctrines of the in- 
 destructibility of matter, the conservation of 
 energy, and the universality of law. 
 
 The Wide Eange of the Practical 
 
 Men of affairs learn the wide range of the 
 practical by discovering, through experience, 
 how numerous are the uses of a given body 
 of knowledge. Most men have had the ex- 
 perience of acquiring in youth some out-of- 
 the-way body of knowledge, or some unusual 
 skill or talent, and of having been surprised, 
 in later life, at the number of occasions re- 
 quiring its use, or permitting its use to ad- 
 vantage. It has been said that any one sub- 
 ject thoroughly mastered will open lines of 
 logical connection with every other subject. 
 To this thought Tennyson gave poetic ex- 
 pression in the well-known lines : 
 
 Flower in the crannied wall, 
 
 I pluck you out of the crannies, 
 
 I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
 
 Little flower — but if I could understand 
 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 
 I should know what God and man is. 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 135 
 
 Certain it is that any one thing well mas- 
 tered will go far to reveal how to master 
 anything else. The man who demonstrates 
 capacity in one line can easily convince peo- 
 ple that he possesses it in other lines. Any 
 virtue or ability which makes friends may 
 be a stepping-stone to anything else which 
 friendly backing can provide. 
 
 Men of science learn the wide range of 
 valuable ideas by discovering how many 
 things are able to throw light upon a given 
 investigation. It is impossible to tell in ad- 
 vance which of the results of an investiga- 
 tion will be the starting point of future fruit- 
 ful researches and applications. Who would 
 have considered that a physician practicing 
 medicine in Java, and observing that the 
 venous blood of his patients was a brighter 
 red than that of people in colder zones, had 
 made a good start toward the enunciation, 
 within two years, of the world-embracing doc- 
 trine of the conservation of energy? Such 
 was the beginning and such was the conclu- 
 sion of Mayer's studies between 1840 and 
 1842. New ideas come by a process of mental 
 cross-fertilization. They are a sort of elec- 
 trical discharge flashing light into conscious- 
 ness, as two storm-clouds of knowledge ap- 
 
136 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 proach each other. A man trained to think 
 upon one line alone will never be a good 
 judge even of that, for he has not the per- 
 spective by which to distinguish between the 
 essential and the trivial. To accomplish re- 
 sults, men of science have learned the ne- 
 cessity of excluding prejudices and precon- 
 ceptions, and even, at certain stages of re- 
 search, enthusiasms and specific aims, in 
 order to keep the mind completely open and 
 receptive to impressions from all sources. 
 As Gore says: "The beginnings of discov- 
 eries are often so very small, that it requires 
 acute senses and observation in order to per- 
 ceive them; and if the mind is preoccupied 
 with a desire to discover some particular 
 practical object, new phenomena are over- 
 looked." 
 
 Great truths are not necessarily great in 
 their origins. The sensation made by a dis- 
 covery comes later, when the corollaries and 
 resultants are perceived, and the world feels 
 the full significance of what has been dis- 
 covered. A new truth is likely to creep tim- 
 idly into some carefully prepared and wait- 
 ing mind as a hint derived from some puz- 
 zling irregularity, or through some faintly 
 remembered analogy, or as the conclusion of 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 137 
 
 a series of small facts which build up to it. 
 The truth may be in its first form so simple 
 and useless that it has been discovered and 
 ignored again and again, passing in and out 
 of the mind unnoticed. Great ideas must 
 often pass through a period of incubation 
 in which they are dependent upon the ma- 
 ternal care of a mind able to perceive large 
 possibilities in little occasions. 
 
 Great truths are not necessarily difficult to 
 understand. Much valuable knowledge has 
 been lost because investigators would con- 
 sider that only to be important which was 
 complex or abstruse. Some of the greatest 
 ideas have been the simplest. How simple is 
 Bacon's law, which forms the basis of the 
 scientific method, namely, that things which 
 in experience agree in being present, or ab- 
 sent, and in varying concomitantly, are con- 
 nected! How elementary seems Darwin's 
 theory of evolution through variation and 
 selection, or Gutenberg's invention of mova- 
 ble type, or Bessemer 's plan of reducing the 
 carbon content of melted pig-iron with a 
 blast of air, or the essential mechanism of 
 the telephone ! These things can be described 
 in a few words and understood by a child, 
 and yet what results they have wrought upon 
 
138 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 the earth! The ideas involved in them slept 
 undiscovered, just beyond the veil of mys- 
 tery, since the dawn of reason on the earth, 
 awaiting an age with flexible temper, and an 
 individual mind willing to regard simple 
 things with searching attention. How many 
 more serviceable ideas are yet hidden, await- 
 ing the unsophisticated mind! 
 
 Great truths do not necessarily spring 
 from impressive subjects. The origins of 
 great ideas are frequently most humble. 
 Eesidues and wastes, unconsidered remnants, 
 slighted phases, unpopular subjects, and do- 
 mains of thinking marked by the taboo of 
 popular ridicule, are all promising fields for 
 great discoveries. We are just beginning to 
 appreciate the significance of shop wastes, 
 minute but frequent time losses, city sewer- 
 age, street noises, smoke, the tools of the day 
 laborer, the rest periods in common work, 
 abandoned farms, domestic science, and 
 many other things which have been, until 
 recently, considered the odds and ends of the 
 world of thought. The very neglect of a 
 subject, in proportion as it has been long 
 continued, means that it is a harvest field for 
 the student, which has not been reaped clean. 
 To work in a neglected field is almost as 
 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 139 
 
 profitable as in one which has been previously 
 inaccessible. A prejudice against a subject 
 only serves to reserve and protect it until 
 the first bold thinker appears. No attitude 
 of mind is more practical than that which 
 expects valuable suggestions from any quar- 
 ter, and is prepared to see an unimagined 
 significance grow out of neglected things. 
 Again and again, in the history of the human 
 mind, has "the stone which the builders re- 
 jected become the head of the corner. ' f 
 
 Nor are the applications of great ideas nec- 
 essarily dramatic, complex, or aristocratic. 
 The valuable physical materials of the world 
 (in their aggregates) are not gold nor silver 
 nor jewels, but soils and manure and pig-iron 
 and lumber. Likewise, the great principles 
 which control the mind of man and his organ- 
 ized activities are the simple basic ones 
 which, in the lives of the masses, become mul- 
 tiplied to colossal aggregates of service. To 
 discover a law of soils may easily be a million 
 times more important than to revolutionize 
 the art of cutting gems ; to increase by a frac- 
 tion the efficiency of every man who lays 
 brick or shovels earth may mean a greater 
 national service than many of our presidents 
 have achieved. 
 
140 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 The man of affairs should take care to 
 prevent himself from falling into the habit of 
 thinking that neglected things have no prob- 
 lems worth considering, or that what is fa- 
 miliar is thoroughly understood. He must 
 beware of assuming that knowledge comes 
 only through the kind of experience he has 
 had, or that the outsider can give him no 
 suggestions for improving the conduct of his 
 business. The intensely " practical' ' mind 
 tends to conceive experience too much as 
 action and not enough as thinking, too much 
 as the doings of individual men and not 
 enough as the expression of the basic talents 
 and motives of human nature, too much as a 
 static present and not enough as the con- 
 tinuous evolution of the past into the future. 
 By so doing it unduly restricts the times, 
 places, subjects, and persons from which 
 stimulus and guidance may originate and 
 come to it. 
 
 Follow the Lead of the Subject-Matter 
 
 The observations of the untrained mind 
 are imperfect ; a little is actually seen, by far 
 the greater part is inferred. In customary 
 action things are hastily identified by a few 
 signs, and what is observed is supplemented 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 141 
 
 by bald assumptions and carelessly formed 
 theories. Says Baldwin: 
 
 Half of what we see and hear never comes in through 
 our senses at all, but is made up outright — suggested by 
 scraps and hints that do come in through our eyes and 
 ears. In a foreign land, when the mind is not so ready 
 to fill in the gaps in the unfamiliar language we hear, one 
 begins to appreciate how largely, in our mother-tongue, the 
 mere act of catching the sound of the words, not to say 
 their meaning, is a matter of suggestion. And in other 
 ways we can see that as soon as things grow familiar and 
 suggestive, it is impossible ever to experience them again 
 in their naked reality; what the bare sense-impressions call 
 up to us becomes interwoven with them, and these additions 
 can with difficulty be distinguished from what is original. 
 * * * It took centuries for artists to see that the 
 shadow on a colored surface was not a darker tone of the 
 same color, but had usually something in it of the com- 
 plementary hue. The natural preconception as to what the 
 color of the surface ought to look like, from having seen 
 it in a clearer light, made it impossible to see the thing 
 aright. 
 
 Accurate, keen, fast, and complete obser- 
 vation is a rare and highly prized element 
 in all mental work. To attain it in any degree 
 the scientist has need of the ideal mind de- 
 scribed by Francis Bacon, "versatile enough 
 for that most important object, the recogni- 
 tion of similarities, and at the same time 
 steady and concentrated enough for the ob- 
 servation of subtle shades of difference," 
 with * ' a power of suspending judgment with 
 
142 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 patience, of meditating with pleasure, of 
 asserting with caution, of correcting false 
 impressions with readiness/ ' willing to 
 arrange thoughts with careful pains, without 
 passion either for antiquity or novelty, and 
 hating imposture in every shape. The true 
 scientist endeavors, with all the power he 
 possesses, to follow the lead of his subject; 
 to fix upon it, sense its most delicate hints, 
 flexibly follow every turn and winding, and 
 thoroughly explore all aspects, to the end that 
 he may finally conceive it accurately, justly, 
 and comprehensively. Eesearch is a pursuit 
 — a game of hide and seek. In it the mind 
 should follow the lead of the subject as the 
 nose of a hound clings to the trail of the 
 fox. All the powers of observation should 
 be let loose to full, free activity, by the joy 
 of action, by the harmonious concurrent 
 working of the senses and the reason, and 
 by a blended confidence and carelessness as 
 to results. Since Descartes formulated the 
 golden rule of restricted assent, that we 
 should give unqualified acceptance to no 
 propositions but those the truth of which is 
 clearly established, it has been the ideal of 
 the scientific worker to emulate that great 
 master when he said, "My whole intention 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 143 
 
 was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away 
 the drift and sand until I reached the rock 
 or the clay beneath. ,, 
 
 It is a splendid exercise for every man, at 
 least once in his early life, to throw himself 
 unreservedly, and with enthusiasm, into 
 some study, and for a time "go the limit" 
 in thoroughness, accuracy, caution, and open- 
 mindedness. Such an experience will exert 
 a lasting beneficial influence upon his think- 
 ing. It will teach him respect for facts, and 
 give him some ability to go straight to them. 
 It will reveal the joy of collecting facts care- 
 fully, of distinguishing them closely, and of 
 formulating their law with precision. It will 
 forever after make it easier for him to throw 
 off the hampering bonds of tradition and 
 habit and personal bias. 
 
 Good observation is essential to good 
 morals. The want of clear thinking is one 
 of the causes which leads men into incon- 
 sistencies, and tempts them to evade their 
 dilemma by false pretenses. The double load 
 of circumstances thus created — the real and 
 the pretended — leads men at last to pro- 
 nounce upon themselves a secret verdict of 
 inefficiency, by which they lose the captaincy 
 of their own powers. "How many an ac- 
 
144 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 tion," says Gomperz in his Greek Thinkers, 
 "injurious to the common welfare, would 
 have been left unperformed, had not a veil 
 of misty thought concealed from the doer 
 of it the fact that it belonged to a class of 
 actions admitted by himself to be reprehen- 
 sible.' ' 
 
 Open-Mindedness 
 
 To follow the lead of the subject-matter is 
 to practice ppen-mindedness in the original 
 investigation by which the first judgment on 
 a subject is formed. To show open-minded- 
 ness is to follow the lead of the subject-mat- 
 ter when it demands the revision of a judg- 
 ment already made. 
 
 The difficulty experienced in altering a con- 
 clusion lies in the fact that any belief held 
 by the mind tends to banish opposing con- 
 siderations, or to diminish their force. A 
 firm believer is one who usually continues 
 gathering fortifying data, and slighting op- 
 posing evidence. Darwin said in his Auto- 
 biography : 
 
 I had, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, 
 that whenever a published fact, a new observation or 
 thought came across me, which was opposed to my general 
 results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at 
 once; for I had found by experience that such facts and 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 145 
 
 thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than 
 favourable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections 
 were raised against my views which I had not at least 
 noticed and attempted to answer. 
 
 This natural difficulty is increased when 
 pride takes a perverted form, and empha- 
 sizes consistency with one's previous pro- 
 gram, rather than consistency with con- 
 trolling truths. Such a pride is mistaken, for 
 one of the vital distinctions between general 
 principles and specific programs is that the 
 latter are local and temporary, while the 
 former are not. Programs are based upon 
 assumptions good only for a particular time 
 and place. Again, such a pride is mistaken, 
 because it misjudges human nature. The vir- 
 tues which spring from conceit evoke little 
 sympathy and support from others. Every- 
 one loves to bring the truth to the aid of 
 those who gratefully receive it and humbly 
 modify their course of action by it. On the 
 other hand, everyone enjoys using truth to 
 humiliate those who show a perverse and 
 stiff-necked disregard for it. 
 
 The seeker after facts must keep his mind 
 fluent and sensitive and teachable. To revise 
 an opinion is not merely to eliminate an 
 error, and secure a specific new truth; it is, 
 by a reflex action of the mind upon itself, 
 
146 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 to refine the thinking process, much as a pho- 
 tographic plate is resensitized, or the needle 
 of a compass is remagnetized. 
 
 The philosopher Nietzsche has given to men 
 of affairs a high place, with respect to open- 
 mindedness. He asserts that a cautious for- 
 bearance in judgment, and wise moderation 
 in action — in short, the scientific spirit, but 
 without being defined as such — is much better 
 known in practical life than among thinkers. 
 The man of action who develops this virtue 
 deserves great credit, for he does so under 
 difficulties. He is called upon to apply ten- 
 tative conclusions in a vital public way, with- 
 out drifting into a practical acceptance of 
 them as final, and without committing himself 
 to them in an unintended sense. He must be 
 able to feel the intense pride in achievement 
 which is the characteristic of all active men, 
 but without over-estimating the permanence 
 of the results secured. He must be able to 
 look upon the old as the fittest which has 
 survived, and yet perceive that the longer 
 the old has stood the more likely it is that 
 the competitive conditions which permitted it 
 have changed and will sweep it away. The 
 man of affairs must recognize that what is 
 widely demanded and is, perhaps, most prof- 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 147 
 
 itable to supply to the public, or most easy 
 to use, is yet likely to be the mediocre thing, 
 comfortable to the average mind, rather than 
 the finest thing which expresses the best 
 thought of the time. He must deal constantly 
 with cramped and tradition-bound minds, and 
 yet keep his own thought free. He must be 
 able to set precedents which express a prin- 
 ciple, without embalming it; and to accept 
 truth when associated with insubordination, 
 competition, or even failure. He must be 
 able to turn freely from action to delibera- 
 tion, and from deliberation back to action. 
 He must live his life strenuously, and yet 
 strenuously avoid the induration of ideas 
 which characteristically marks the on-coming 
 of old age. 
 
 Exceptions and Failures Reveal New Laws 
 
 A thorough and well-sustained investiga- 
 tion into any subject has the effect of concen- 
 trating attention with ever-increasing inten- 
 sity, as the work progresses, upon the re- 
 siduum of unexplained or exceptional facts. 
 The degree to which one has secured knowl- 
 edge of any subject, or has learned how to 
 secure it, may be judged fairly by the atten- 
 tion given to exceptions. The beginnings of 
 
148 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 studies are with typical and normal cases; 
 their conclusions with exceptions. 
 
 An old maxim is, "The exception proves 
 the rule." This might better be amended to 
 read, "The exception reveals a new rule." 
 An exception shows the working of some 
 force not accounted for by the rule. It re- 
 veals something new, something not yet un- 
 derstood, something remaining to be done, 
 a promising ground for a new start. It was 
 said of Darwin, "There was one quality of 
 mind which seemed to be of special and 
 extreme advantage in leading him to make 
 discoveries. It was the power of never let- 
 ting exceptions pass unnoticed. * * * These 
 things he seized upon to make a start from. ' ' 
 
 A good test of one's ability to gather new 
 ideas is his action under defeat. The severe 
 rule of competition compels the man of af- 
 fairs to "make good" with useful results, 
 from step to step in his business career, in 
 order that he may gain resources and the con- 
 fidence of others, with which to attempt the 
 next greater achievement. Failure has for 
 him a peculiarly sinister sound. It not in- 
 frequently happens, therefore, that when 
 failure overtakes an executive, the agitation 
 springing from his hatred and fear of it, and 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 149 
 
 the preoccupation resulting from his effort 
 to evade or ignore it, cause him to banish the 
 details of it from mind without attentive con- 
 sideration. The helpful ministry of failure 
 is thus lost. Like Simon Ingott, he reads 
 1 ' Much Ado About Nothing/ ' and sees no 
 point in the phrase, " Adversity's sweet 
 milk." 
 
 The scientist, working with a longer tether, 
 and with a mind composed to accept delay 
 and round-about methods with equanimity, 
 has learned better how to utilize failures. 
 He does not ignore them, nor turn his back 
 upon them, but on the contrary, he fastens 
 with special eagerness and tenacity upon 
 them. To the scientist, failure is a means 
 of discovering truth only a little less direct 
 than success. It proves how a thing cannot 
 be done and, in so doing, closes up one of 
 the by-paths down which investigation might 
 turn. 
 
 It is partly the paralysis produced by the 
 fear of failure which makes failure danger- 
 ous. One of the causes of undue fear is ex- 
 aggerated pride and self-consciousness. 
 When pride is controlled, hostility to oppos- 
 ing opinion, and panic under failure, disap- 
 pear. The result is a serene and objective 
 
150 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 temper, like that for which Julius Caesar was 
 noted. With such a temper the intelligence 
 is flexible enough to turn in whatever direc- 
 tion significant facts lie, and to receive in- 
 struction even from enemies. Thus a man 
 may add to himself a new resource, namely, 
 the suggestion derived from the investigation 
 of his own disappointments. 
 
 One of the reasons given by Draper for the 
 great mental efficiency of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury is the friendly eclectic attitude which 
 came to prevail, which recognized few differ- 
 ences as irreconcilable, and avoided sharp- 
 ening them into hostilities. ' • The question, ' ? 
 said Draper, "is no longer whether a par- 
 ticular doctrine or its opposite is true, but 
 what are the elements of truth and error in 
 each of them, and how can we attain to a 
 comprehensive view of things, in which jus- 
 tice is done to both." 
 
 Thokoughness 
 
 Thoroughness is the virtue which results 
 when energy is brought to bear upon care- 
 fully circumscribed aims. "High knowledge 
 and great strength," says Emerson, "are 
 within the reach of every man who unflinch- 
 ingly enacts his best." The virtues of thor- 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 151 
 
 oughness have been preached until they are 
 trite. It is not only the merit of science that 
 it reenforces this teaching, but also that it 
 gives us a new definition of what constitutes 
 accuracy and thoroughness. 
 
 In the long series of scrupulously careful 
 weighings of nitrogen, performed by Lord 
 Eayleigh, a constant discrepancy of less than 
 one-half of one per cent led to the discovery 
 of argon, and other minor constituents of the 
 atmosphere. In determining the latitude of 
 the Radcliffe telescope at Oxford, by means 
 of repeated and elaborately exact determina- 
 tions, the error was brought within 1.02 sec- 
 onds, or thirty-four yards on the surface of 
 the earth. From the eight tons of concen- 
 trates, treated during two years by the 
 Curies at Paris, there was only as much 
 radium recovered as could be heaped in a 
 salt spoon. By such work scientists have 
 shown what thoroughness can be made to 
 mean in terms of accuracy. 
 
 In Newton's eighteen years of work upon 
 a missing link in his explanation of the orbit 
 of the moon, and in Darwin's twenty- two 
 years of work upon the origin of species, 
 from the opening of the first note book in 
 July, 1837, to the completion of the finished 
 
152 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 work in November, 1859, scientists have 
 shown ns what a portion of the world's work 
 requires in the way of patience. 
 
 There is certainly something to be learned 
 by men of affairs from such a spirit and such 
 ideals. They show what it is possible to do. 
 It is a stimulus to the timid or weary to 
 know that others have dared vastly more 
 than they, and have succeeded. These 
 achievements of the human spirit scientists 
 offer for the encouragement of any man who 
 works in the world of ideas. "Few things,' ' 
 said Eochef oucauld, ' ' are impossible in them- 
 selves ; the application to make them succeed 
 fails us more often than the means." 
 
 Methods Are More Valuable Than Eesults 
 
 For the intelligent understanding of any 
 art, or craft, or professional activity, it is 
 essential to distinguish between methods and 
 results. As a rule, good methods alone bring 
 satisfactory results in industry a« elsewhere. 
 The exceptions to this rule are, unfortu- 
 nately, very numerous. Carefully planned 
 actions sometimes end in unpredictable dis- 
 aster while, on the other hand, in a favored 
 land like ours, which drops fatness, many 
 persons have acquired wealth by stupid and 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 153 
 
 anti-social means. Many great estates in 
 America are flabby hulks of property, hang- 
 ing together because they happen never to 
 have been challenged to economic combat by 
 first-class ability. They resemble antedilu- 
 vian monsters of low organization, flounder- 
 ing in the economic mire of a new and boun- 
 tifully endowed land. Their pretensions, as 
 oracles of economic wisdom, constitute a 
 pseudo-science of industry with which every 
 student of business administration is com- 
 pelled to deal. They really testify merely 
 to the richness of the feeding where they 
 were grown. Such estates can be found 
 where ignorant immigrant labor, unable to 
 defend itself as does the native, has been 
 exploited; where over-grown industrial in- 
 fants have successfully cried for prohibitive 
 tariffs ; where principalities of public domain 
 have been seized by circumventing antiquated 
 land laws; and where small investors, too 
 much devoted to their life work as teachers, 
 doctors, or mothers, to master the intricacies 
 of the American " science' ' of promoting, 
 have been fleeced. To study such enterprises, 
 with the idea of discovering methods appro- 
 priate to a respectable and permanent science 
 of industry would be about as intelligent as 
 
154 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 to study the unfortunate fat boys of dime 
 museums to discover the road to health. 
 
 On the other hand, American industry 
 abounds with men and industrial establish- 
 ments whose histories are significant for the 
 future of industrial affairs. Engineering 
 has never been more dramatic and coura- 
 geous than in American railway construc- 
 tion; merchandising has never gone further 
 in offers of service and guarantees of satis- 
 faction than in American department stores 
 and mail-order houses. A nearer approach 
 to the scientific control of industrial opera- 
 tions has probably never been made in the 
 world's history than in those establishments 
 now employing "scientific management. ' ' 
 There are men in this country who have 
 shown the world how to save time and toil, 
 how to meet the unexpected with infinite re- 
 sourcefulness, and how to preserve an un- 
 sullied personal honesty under the cloak of 
 corporate organization. There are leaders 
 who, without systematic training in youth, 
 have yet built up a new science of affairs, 
 the principles of which can be taught to the 
 coming generations. 
 
 Few things will help forward the science 
 of industrial administration more than to 
 
 ' 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 155 
 
 drop the old question, "How much is he 
 worth V 9 and press the new one, "How did he 
 get it!" A true aristocracy will never be 
 formed in American industry until all good 
 men unite to draw the lines sharply, and 
 resolve to give honor only to those who have 
 shown the capacity to observe accurately, to 
 think straight, to preserve their ideals, and 
 to develop productive rather than predatory 
 industries. 
 
 In the long run, methods are infinitely 
 more important to industry than the results 
 which at any given moment embody their 
 effects. The prevalence of honorable and 
 efficient methods is the only thing which can 
 keep open the road to future achievements. 
 The first care, therefore, of the business com- 
 munity should be sound methods. We hear 
 much of governmental and other reforms 
 which are feared because they will disturb 
 business. It is safe to say that there is 
 hardly any probable destruction of property 
 which will not, in the long run, prove im- 
 mensely profitable, if it is the price which 
 must be paid for a superior method. To 
 say this is merely to apply the well-estab- 
 lished American principle of scrapping obso- 
 lete equipment, to the problem of getting rid 
 
156 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 of superseded and worn-out methods and 
 policies. 
 
 The paramount value of methods was em- 
 phasized by Mr. Carnegie, when he said, 
 1 'Take away all our factories, our trade, our 
 avenues of transportation, our money; leave 
 me our organization, and in four years I 
 shall have reestablished myself.' ' Results 
 change from day to day; scientific methods 
 are a heritage of intangible capital of more 
 permanent value. Eesults represent past 
 conditions; methods prepare for what is to 
 come. To possess efficient methods is to have 
 the power to recover lost results, or to re- 
 place obsolete results at will ; but to possess 
 results with inadequate methods is to begin 
 at once to fall behind. Results may be ac- 
 quired by accident ; methods are transmitted 
 only by the slow growth of habits. Results 
 may be easily transferred ; to the attainment 
 of superior methods there is happily no 
 royal road. 
 
Chapter IX 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF MENTAL 
 EFFICIENCY (Continued) 
 
 'HP HEBE are certain advantages character- 
 A istic of each of the different stages of 
 any long-continued course of study. The 
 beginnings are marked by a certain buoyancy 
 and fertility of suggestion, and by vivid con- 
 sciousness of details. More advanced effort 
 is marked by grouped handling, ready and 
 semi-automatic action, and sustained and as- 
 sured power. The light of reason is, at the 
 beginning, a series of brilliant flashes ; later 
 on, it becomes a more steady but less pene- 
 trating glow. At first the thought flies with 
 light freedom and unconventionality from 
 one boundary of the subject to another, re- 
 vealing the most unexpected relationships; 
 it later moves with more force, but greater 
 circumspection, in definitely prescribed chan- 
 nels. 
 
 It is the general opinion that the advantage 
 of thoroughness is within the reach of any 
 well-endowed person who will, with tenacity, 
 work himself deeply into the heart of his 
 subject; but that the virtue of originality is 
 157 
 
158 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 the exclusive privilege of talent. While there 
 is truth in this belief, it seems reasonable to 
 say that the talents which fit a traveler to 
 become familiar with a well-settled country 
 should, in some degree, qualify him to ex- 
 plore a new one. Is not originality, indeed, 
 a sort of tenacity in asking questions about 
 a subject, and in keeping one's self in the 
 initial stage of free inquiry? If thorough- 
 ness comes from tenacity in penetrating into 
 a subject, does not originality come from 
 tenacity in opening new avenues to it, view- 
 ing it in new perspectives, and in bringing 
 it into comparison with all things? 
 
 The Fertility of a New Point of View 
 
 The fertility of a new point of view lies 
 in the fact that when two bodies of ideas, 
 never before united, are brought into com- 
 parison, the mind observes relationships, and 
 draws conclusions, which cannot otherwise be 
 attained. From any given body of facts the 
 number of useful conclusions which can be 
 inferred is limited. Further advance in 
 thinking then awaits the introduction of new 
 facts. The original mind is one which, more 
 perseveringly and boldly than others, travels 
 up and down through the world of ideas for 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 159 
 
 new facts, and brings them into comparison 
 with that which it desires to understand. 
 
 Industrial literature recognizes the value 
 of the ' ' outside point of view. ' ' This is based 
 upon the realization that every mind which 
 considers a matter brings into comparison 
 with what it sees a fund of experiences and 
 stock of previous knowledge somewhat differ- 
 ent from that of any other mind. Every 
 mind has its own viewpoint, and can make 
 a unique contribution of ideas, however hum- 
 ble. If a superintendent who has just rem- 
 edied great losses in haulage and handling 
 visits an industrial establishment, he is likely 
 to see its practice with reference to the move- 
 ment of materials with a more intense and 
 suggestive vision than the managers them- 
 selves. A teacher, trained in child psychol- 
 ogy, may instantly observe that youths in an 
 office or factory are assigned to tasks for 
 which the corresponding faculties have not 
 yet sufficiently developed. A diplomat, or 
 an alienist, may detect in a staff the evi- 
 dences of strain, invisible to those who are 
 adjusted to the situation by familiarity. An 
 insurance adjuster may see easily avoidable 
 sources of fire risk. A doctor may notice 
 the bad air; and an engineer may observe 
 
160 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 the over-run of machines. Men differ, not 
 so much in perceptive powers, as in their 
 skill or good fortune in working themselves 
 into new and productive points of view, while 
 others are hampered by looking from the tra- 
 ditional angle. 
 
 There are various suggestions which may 
 be of service in attaining new points of view. 
 One is to consider, in turn, the various prop- 
 erties or aspects of the thing concerned. A 
 machine may be considered with reference to 
 the use of power, economy of materials, out- 
 put, skill of attendant, fatigue of attendant, 
 rate of depreciation, liability of accident, 
 cost, accessibility, repairability, etc. An ad- 
 ministration may be judged as a system of 
 checks and balances, a solidarity of interests, 
 a repository of information, a teaching 
 agency, a center of enthusiasm, a judge of 
 rewards and penalties, a promotion ladder, 
 a disciplinary power, a trustee of capital 
 interests, an exponent of the operative's 
 welfare. 
 
 Another rule is to assume the increase and 
 dominance, or the diminution and elimina- 
 tion, of any factor or tendency, and inquire 
 what the consequences would be, and how 
 they could be met. Mr. Lewis' article in 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 161 
 
 The Engineering Magazine for January, 
 1901, is an excellent example of this kind of 
 study. Still another suggestion, allied to the 
 last, is to search out and study those cases 
 in which the particular phase or agency of 
 performance under consideration has been 
 specially stressed, as where good results have 
 been attained in spite of extraordinary dif- 
 ficulties, or where exceptional results have 
 been achieved under ordinary conditions. 
 
 One of the chief enemies of originality is 
 the prestige of the established order of 
 things. The current methods of thinking and 
 acting have the advantage of being embodied 
 in tangible forms. The constant repetition of 
 stock opinions tends to wear ruts of accept- 
 ance in all but the most independent minds. 
 Custom and tradition are valuable to pre- 
 serve the heritage of knowledge already 
 gained, but they serve, nevertheless, as cur- 
 tains to shut in and darken the mind, and 
 prevent it from seeing in each day the begin- 
 ning of a new life. 
 
 Civilization is passing out of a period of 
 traditional knowledge into one of scientific 
 knowledge. There still survives, however, in 
 many fields of practical action, an intellectual 
 timidity, proper to empirical knowledge, but 
 
162 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 which science has long since cast aside as no 
 longer essential to self-preservation. The 
 remedy for such timidity is the introduction 
 of scientific methods. 
 
 Unity of Principle in Variety of 
 Embodiment 
 
 The mediaeval ecclesiastical conception 
 made of history the record of the interference 
 of an over-ruling divine wisdom in human 
 affairs. When, in the Kenaissance, men be 
 gan to look upon past events as the record of 
 the temper of men, and of their vices and 
 virtues, it was found possible to discover 
 principles of social action ; and so the science 
 of politics was founded. A change analo- 
 gous to this is now going on with reference 
 to business administration. Public opinion 
 has been looking, with open-mouthed awe, 
 at the doings of business leaders, and at the 
 complex mechanism of industrial enterprises. 
 These things have been esteemed the records 
 of supermen, whose doings are above human 
 nature, and beyond formulation into laws. 
 But public opinion is changing. This genera- 
 tion is not so over-awed by the Captains of 
 Industry. It now sees in business, for the 
 most part, ordinary human nature in calcu 
 

 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 163 
 
 lable movements. It perceives that there is 
 a rational ordering of authority and respon- 
 sibility wherever efficient joint action takes 
 place. And so a science of administration is 
 coming into existence. The science comes 
 now, not because the principles are for the 
 first time at work in the world, but because 
 the advance of thinking has melted away 
 interfering preconceptions, so that men are 
 at last free to turn and look at the facts. 
 
 There is but a comparatively small number 
 of underlying administrative principles ; but 
 there are in the world of affairs endless adap- 
 tations and combinations of these elements 
 into policies and programs. To perceive 
 that problems of administration are prob- 
 lems of human nature, to understand basic 
 principles rather than mere corollaries or 
 specific derivations of them, and to perceive 
 under a wide variety of circumstances the 
 occasions which call for a single rule, is to 
 sweep away much superficial complication, 
 and to attain administrative insight. With 
 a knowledge of principles, the administrator 
 can steer through the heterogeneity of af- 
 fairs, as a pilot, steering by the stars, keeps 
 to his course, regardless of the direction of 
 wind and waves. 
 
164 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 By diligently exercising himself in the 
 recognition of administrative principles, the 
 student will find his eyes opened to evidences 
 of their operation in all forms of associated 
 effort. If administration has to do with 
 human nature, anything which extends the 
 executive's knowledge of human nature con- 
 firms his grasp of its principles. The execu- 
 tive may assert that he is interested only in 
 industrial affairs, but if he will admit that 
 one of the tasks of industrial organization is 
 to educate men for their functions, he thereby 
 admits that the business executive may 
 profitably study school administration and 
 pedagogical principles. If discipline is an 
 industrial function, the history of war will 
 be pertinent. If investigations have to be 
 made, science can show how to conduct re- 
 search and weigh evidence. In short, the field 
 from which a knowledge of administrative 
 principles can be gleaned is precisely as ex- 
 tensive as the application of those principles 
 in human society. 
 
 This underlying structure of administra- 
 tive principles, upon which are based all 
 human affairs, Socrates once revealed to a 
 disappointed candidate for military office, by 
 showing him how the qualities essential to 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 165 
 
 good generalship are employed by the mer- 
 chant who is able to collect a stock of goods, 
 the leader of a chorus who is able to select 
 competent teachers, and the manager who 
 can order the affairs of the large classical 
 household, with its dependent slaves. When 
 his friend protested, saying, "By Jupiter, 
 Socrates, I should never have expected to 
 hear from you that good managers of a fam- 
 ily would also be good generals,' ' Socrates 
 responded : 
 
 Come then, let us consider what are the duties of each 
 of them. Is it not, then, the duty of both, to render those 
 under their command obedient and submissive to them? 
 
 Unquestionably. 
 
 Is it not also the duty of both to intrust various employ- 
 ments to such as are fitted to execute them? 
 
 That is also unquestionable. 
 
 To punish the bad, and to honor the good, too, belongs, 
 I think, to each of them. 
 
 Undoubtedly. 
 
 And is it not honorable to both to render those under 
 them well-disposed towards them? 
 
 That also is certain. 
 
 And do you think it for the interest of both to gain for 
 themselves allies and auxiliaries or not? 
 
 It assuredly is for their interest. 
 
 Is it not proper for both also to be careful of their 
 resources? 
 
 Assuredly. 
 
 And is it not proper for both, therefore, to be attentive 
 and industrious in their respective duties? 
 
166 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 In conclusion, Socrates brought the matter 
 back to the principles of human nature, say- 
 ing: 
 
 Do not, therefore, despise men skillful in managing a 
 household; for the conduct of private affairs differs from 
 that of public concerns only in magnitude; in other respects 
 they are similar; but what is most to be observed is that 
 neither of them are managed without men, and that private 
 matters are not managed by one species of men, and public 
 matters by another; for those who conduct public busi- 
 ness make use of men not at all differing in nature from 
 those whom the managers of private affairs employ; and 
 those who know how to employ them conduct either public 
 or private affairs judiciously, while those who do not know 
 will err in the management of both. 
 
 It remains only to add that the writer who 
 recorded the above conversation with ap- 
 proval was Xenophon, one of the most noted 
 generals of ancient times, and the hero of 
 The Eetreat of the Ten Thousand. 
 
 To master his science, the administrator 
 should practice himself as a mental athlete 
 in seizing his principles under whatever 
 guise or outward seeming they present them- 
 selves. He should strip them to the bone 
 of their essential truth, and clothe them again 
 with the details appropriate to specific appli- 
 cations. The administrator should look for 
 his principles everywhere, and set for himself 
 problems in carrying them from field to field, 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 167 
 
 from industry to industry, from club to col- 
 lege, from church to state; adjusting them 
 always with a scrupulous regard for pro- 
 priety, worthy traditions, the delicacies of 
 human sentiment, and other factors of 
 change. 
 
 Co-operation 
 
 Industry and science agree in making large 
 use of that simple form of co-operation, com- 
 monly known as the division of labor, by 
 which persons of unlike genius are united 
 in the same enterprise, for the accomplish- 
 ment of different functions. 
 
 The dawn of modern science in Europe 
 presented, in the life history of two noted 
 men, a striking instance of the benefits of 
 individual co-operation. Tycho Brahe, the 
 leading astronomer of the latter half of the 
 sixteenth century, was a nobleman of proud 
 spirit and, by reason of a certain dramatic 
 talent which attracted attention, able to 
 secure from his royal patrons large grants 
 for astronomical apparatus. He was an ex- 
 pert instrument maker, and an accurate ob- 
 server. His life was spent largely in com- 
 piling tables of observations of planetary 
 movements. Kepler, who came under his 
 
168 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 patronage, and who worked with him for 
 many years, was a poor observer, suffering 
 from defective eyesight. He was awkward in 
 his movements, and possessed little mechani- 
 cal ability. He was, however, a good mathe- 
 matician, and he possessed the rare ability 
 to become enthusiastic over statistical calcu- 
 lations. The five laws of planetary motion 
 which Kepler discovered, and the Eudolphine 
 tables which he completed, are monuments to 
 a splendid and devoted co-operation between 
 two geniuses of entirely different endow- 
 ments. 
 
 Applied science has a similar example of 
 fruitful co-operation, in the case of Isaac 
 Watt and Matthew Boulton. Watt has de- 
 scribed himself in the following words: "I 
 am not enterprising. I would rather face a 
 loaded cannon than settle an account or make 
 a bargain ; in short, I find myself out of my 
 sphere when I have anything to do with man- 
 kind.' ' Boulton was a man of affairs, full 
 of energy and common sense, and possessed 
 of property. He is remembered because he 
 was able to perceive and respect the talent 
 of a man entirely different from himself, and 
 because he tenderly encouraged and coura- 
 geously defended that genius through mani- 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 169 
 
 fold attacks and disappointments, to the last- 
 ing benefit of the world. 
 
 There are abundant illustrations of the 
 fruitful co-operation of men of different tal- 
 ents, in business. There are even enough 
 men of wealth ready to enter into an arm's- 
 length alliance with science and education, by- 
 means of a cold bequest. But there is a wait- 
 ing opportunity for men of affairs to go into 
 living, daily partnership with the arts and 
 sciences, by entering into close personal rela- 
 tionships with men who need the help of a 
 natural administrator to make their contri- 
 bution to progress. A good many captains 
 of industry might weave their names firmly 
 into the fabric of history, as did Boulton, by 
 aiding some delicate flower of genius with 
 energetic counsel and a wise corrective in- 
 fluence. 
 
 One form of co-operation is publicity. 
 Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century 
 philosopher, said: "Whoever has the legis- 
 lature or supreme power of any common- 
 wealth, is bound to govern by established 
 standing laws, promulgated and known to the 
 people, and not by extemporary decrees.' ' 
 Have widely-known "established standing 
 laws' ' any advantage for the private admin- 
 
170 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 istrator ? They have, for one thing, the effect 
 of putting the executive upon his mettle, by 
 bringing home to him the seriousness of what 
 he is doing. One of the most effective ways 
 by which an administrator can attain con- 
 sistency is to hedge about his important ac- 
 tions by a certain formality and publicity, 
 which recalls him to a full consciousness of 
 what he is doing. Out of the habit of con- 
 sidering the bearing of specific acts upon the 
 general program, some sort of a philosophy 
 of administration is sure to grow. 
 
 Another advantage of "established stand- 
 ing laws" is that they meet the full force of 
 public opinion. They exterminate false 
 rumors, draw the fire of critics, attract posi- 
 tive contributions of value, and give a favor- 
 able impression of strength and fairness. 
 
 There is an intermediate scale of co-opera- 
 tion, larger than the personal form, and yet 
 not nation-wide. It is illustrated in the in- 
 formal working together of a number of per- 
 sons (as a profession), or institutions (as a 
 trade), for such objects as the fixing of 
 standards, the regulation of fundamental 
 conditions, the performance of valuable but 
 non-profit-bearing undertakings, and the 
 establishment of a reasonable and mediating 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 171 
 
 temper of mind. Science and industry are 
 at opposite poles in the use of this type of 
 joint action. Science uses it to a marked 
 degree, industry but little. In science the 
 rule of publicity of all improvements and 
 discoveries is supreme. Each individual 
 strives to " clarify his notions by filtering 
 them through other minds, ' ' as Samuel John- 
 son advised. Each is proud to have stim- 
 ulated others, and each builds on the work 
 of others. Scientific standards are main- 
 tained by means of societies, which bring out 
 the ideas of the best minds, and harmonize 
 the results. The common use of like research 
 methods, and apparatus, and terminology is 
 considered, in science, simple common sense. 
 
 The great enemy of co-operation, in all of 
 its forms, is competition. In industry the 
 half-truth, ' i Competition is the life of trade, ' f 
 still circulates from mind to mind without 
 its qualifying clause, * ' Where trade is in the 
 hands of indolent or dishonest persons.' ' 
 Industry is so weakened by the losses of in- 
 ternecine warfare that it tolerates such in- 
 efficiencies as unstandardized accounts, un- 
 necessary duplication, useful facts smothered 
 as trade secrets, perpetual dispute as to fun- 
 damental principles, unstandardized and un- 
 
172 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 reliable vocabulary, meaningless variations 
 in merchandise, and colossal wastes in dis- 
 tribution. 
 
 The possibilities of individual enterprise 
 have been pretty thoroughly mapped out by 
 the last generation of business executives. 
 There still remains a new world of welfare 
 to explore through group enterprise. When 
 our captains of industry shall be broadened 
 to take pride in the achievements of indus- 
 tries and cities and regions (as now occasion- 
 ally happens when a city rebuilds after a fire, 
 or a local exposition is being promoted) much 
 of the energy now lost in competition will 
 be saved for useful work. 
 
 The Correlation of the Arts and Sciences 
 
 Culture, the sciences, and the industrial 
 arts are stimulated by much the same condi- 
 tions. In the seventh and sixth centuries 
 B. C, the conditions which aroused the Greek 
 settlements led almost simultaneously to the 
 rise of industry, the fine arts, and systematic 
 thinking. In the Italian Renaissance the new 
 ideas derived from contact with the East in 
 trade, and with the ancients in culture, pro- 
 duced not only the merchant-princes of 
 Florence and Venice, but also the artists, and 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 173 
 
 the pioneers of science. In America, today, 
 conditions resemble those which existed in 
 the periods just mentioned. Here there is 
 not only boundless opportunity, but the old- 
 world traditions which would have closed 
 these opportunities to the masses have been 
 broken. Here the contrasts between rich 
 and poor are so sharp as to awaken even the 
 dullest minds to the drama of life. Inasmuch 
 as people are aroused in proportion as that 
 which they desire seems attainable to them, 
 a bold and even audacious courage prevails ; 
 talent is keenly appreciated, and an immense 
 fund of energy is released. 
 
 The first result of this energy is a stu- 
 pendous industry. The next results of it will 
 be in America, as in Greece and Italy, a great 
 science and a great art. Modern America, 
 indeed, represents a new Eenaissance, now 
 in progress. 
 
 This Eenaissance differs, however, from 
 those springtimes of thought which have 
 gone before it in history, by reason of its 
 democracy. It is marked by the large pro- 
 portion of the community taking part in it, 
 and driving it forward. This democratic 
 characteristic signifies that our science will 
 be in a special sense directed to the task of 
 
174 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 revolutionizing and perfecting industry, 
 which is the basic activity of society, and the 
 chief expression of the life of the masses. 
 It signifies also that our art and culture will 
 be, in an unusual degree, permeated by a 
 sense of social service, and will be specially 
 devoted to the work of redeeming industry 
 from drudgery and brutality. 
 
 Persistent Thinking as the Universal 
 Solvent 
 
 The administrator who neglects to apply 
 the rules of scientific thinking to his affairs, 
 and who does not exercise the highest reason 
 within his grasp, sees things flat, without 
 perspective of relative importance, derives 
 few suggestions, contradicts himself without 
 knowing it, makes difficulties where there are 
 none, mistakes the point, misconceives op- 
 ponents, perpetually arrives at knowledge 
 too late, needlessly repeats corrected faults, 
 is obstinate when he thinks himself steadfast, 
 inconsistent when he makes concessions, and 
 most excites the contempt of superior minds 
 when most confident of himself. 
 
 The administrator who conceives his prob- 
 lems in an intellectual way, and uses obser- 
 vation and thinking as his universal solvents, 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 175 
 
 establishes a knowledge of fundamental prin- 
 ciples, approaches constantly toward ac- 
 curacy and comprehensiveness, and estab- 
 lishes the habit of ascertaining things at first 
 hand. Such a man cultivates self-command, 
 application, and respect for sincerity. He 
 grows in attentiveness to allow no fallacy 
 or confusion to slip by, in tenacity to leave 
 out no logical step, and in courage to ac- 
 knowledge difficulties frankly, while yet be- 
 lieving that a law exists. 
 
 If science is the accumulated truth which 
 reason has discovered, administration is the 
 art of bringing action under the control of 
 reason. It is only through an efficient use 
 of his mental resources that an administrator 
 can succeed in putting each individual where 
 his highest qualities are used, in establish- 
 ing logical relationships, in bringing the in- 
 ferior under the helpful leadership of the su- 
 perior, in providing immediate, complete and 
 accurate records, in elucidating orders, in 
 preceding action by due deliberation, in un- 
 locking the energies of men by ennobling 
 their conceptions of their tasks, and in estab- 
 lishing a rational system of rewards and 
 punishments. All these administrative prob- 
 lems are problems of thinking. In seeking 
 
176 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 their solution, the administrator seeks sim- 
 ply to penetrate every part of organized ac- 
 tion with the illumination which proceeds 
 from the intellect. 
 
 Intellectual Courage 
 
 One must learn, must practice persistently, 
 even fight strenuously, for the right to bring 
 all his powers to bear upon his life work, to 
 exercise all the abilities of his mind, all his 
 sympathies, his feelings and knowledge, un- 
 abashed by decorum, literality, and philistin- 
 ism. Thus forcefully did William James, in 
 one of his essays, emphasize the bravery re- 
 quired for first-class thinking. This is a 
 statement of the great truth, so often em- 
 phasized by Fichte, Varnhagen, Emerson, 
 and others, that the root evil of life is cow- 
 ardice, and the basic virtue bravery ; bravery 
 to make all vital decisions in perfect honesty 
 and seriousness, and to bring to bear upon 
 them all the powers of one's personality. 
 
 Opposition to the evolution of scientific in- 
 dustry is to be expected from many sources : 
 from laborers caught in the fallacy of a uni- 
 versal over-production, who conceive that 
 there will not be enough work in the world 
 to go around; from officials who fear for 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 177 
 
 their positions; and from scientists who are 
 not pioneers npon the present frontiers of 
 science. When one speaks of industry as a 
 possible fine art, he must count upon the in- 
 ertia of those for whom culture means no 
 vision of social good, growing into reality- 
 through sacrifice, but signifies the mark of a 
 complacent Brahmin caste, pluming itself on 
 its superiority. The champions of the vested 
 interests of the world of culture tend to be 
 blind to the beauties of the new and more 
 democratic ideals, which most need cham- 
 pions, and the appeal of which fills the heart 
 of the reformer. 
 
 The crucial difficulty in every advance in 
 the world of action, as in the world of 
 thought, is undoubtedly to unlock the mind 
 of man and, by dismissing the phrase, "It 
 cannot be done," release human energies, so 
 that a fair trial may be made. It is to this 
 point that the plaintive closing sentences of 
 Santayana's "Life of Season" return: 
 
 The darkest spots are in man himself, in his fitful, irra- 
 tional disposition. Could a better system prevail in our 
 lives, a better order would establish itself in our thinking. 
 It has not been for want of keen senses, or personal, 
 genius, or a constant order in the outer world, that man- 
 kind have fallen back repeatedly into barbarism and super- 
 stition. It has been for want of good character, good 
 
178 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 example, and good government. There is a pathetic capac- 
 ity in men to live nobly, if only they would give one another 
 the chance. 
 
 Over this difficulty of making trials on 
 faith, it is the supreme mission of excep- 
 tional men to help the world of ordinary 
 minds. An ideal is not something to con- 
 template, but to attempt. To attempt it is to 
 gain a momentum toward it, which makes it 
 seem nearer and more real. In the measure 
 that we achieve an ideal for ourselves, we 
 begin to think it possible for others. 
 
THE ADMINISTRATOR AS A 
 DIPLOMAT 
 
 Chapter X 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE GENTLEMAN- 
 ADMINISTRATOR 
 
 T N the present state of industry many kinds 
 of persons are trying their hands at ad- 
 ministrative work. It is the privilege of the 
 capitalist in a capitalistic regime to nominate 
 himself to whatever positipn he chooses. In 
 the ranks of administrators there are to be 
 found men who have been drafted in be- 
 cause they have invented a new process or 
 designed a package, or because they under- 
 stand machinery, or corporation law, or have 
 inherited a going business. When we come 
 to know more of the science of administra- 
 tion, and when public opinion shall demand 
 a more scientifically planned economy, it will 
 commend itself to reason as an efficient prac- 
 tice to put into administrative positions only 
 179 
 
180 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 those who understand the art of handling 
 men. 
 
 Administration and Human Nature 
 
 Administration is a form of negotiation or 
 diplomacy. The stuff with which it deals is 
 human nature. The executive is not only 
 called upon to provide an administrative 
 framework of defined positions, and a body 
 of rules governing operations, but to trans- 
 mute his ideas into conviction in the minds 
 of others, and to vitalize others by his energy 
 and sympathy. He must breathe the breath 
 of life into his creation. To this end he has 
 need to be a judge of men, gauging their abil- 
 ities and acquirements as they are revealed 
 by language, intonation, expression, features, 
 cranium, build, posture, habit, and all the 
 works of their hands and minds. He must 
 ascertain the prejudices and sympathies of 
 his men, find the grooves in which habit 
 makes their action easy, and divine the inter- 
 ests and ideals which can be relied upon in 
 elevating their thinking and energizing their 
 wills. 
 
 Knowing human nature, the administrator 
 will understand why the esthetic and moral 
 impulses everywhere interlace with economic 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 181 
 
 motives in sound and permanent forms of 
 industrial activity. He will have the cour- 
 age to put into the management of practical 
 affairs a new and more refined calculus of 
 pleasures and pains, because he has the imag- 
 ination to conceive what an outpouring of 
 repressed and chafing energy there will be 
 when men are led by executives who under- 
 stand and esteem men. For him an organi- 
 zation will be, first of all, a body of human 
 beings sustaining each other with sympathy 
 in a process of self-expression. 
 
 Sources of Knowledge 
 
 Among the sources from which the indus- 
 trial executive can secure a knowledge of the 
 diplomatic aspects of administration, in ad- 
 dition to his own intuitive powers and the 
 life histories of other industrial leaders, is 
 the experience which society has accumulated 
 in the conduct of non-economic forms of or- 
 ganized effort. There are general principles 
 of administration which underlie politics, eco- 
 nomics, ecclesiastics, diplomacy, military 
 strategy, and all other forms of associated 
 human action. Each department of experi- 
 ence can yield knowledge of profit to the 
 others, for each can elucidate the working of 
 
182 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 certain forces which are everywhere present, 
 but are peculiarly clear and significant in it. 
 
 In military history, the administrator can 
 see exemplified the Spartan virtues of de- 
 cision, discipline, despatch, concentration, 
 and preliminary preparation. From it he 
 can learn the physics of handling men in 
 masses. 
 
 In like manner, from the record of diplo- 
 macy, and the study of the conceptions which 
 society at various times has formed of the 
 ideal gentleman, the administrator can learn 
 the function of manners, the subtle efficiency 
 of tact, and can observe the bearing of es- 
 thetic and ethical forces upon economics. 
 From such sources he can secure guidance 
 in the delicate art of handling men as in- 
 dividuals. 
 
 It is the recognition of these bonds of basic 
 law, stretching from one life interest to an- 
 other, and binding all together in a har- 
 mony, which has enabled all great admin- 
 istrators to understand each other so well. 
 "A master likes a master/ ' says Emerson, 
 1 i and does not stipulate whether it be orator, 
 artist, craftsman, or king. ' ' Likewise, in the 
 "Ballad of the East and West," Kipling 
 sings : 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 183 
 
 — •" there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, 
 nor Birth, 
 When two strong men stand face to face, tho* they come 
 from the ends of the earth ! ' ' 
 
 History of Ideal Types 
 
 Let ns make a brief review of what, in 
 various ages, it has been thought a man 
 should be, in the hope that it will yield sug- 
 gestions of use in denning our ideas as to the 
 place and function, the character and ap- 
 propriate methods, of the industrial entre- 
 preneur, or Captain of Industry, who has be- 
 come so prominent since the industrial revo- 
 lution. And this let us do, not in a spirit of 
 criticism, but to the end that the business 
 executive may become a better rounded and 
 more reliable instrument of progress, fitting 
 harmoniously into the social order, so that 
 when his account is balanced with each of 
 the precious interests and aspiring tenden- 
 cies of contemporary life, he may be found 
 to be a profitable servant of society. 
 
 The Pagan Hero 
 
 The ideal man of ancient times was a leader 
 who wrought for the general good through 
 the instrumentality of the State. A priest- 
 king in Egypt, and an inspired prophet and 
 
184 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 law-giver in Judea, he was frequently con- 
 ceived by the Greeks and Romans as an ora- 
 tor. Doubtless the most dramatic form in 
 which the power of the more refined graces 
 of character can exhibit itself is the spell 
 which an eloquent speaker can exert over a 
 listening multitude. The States of ancient 
 times were for considerable periods governed 
 by large primary assemblies of citizens. 
 These, in an age of imperfectly formed laws, 
 and of well-nigh constant warfare, provided 
 an avenue to power through the arts of the 
 rostrum. The principal ingredient in the 
 pagan ideal was the worship of patriotism. 
 In Greece, where the State so greatly pre- 
 dominated, this led men to reason back from 
 the requirements of the perfect State to the 
 essential characteristics of the perfect citi- 
 zen. The conception was rounded out by ad- 
 miration for the skilful use of reason, and 
 by the breadth and sanity of judgment which 
 naturally followed from the Greek concep- 
 tion of beauty as balance, measure, or pro- 
 portion. 
 
 In Rome the virtue of patriotism was of 
 a more stern complexion, as if influenced by 
 the continual military conquests. There the 
 characteristics especially admired were self- 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 185 
 
 reliance, fortitude, serenity in trying vicissi- 
 tudes, a stern simplicity, and ready self-sacri- 
 fice to avoid the humiliation of one's honor. 
 The defects of this virtue were blunted sen- 
 sibilities, a merciless treatment of the weaker, 
 and narrow prejudice against the people of 
 other countries and races. The gentleman 
 of ancient times was a servant of the State. 
 The gamut of virtue ran from the refined 
 periods of a perfumed orator to the final act 
 of a defeated general falling upon his sword 
 to avoid gracing an enemy's triumph. But 
 in all this range there was no greatness ad- 
 mired which was purely personal and self- 
 seeking. 
 
 Pagan and Christian 
 
 The transition from pagan to mediaeval 
 thinking is marked by the introduction of 
 Christian ideals, and the ascendency of the 
 organized church. The Eoman citizen, ani- 
 mated by the sense of human dignity, had 
 cultivated a quick assertion of rights and a 
 quick resentment of wrongs. The Christian 
 priest, humiliated by a sense of sin, now 
 sounded the depths of self-sacrifice and bod- 
 ily mortification. The hordes of barbarian 
 invaders who exterminated the martially in- 
 
186 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 clined Eomans, ignored the humble early 
 Christian bishops, and permitted them to 
 possess themselves of the administrative plan 
 of the fallen empire, and organize their 
 church upon it. 
 
 Learning also fell into the hands of the 
 church, so that soon the story of ancient 
 virtue was read only in monasteries where, 
 viewed as a record of pagans, it fell coldly 
 upon minds filled with the doctrine of human 
 depravity, and cramped into a barren dia- 
 lectic by the limits which religious dogma 
 imposed. 
 
 So, therefore, within the precincts of the 
 church, in the hermit's retreat, and in pro- 
 tected monasteries and nunneries, the image 
 of the pagan hero faded into the background, 
 and that of the Christian saint was installed 
 as the personal ideal. 
 
 The Teutonic races, spurred forward by 
 migrating hordes in the rear, and thrown 
 backward by trained armies upon the Roman 
 frontiers, were compelled to bend the full 
 force of their tribal organizations to warfare. 
 Their youths were trained to a hardy active 
 life. Their courage and spirit were con- 
 stantly fed by stories of exploits of the chase 
 and the battlefield. They were proud of their 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 187 
 
 stature and strength, and were full of boast- 
 ing and ferocity. 
 
 If the barbarian invaders in southern 
 Europe took over the conduct of military 
 and political affairs, leaving social and re- 
 ligious matters in the hands of the church, 
 on the other hand, in northern countries, as 
 soon as an orderly life was to some degree 
 established, the pioneer preachers of the 
 Christian faith appeared in every neighbor- 
 hood. Thus everywhere were brought into 
 contact in western Europe the gentle south- 
 ern priest and the brave northern warrior. 
 These two types curbed each other and 
 wrought upon each other, through many a 
 generation of silent or outbroken contest, un- 
 til at last, in the crusades, the church found 
 a vent for barbaric love of war in her ser- 
 vice. In the crusades the union between the 
 temporal and spiritual forces of society again 
 became perfect. And so we have an era of 
 achievement. The physical manifestation of 
 the energy which this union begot was the 
 conquest of the Holy Land ; a far-distant and 
 hotly contested region was won by an army 
 of diverse races and poor discipline, under 
 jealous leaders, and without the aid of mod- 
 ern arms, commissariat, or means of trans- 
 
188 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 port. The spiritual or intellectual result of 
 this union was the splendid conception of the 
 chivalrous knight. 
 
 Elements of Chivalry 
 Chivalry preserved the active force of the 
 northern chieftains, but directed it to un- 
 selfish and lofty ends. It combined strength 
 with modesty and gentleness. It retained 
 self-confidence, but forbade boasting. It cul- 
 tivated the love of renown, but so refined the 
 imagination that satisfaction could be found 
 only in splendid exploits. It retained a love 
 of conflict, but made mercy to the vanquished 
 as much a test of character as the victory it- 
 self. It retained Teutonic chastity, but glori- 
 fied it into the pure emotion described by 
 Dante as "a love which withdraws my 
 thought from all vile things.' ' It retained 
 the Gothic conception of loyalty and fra- 
 ternity, but widened the group within which 
 brotherhood was recognized to include all 
 who named the name of Christ. Symonds 
 
 Chivalry absorbed and organized not only much of the 
 Christian but also a large portion of the old Teutonic 
 spirit. The unselfishness, humility, forgiveness of injuries, 
 indifference to worldly wealth, the chastity and purity of 
 love which formed ingredients of the chivalrous ideal, were 
 Christian. The adoration of women, the love of battles and 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 189 
 
 the feats of arms for their own sake, the scrupulous sense 
 of honor, the obedience to laws, the truthfulness and loyalty 
 to persons, the respect of knighthood as a form of consecra- 
 tion, — all these no less essential elements of chivalry were 
 Teutonic. 
 
 In short, then, chivalry married the tender 
 virtues of the Christian south to the rugged 
 strength of the barbarian north. 
 
 The institution of chivalry arose toward 
 the end of the tenth century. It was most 
 vigorous during the crusades, most elaborate 
 during the Wars of the Roses. It was robbed 
 of much of its beauty by the ungenerous 
 passions evoked in the French and English 
 civil wars. Its honor was weakened by the 
 sophistications of Renaissance policy. When, 
 at last, standing armies made kings and com- 
 mons powerful, and there was no longer any 
 need of traveling champions of justice, armed 
 with spear and shield, knight-errantry ceased 
 to be. By the sixteenth century it was but a 
 memory. The ringing horn on the hillside, 
 the clash of combat in the road, and the ap- 
 plause of spectators in the tilt-yard, were 
 heard no more. Men gave over romantic 
 quests inspired by the Holy Grail, or a lady's 
 glove, and hung their glittering armor as an 
 ornament on castle walls. Knighthood dis- 
 appeared into the shining mists of story and 
 
190 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 song, leaving behind, in addition to its ideal 
 so wonderfully compounded of strength and 
 beauty, a habit of respectful behavior, a quick 
 answerability for personal wrongs, a wealth 
 of armorial bearings and mottoes and pre- 
 cedents for heraldry, and various orders of 
 nobility and decorations of merit. It left also 
 a pathetic longing in the human heart to see 
 such another age of romance. 
 
 The chivalrous knight swore allegiance to 
 God, his king, and his lady. He thus joined 
 Christianity, loyalty, and love — religion, pa- 
 triotism, and the arts. The vows of the 
 knight bound him to renounce material gain, 
 to preserve faith, to keep his word sacred, 
 actively to protect women and all weak and 
 oppressed persons, to seek glory through 
 arduous exploits and noble conflicts, and yet 
 draw his sword in no unjust quarrel. These 
 vows gave consistency to an ideal of aristo- 
 cratic conduct appropriate to serve as a code 
 of morals for a dominating, vital type of 
 leader, living in a disturbed and transitional 
 age. 
 
 Eesults of Chivalry 
 
 The enthusiasm which the many-sided ideal 
 of chivalry evoked with its galaxy of virtues, 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 191 
 
 may be seen, in literature, in the unfolding 
 of the themes of the simple Aryan folk tales, 
 and the prose romances of the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries, into the sensuous beauty 
 of Provencal poetry, and the delicacy and 
 pathos of Petrarch and Dante. Chivalry em- 
 bellished with romance the lives of its half- 
 legendary founders, Charlemagne, Siegfried, 
 and Arthur. It supplied the conception of 
 virtue sung in Chaucer's " Pilgrimage,' ■ Mal- 
 ory's "Morte d 'Arthur," and Spenser's 
 "Faerie Queene." In the world of action, 
 chivalry animated the crusades, dispensed 
 justice throughout Europe for four hundred 
 years, purified court life, and made much of 
 the warfare of the middle ages peculiarly 
 humane and noble. Its enthusiasm burned 
 into brilliancy in such characters as Kichard 
 and Blondel, the Black Prince and his father, 
 Tancred, Godfrey of Bouillon, Gaston de 
 Foix, Bayard, and Warwick, and in a thou- 
 sand forgotten commanders of the Templars, 
 the Knights of St. John, and the Teutonic 
 Knights. 
 
 Chivalry served to draw out and develop 
 those free, bold spirits whose talents could 
 not have been evoked by the disputations of 
 the school-men, nor the mortifications of the 
 
192 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 religious zealots. It created a romance of 
 action to match the saint's moral paradise, 
 and evoked poetry and the arts to celebrate 
 its charms. The love of the beautiful which 
 it begot caused a hospitable reception to be 
 given in Europe to the refinements brought 
 from the East by the returning crusaders, 
 which caused the first slight stirring of in- 
 ternational trade. 
 
 A great advance in decency, courtesy, and 
 personal loyalty was made in Europe, 
 through chivalry, between the twelfth and the 
 sixteenth centuries. By permitting men to 
 differ without brutality, a freer and more 
 flexible movement of thought was made pos- 
 sible ; and thus the temper of mind was pre- 
 pared which permitted the old order of think- 
 ing to break up, and a new one to form 
 which should be comprehensive enough to 
 include the forgotten treasures of classical 
 times, and the possibilities of the newly dis- 
 covered west. 
 
 It created a friendliness and freemasonry 
 among the ruling classes of Europe which 
 so softened social and national antagonisms 
 as to permit a merciful spirit to express it- 
 self ultimately in the unwritten laws of war, 
 and in the practice of diplomacy. The knight- 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 193 
 
 errant *s love of dangerous exploits trans- 
 mitted itself to the " Shepherds of the 
 Ocean," who discovered the new world and 
 explored its continents. Through chivalry 
 the glamour of the crusades was transmitted 
 to the "banner of the cross" of the modern 
 missionary field. 
 
 In England and France, where the knight 
 exerted the greatest influence, there was de- 
 veloped that freedom and tolerance which 
 the quick honor of the code demanded, that 
 courage to attempt romantic things which 
 its quests developed, and that habit of ac- 
 tively bringing one's ideals to bear upon the 
 real world which its vow to deliver the op- 
 pressed involved. So was formed the basis 
 of the modern conception of a gentleman. 
 The consequence of the development of these 
 virtues was that France and England were 
 placed for a long period in control of the 
 world, and in the van of civilization. 
 
 The Courtier 
 
 The formation of great political States in 
 Europe at the close of the Middle Ages, and 
 the establishment of the power of the mon- 
 archs throughout their realms, made it un- 
 necessary that the knight-errant should 
 
194 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 longer ride up and down through the land 
 as the champion of those who were wronged. 
 The introduction of firearms, and the growth 
 of standing armies, made obsolete the 
 mounted warrior encased in armor, and 
 skilled in individual contests with the lance 
 and sword. The administrative machinery 
 of general government, for each country, be- 
 came concentrated at the court of the mon- 
 arch. The officers of the realm organized 
 themselves about the person of the sovereign, 
 on the model of a great household. As the 
 page, squire, and knight of war-like chivalry 
 disappeared, the chief men of the realm be- 
 came grand chamberlains, grand almoners, 
 provosts, officers of the guard, equerries, and 
 masters of the bedchamber, the wardrobe, the 
 pantry, and even of the hounds. The world 
 of opportunity was not now chiefly the field 
 of dangerous exploit, but the anterooms of 
 the great, the royal hunting parties, and the 
 petty courts of the favorites of the hour. To- 
 ward this world of opportunity, therefore, 
 men of talent turned their thoughts. To the 
 courts were drawn the leaders of the royal 
 armies, the prelates of the church* and vassal 
 nobles more easily controlled as ornaments 
 of court than as administrators on their own 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 195 
 
 estates surrounded by their henchmen. Court 
 circles were completed by the various mem- 
 bers of the royal family, representatives of 
 foreign monarchs, and a miscellaneous crowd 
 of soldiers of fortune, scholars, artists, and 
 agreeable men and women in waiting. 
 
 These persons were brought into an inti- 
 mate daily contact which gave unusual im- 
 portance to tact and the graces of personal 
 intercourse. "In acquiring talents adapted 
 to tranquil times,' ' said Taine, "men lost 
 those suited to times of agitation.' ' The 
 knightly virtues were exchanged for the 
 courtly ones. But if there was now less em- 
 phasis upon physical stamina and the mili- 
 tary virtues than in the days of chivalry, 
 there still survived from that period a high- 
 spirited honor, a scrupulous observance of 
 the personal rights of others, and many 
 graceful formalities and traditional expres- 
 sions of deference. 
 
 Great power was now concentrated in the 
 hands of a few persons, so that even the 
 destinies of States were decided by dynastic 
 and personal alliances and antagonisms. The 
 energies of court circles, therefore, found ex- 
 pression in an elaborate subtle game, the ob- 
 ject of which was to win personal influence. 
 
196 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 Every conversation, and even every recre- 
 ation, might become pregnant with possibil- 
 ity, if the great ones were present. A look 
 or a word might ruin a cause ; the friendship 
 of a relative or a favorite might insure a 
 career. Under such conditions, manners, 
 which should take a position as the minor 
 morals of life, were emphasized at the ex- 
 pense of more noble virtues. 
 
 An entirely new element in court life, not 
 present in the age of chivalry, Was intro- 
 duced by the revival of learning. The Eenais- 
 sance was an awakening to the joy of life, 
 and to a new curiosity with reference to the 
 physical world. Brought about by the revival 
 of classical learning and the discovery of the 
 new world, its rise reinaugurated scientific 
 study, and stimulated literature and the fine 
 arts. The invention of printing, and the in- 
 troduction of paper helped to spread broad- 
 cast in polite society reproductions of the 
 ancient classics, while the humanists pre- 
 sented themselves at court as teachers, lec- 
 turers, poets, and arbiters of taste in speak- 
 ing and writing and in all matters involving 
 the arts. 
 
 We may, perhaps, distinguish three ele- 
 ments which united to form the court ideal 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 197 
 
 of life in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eigh- 
 teenth centuries; the virtues of the knight 
 sans peur et sans reproche inherited from 
 chivalry, the accomplishments of scholarship 
 and polite learning introduced by the hu- 
 manists, and the sinuous practices of an ele- 
 gant but unscrupulous diplomacy, to which 
 the conditions of court life gave birth. In so 
 far as these elements were capable of being 
 harmonized, they made up the conception of 
 what the ideal courtier should be. In Ed- 
 mund Spenser's "Faerie Queene" we have 
 this character presented as conceived at the 
 court of Elizabeth, the emphasis being placed 
 upon manliness. In i l II Cortegiano ' ' of Cas- 
 tiglione, the ideal of the Italian court of the 
 Duke of Urbino in the early sixteenth century 
 is presented, with the emphasis upon culture 
 and the graces. At his best, as illustrated, 
 let us say, by Sir Philip Sidney, the courtier 
 was a sort of knight with armor laid off, 
 bending himself to the delicate negotiations 
 involved in the new scheme of highly cen- 
 tralized personal government. The courtier 
 was more gentle and more graceful than the 
 knight, and perhaps better balanced and more 
 restrained. His temper was more flexible, 
 and he was better educated. He gave more 
 
198 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 attention to self-control, repressing temper, 
 melancholy, and all ungracious actions, in an 
 effort to please ; and he coached himself more 
 constantly to remember the likes and dislikes 
 and the interests of others. 
 
 But he was in an atmosphere unfavorable 
 to many of the manly virtues. The ideal of 
 the courtier suffered a rapid deterioration. 
 The elaboration of the material side of life, 
 through the attention paid by court circles 
 to equipages and palaces and garments and 
 costly functions, fired the ambition of aspir- 
 ing men everywhere in Christendom to obtain 
 wealth. While this undoubtedly stimulated 
 industrial development, it contributed not a 
 little to the ultimate decline of the courtier 
 into the mere man of fashion and dandy. 
 The Kenaissance introduced many vices 
 which fastened themselves upon the idle priv- 
 ileged classes and, in England, led to the re- 
 volt of Puritanism, by which was set up an 
 unfortunate opposition between the graces 
 and the virtues. Italian intrigue gave to 
 statecraft a sinister turn. Irresponsible 
 power produced an autocratic haute diplo- 
 matic which lingered in conflict with demo- 
 cratic ideals and persisted at least until Met- 
 ternich's time. 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 199 
 
 The emphasis placed on birth barred out 
 much talent. The narrowing of the range 
 of interests made the court circle incapable 
 of anticipating the forthcoming social move- 
 ments, and of adjusting itself to them. At 
 last, the demand of the people for political 
 power placed the whole group in the light 
 of usurpers, and deprived the courtier of the 
 stimulus of general admiration, and of the 
 force of his own good conscience. And thus 
 the heart was taken out of the court concep- 
 tion of what a man should be. There was 
 soon left only a shell of genealogies, formali- 
 ties, and clothes. A great decline in nobility 
 of character is visible between the court of 
 Elizabeth and that of George II. 
 
 " Aristocracies,' ' says Matthew Arnold, 
 " those children of established fact, are for 
 epochs of concentration. In epochs of ex- 
 pansion, aristocracies with their natural 
 clinging to the established fact, their want of 
 sense for the inevitable transitoriness of all 
 human institutions, are bewildered and help- 
 less.' ' 
 
 i The Gentleman 
 
 The next movement therefore is a demo- 
 cratic one. After the era of revolutions had 
 
200 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 established popular governments, the re- 
 sponsibility of leadership, which once rested 
 with the few, devolved upon public opinion. 
 A new range of rights and duties was opened 
 to the citizen. It will be observed that the 
 conceptions of past ages were ideals of 
 leadership. The orator-patriot was a leader ; 
 so also were the knight and the courtier. 
 Now that we have reached the age of de- 
 mocracy can there any longer be an ideal of 
 leadership? It has been said that many steps 
 in progress have had a leveling effect. Gun- 
 powder abolished certain inequalities between 
 fighting men, printing leveled learning in cer- 
 tain ways, transportation brought travel- 
 ing men nearer to equality, and the tele- 
 graph made communicating men stand more 
 nearly upon a plane. But leadership has not 
 thereby been destroyed. On the contrary, 
 these inventions have increased the number 
 of departments of human effort which offer 
 scope for the exercise of great powers of 
 leadership. The duty of leadership has been 
 laid upon a vastly greater number of per- 
 sons than ever before. The inventions above 
 referred to have made scope for scholars in 
 the control of the fecund press, for states- 
 men to fix the transportation rates which 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 201 
 
 shall determine the circulatory system of the 
 nation's industry, and for men of culture to 
 say what is worth while as telegraphic news. 
 Machine processes of industry have brought 
 into existence vast industrial interests which 
 call loudly for men of the highest character. 
 "What becomes of the gentleman in an age 
 of democratic equality V asks Crothers. 
 "Just what becomes of every ideal when the 
 time of its fulfillment has come. It is freed 
 from its limitations and enters into a larger 
 life. ,, 
 
 Curiously enough, the democratic ideal is 
 the most complex. Each ideal in the sequence 
 of history has naturally enough been more 
 complex than its predecessor, for it has 
 added, to the elements carried over from the 
 old, the new qualities evoked by the need of 
 the times. The conception of the gentleman 
 contains elements derived from all the cul- 
 tural enthusiasms which have preceded it. 
 This complexity emphasizes the sovereign 
 importance of balance and due proportion. 
 A gentleman is one who gives to each worthy 
 aim of life its rightful consideration. He 
 pushes those things into the background 
 which belong in the background. He is one 
 who will not permit ' ' raw haste, half-sister to 
 
202 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 delay,' ' nor disfiguring intensity in the pur- 
 suit of a few ends, to leave him a spiritual 
 pauper in other departments of his nature. 
 With nothing in excess, and nothing forgot- 
 ten, he sees life as a whole and plans to make 
 a harmony of it. The relation of balance of 
 character to administration is clear. The 
 man who cannot administer his own talents, 
 and establish harmony in his individual char- 
 acter, gives poor promise of introducing due 
 proportion and smooth co-operation into the 
 labors of others placed under his control. 
 
 The question has often been asked: "What 
 is it to be a gentleman? " Thackeray, who 
 asks it in "The Four Georges,' ' answers, "It 
 is to have lofty aims, to lead a pure life, to 
 keep your honor virgin, to have the esteem 
 of your fellow citizens, and the love of your 
 fireside; to bear good fortune meekly; to 
 surfer evil with constancy; and through evil 
 or good to maintain truth always I" Hux- 
 ley chooses as the essential qualities, thought- 
 fulness for others, generosity, modesty, and 
 self-respect. Newman, in his ' ' Idea of a Uni- 
 versity,' ' gives a wonderful catalog of the 
 virtues of the gentleman, in which the func- 
 tions of kindliness, modesty, fairness, and 
 tolerance are trenchantly set forth. 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 203 
 
 In personal intercourse the gentleman 
 " sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly 
 speaks, coolly answers, and ceases when he 
 has no more to say." He makes few apolo- 
 gies, knowing that many are futile. He is 
 sparing in the use of criticism, satire, and 
 ridicule ; but on occasion employs them with 
 a convincing candor. He is tolerant of abuse, 
 as one who knows the force of the passion 
 which it expresses; but in his own speaking 
 aims not to make truth offensive by excess of 
 force. In argument he strives not more to 
 convince the intellect than to win the heart, 
 knowing too well the value of a friend to sac- 
 rifice one for a triumph in debate. He is 
 hampered by few aversions, by rare resent- 
 ments, and by no jealousies. 
 
 The heart of a gentleman is hospitable to 
 new friends. He makes acquaintances with- 
 out precipitant confidences; and his friend- 
 ships are not cut to the pattern of his inter- 
 ests. He possesses the sympathy born of 
 much experience; and from kindliness of 
 heart, as well as acute perception, attains the 
 virtue which is the twin- sister of excellence, 
 namely, the appreciation of excellence in 
 others. He avoids dissimulation as the weak 
 policy of those who are overmatched by cir- 
 
204 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 cumstances. He does not need to boast, for 
 he has curbed his appetite for praise until he 
 is content with that recognition which flows 
 naturally from his achievements. He under- 
 stands the endurance of cheerfulness; and 
 prizes the beauty of unpublished charity. 
 
 A gentleman possesses the harmony of na- 
 ture which, "suiting the action to the word, 
 the word to the action/ ' is able to attain ad- 
 dress without loss of more sterling qualities. 
 He judges himself too justly for presumption, 
 and others too accurately for diffidence. By 
 avoiding the impetuosity of youth, and the 
 avarice of decrepitude, he prolongs the 
 golden age of life. Through his restraint 
 there is expressed a reserve strength which 
 sustains admiration as by a perpetual prom- 
 ise of new revelations of moral beauty. 
 
 A gentleman is one who is endowed with 
 generous impulses, a sound understanding, 
 and a firm will; he has taught himself the 
 nature of the human heart; he is moving 
 through the world in the company of splen- 
 did ideals, for whose realization he ever hope- 
 fully and joyously strives. 
 
 Present Need of Leadership 
 
 There is a degree of similarity between 
 the juncture now prevailing with reference 
 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 205 
 
 to ideals of conduct, and certain transitional 
 periods of the past when old models were 
 disintegrating and new ones forming. In the 
 early middle ages the delicate ideals of Chris- 
 tianity were brought into contact with the 
 ferocity of the barbarian peoples. At first 
 the refined spirits of the Church shrank into 
 seclusion, cultivating self-perfection while 
 they awaited the end of the world. But when 
 finally a zeal was awakened within them to 
 carry their gospel to the northern peoples, 
 and to this zeal was added system and di- 
 plomacy, their efforts were crowned with suc- 
 cess. Not that they made many hermits and 
 recluses; they did not, human nature be 
 thanked. But, by coming into a vigorous and 
 intimate relation to life, they caused the 
 Christian virtues to unite with the prevailing 
 secular ideals of the northern races, and 
 formed that beautiful composite of charac- 
 teristics which graced the chivalrous knight. 
 An analogous process of integrating di- 
 verse social interests is now under way. The 
 Puritan movement, which for a long period 
 parted religion and culture as co-operating 
 social forces in English-speaking countries, 
 was followed by the Industrial Revolution 
 which served to carry ethical and economic 
 
206 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 thought apart. The Eeformation withdrew 
 the emphasis from the social law and placed 
 it upon the individual conscience, but the In- 
 dustrial Eevolution made the individual ap- 
 pear as an insignificant atom in great na- 
 tional and international adjustments of sup- 
 ply and demand. It applied to him the 
 scourge of a new competition, offered him the 
 secrecy of producing for a distant market 
 under cover of the corporation and, through 
 the philosophy of natural liberty, bade him 
 follow his self-interest. 
 
 Likewise, culture and industry for a time 
 drew apart, the one looking ever backwards 
 and over-valuing literature, the other look- 
 ing ever forward and over-valuing action. 
 The new system of manufacturing and com- 
 merce served to rearrange communities geo- 
 graphically on the basis of their interests. 
 The trades were carried out of the house- 
 holds and villages, where the general intelli- 
 gence of the community had kept vigilant 
 eye upon their practices, and were concen- 
 trated in regions of coal and iron, and in the 
 industrial quarters of cities, temporarily out 
 of the vision and thought of the liberal pro- 
 fessions and the landed families and the uni- 
 versities. 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 207 
 
 But now the interests of society are again 
 beginning to react energetically upon each 
 other. If a new synthesis can be made which 
 will bring the various forces of the com- 
 munity into harmonious co-operation, as in 
 the age of the crusades and the cathedrals, 
 another period of great achievements may 
 be ushered in. Eeligion, now no longer so 
 certain of the accuracy of its knowledge of a 
 future world, is concerning itself more with 
 present social problems; while industry has 
 had long enough experience with the new 
 order to perceive the reality of the results 
 of the long-run, and to turn to the causes of 
 individual efficiency. Likewise, culture, bet- 
 ter informed of the world's present life- 
 process by modern agencies of news gather- 
 ing, is ashamed of literary dilettantism; 
 while the Captains of Industry, having shown 
 secret aspirations by post-mortem endow- 
 ments of socializing institutions, are giving 
 way to a generation of college men in busi- 
 ness who reach forward more boldly to a 
 new chivalry of generous living leadership. 
 
 The age is full of opportunities. Industry 
 awaits the administrator who shall be all that 
 a gentleman should be ; efficient but humane, 
 adroit but honorable, a lover of his fellow- 
 
208 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 men as well as a leader of them; and who 
 shall use his power with gentleness, and his 
 wealth with imagination, and shall illuminate 
 the world of private property with light from 
 far-away interests of the heart. 
 
 Such an administrator will, indeed, assert 
 his driving power and mastership, and will 
 take care to insure discipline or the spirit of 
 sacrifice, which is essential to all successful 
 organized action. But he will not rest con- 
 tent with that blind, mechanical, and sullen 
 discipline gained by coercion. He will move 
 upon a higher plane of efficiency to evoke 
 true loyalty, that infectious nobility which 
 spreads in the ranks in response to nobility 
 in the leader. 
 
 Nor will such management now be unprofit- 
 able. One of the characteristic movements of 
 progress is the spread to wider and wider 
 circles of society of that delicacy of intuition, 
 and that sensitive self-respect, which for- 
 merly prevailed only within the most favored 
 circles. More and more, men and women in 
 the ordinary walks of life are being leavened 
 with culture, and are becoming sensitive to 
 discourteous treatment, observant of the 
 causes of human suffering, appreciative of 
 beauty of environment, and responsive to the 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 209 
 
 appeal of high ideals. This advance compels 
 the administrator to exercise a progressively 
 strict restraint in the choice of means, and to 
 calculate ever more seriously the justice and 
 spiritual value of his final aims. There exists 
 much inefficient management which is so be- 
 cause it has not observed how refined the pub- 
 lic schools have made the young men and 
 women now entering stores and offices, how 
 responsible the colleges have made those 
 graduates who are working toward mana- 
 gerial positions, how scientific the engineers 
 have made the technical staffs, how proud 
 and independent the economic agitations of 
 recent years have made workmen, and how 
 discriminating modern periodical literature 
 has made the consuming public. 
 
 The common thought will endorse bringing 
 the various interests of society more inti- 
 mately together in a union which may be still 
 called by the old name, "carrying on a busi- 
 ness. ' ' It will endorse leadership which rec- 
 ognizes, as a part of sound practical busi- 
 ness policy, efforts to improve the relation of 
 the school system to industry, to adjust in- 
 dustrial effort to a proper recreative pro- 
 gram, to give esthetic considerations weight 
 in planning industrial equipment, or to make 
 
210 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 revisions in our obsolete code of industrial 
 ethics. It is characteristic of the gentleman 
 that he firmly interlaces the interests of life. 
 He works through larger correlations than 
 the ordinary man, for his comprehensive and 
 well-balanced knowledge gives him a greater 
 faith. The gentleman-administrator will aim, 
 therefore, to bring the loose ends of society 's 
 labors together, and perfect a working har- 
 mony between the creative forces of his age. 
 
 The Captain of Industry 
 
 The captain of industry is the logical suc- 
 cessor to the knight and the courtier. "The 
 leaders of industry, if industry is ever to be 
 led," says Carlyle, "are virtually the cap- 
 tains of the world; if there be no nobleness 
 in them, there will never be an aristocracy 
 more." Homer called Agamemnon the 
 ' 'Shepherd of the People," because he or- 
 ganized them so that they wrought great 
 things. The modern executive whose func- 
 tion it is to move men's minds in economic 
 affairs may, if he will, be a shepherd of his 
 flock in many pastures other than those in 
 which the daily bread is gained. There may 
 be some excuse if others build up little pri- 
 vate paradises, and cherish in a timid secret 
 
THE GENTLEMAN-ADMINISTRATOR 211 
 
 way some aspiration toward the beautiful 
 which is too weak to reach further than a 
 collecting mania or to touch more lives than 
 those of wife and children; but the adminis- 
 trator is by instinct a leader, by right of 
 ability a law-giver, and by virtue of position 
 a general model of conduct. How shall the 
 administrator, who has no great unselfish 
 aims, be excused, whose function it is to 
 guide the daily thinking of others, and whose 
 talent fits him to organize the efforts of oth- 
 ers, and give to them balance and proportion 
 as parts of a general plan? How shall his 
 name get into the roll of great leaders, if he 
 administers only for himself, and lets the 
 world go on its way unrefreshed and unen- 
 nobled through his talent? 
 
Chapter XI 
 
 THE METHODS OF THE GENTLEMAN- 
 ADMINISTRATOR 
 
 A POINT of view for judging the methods 
 ■* *■ appropriate to the gentleman-adminis- 
 trator may be gotten by starting with the fact 
 that the conduct of affairs is chiefly a matter 
 of managing human nature. The principles 
 of administration are in large measure sim- 
 ply approved ways of convincing the human 
 reason, of arousing the human will, and of 
 protecting human nature against its own 
 weaknesses. To obey the laws of human 
 nature means, negatively, to limit one 's aims, 
 as Caesar did, to what is practicable. Posi- 
 tively, it is to steer such a course toward a 
 chosen aim as will arouse the greatest pre- 
 ponderance of favorable forces. 
 
 The nature of the "calculus of diplomacy' ' 
 may be illustrated by an observation of 
 Machiavelli that "It is a mark of great pru- 
 dence in a man to abstain from threats or 
 any contemptuous expressions, for neither 
 of these weaken the enemy, but the one pro- 
 tects him by making him more cautious, and 
 the other strengthens him by exciting his 
 hatred, and a desire to revenge himself." 
 213 
 
214 business administration 
 
 The Study of Human Nature 
 The beginning of diplomacy in administra- 
 tion is, therefore, to become a student of 
 men. 
 
 Most of us form our general opinions of 
 persons with too great haste and, having 
 formed them, we modify them with too great 
 reluctance. The diplomatic person is one 
 who has the instinct for the observation of 
 points of character, and who persists longer 
 than others in such observation. He excels 
 in watchfulness to correct his impressions, 
 so that his policies may be modified con- 
 stantly by easy transitions, rather than occa- 
 sionally by harsh reversals. He observes 
 those matters which illustrate the force of 
 habit, or the flexibility of a well-trained will ; 
 and probes out the few central notions which, 
 in most men, govern conduct. In a company 
 of persons, he observes the signs by which 
 natural leaders betray themselves, and by 
 which others admit their leadership. To him 
 there are two languages; one of words de- 
 noting concepts, the other of signs revealing 
 character. To the testimony of social inter- 
 course he adds that of deeds, studying their 
 times and sequences, their force and continu- 
 ity, their precision and appropriateness. 
 
METHODS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 215 
 
 Into comparison with character he brings 
 reputation, judging both by practical ideals. 
 
 Elements of Efficiency 
 
 Diplomacy is good economy because it 
 seizes opportunity. It is wary enough to 
 forego many advantages, but too experienced 
 to wait for all circumstances to become favor- 
 able. The study of human nature prepares 
 the administrator not only to utilize oppor- 
 tunities, but to see them afar off, and time 
 their arrival. Opportunity is an excep- 
 tional degree of harmony between talent, 
 project, and circumstance. More precisely 
 stated, it is an advantage more valuable than 
 the present worth of the chance of any fu- 
 ture superior advantage which competes for 
 the attention of the same talents. The diplo- 
 mat keenly realizes that the utilized oppor- 
 tunities of a life tend to arrange themselves 
 in series, both ascending in value and in- 
 creasing in frequency. He, therefore, flex- 
 ibly lends himself to small matters which 
 those persons ignore who have forgotten the 
 fable of the camel's nose. 
 
 A second secret of the efficiency of diplo- 
 macy lies in its following the line of least 
 resistance. There is a kind of indirect ap- 
 
216 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 proach in dealing with the forces governing 
 thinking and feeling, which is analogous to 
 the round-about productive process of capi- 
 talistic industry. Such a course may be illus- 
 trated by the policies of Lord Kitchener in 
 Egypt. Finding that the male population of 
 certain districts was giving trouble to the 
 local police by its lawlessness, he arranged 
 that the hated draft for the army should fall 
 most heavily upon these districts, so that the 
 State might utilize this valor and energy. 
 The effect was a prompt competition between 
 districts to see which could be most orderly. 
 To the request of the Egyptian government 
 to be allowed to send troops to the aid of 
 Turkey he replied favorably, but made it 
 plain that since Egypt could not be left ex- 
 posed, an equal body of English troops would 
 be brought in, at the expense of the Egyptian 
 government. No troops were sent out. 
 
 The diplomat aims rather to mould men in 
 the origins of their convictions than to sub- 
 due them in the full course of their actions. 
 He draws others toward his conclusion step 
 by step, through a series of easy transitions. 
 He does not press his point, and he never 
 commits the folly of celebrating a triumph 
 which intensifies to another the personal ele- 
 
METHODS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 217 
 
 ment in defeat. He economizes severely in 
 the number of independent decisions he re- 
 quires from others, working through natural 
 leaders, taking advantage of habit, and pre- 
 senting new matters as corollaries of old. 
 Diplomatic management aims to set up such 
 an economy of effort among psychic forces 
 as engineering does among physical forces. 
 Like engineering, it uses one force to correct 
 or neutralize another, producing such an 
 equilibrium of divergent tendencies that, in 
 directing affairs, the influence of the admin- 
 istrator suffices everywhere to make a pre- 
 ponderance. 
 
 Another secret of diplomacy is that 
 it makes a perfected work of whatever it 
 undertakes. There is in industry much bad 
 management which patiently enough bears 
 the heat and burden of the day, performing 
 the monotonous or arduous duties which con- 
 stitute the bulk of so many matters, but which 
 always stops a little short of roundly-finished 
 and satisfying work, firmly fitted into its 
 place, understood, and heartily accepted. 
 The administrator who provides equipment, 
 organization, and technical skill and then, 
 from lack of the personal graces, alienates 
 others and misrepresents himself, is similar 
 
218 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 to the farmer who performs all the field labor 
 necessary to produce crops, but who, for lack 
 of a little cleanliness and taste in the final 
 grading and packing, receives but half the 
 price. 
 
 The undiplomatic man makes a long jour- 
 ney and offends his host on the steps; 
 trains an apprentice and loses him at the 
 beginning of productive years by a sharp 
 word; builds a structure and leaves it hide- 
 ous for lack of an extra foot on the cornice ; 
 brings a group of negotiations to a final con- 
 ference and sticks at a minor point. Such a 
 man prepares for a position and expects 
 those with appointing power to know his 
 fitness by divination; he labors earnestly to 
 prepare a plan but presents it stiffly with a 
 "take it or leave it" air. Diplomacy has a 
 passion to complete its task as a work of 
 art, and it takes the necessary infinite pains 
 up to the very end. It realizes that all affairs 
 begin and end as psychic states; — end as a 
 state of satisfaction in some person or group 
 of persons. It does not neglect, therefore, 
 to humanly interpret its results to the minds 
 and hearts of men, and to win for them at- 
 tention and friendly consideration as fore- 
 runners to acceptance. 
 
 ! 
 
methods of the administrator 219 
 
 Due Form 
 
 It is a necessary part of the economy of 
 any art or craft to preserve the devices, pol- 
 icies, principles, and even the points of view 
 and ideals, which experience has established, 
 in order that talent may not unduly waste 
 itself in reproducing what has already been 
 created out of the void, by past generations 
 of masters. In the fine art of conduct, due 
 form is the established technique which, un- 
 der ordinary conditions, is not to be changed, 
 except by those who first prove their talent 
 by its mastery. The conservatism of society 
 is a sound instinct to protect the costly gains 
 of civilization against the rude hands of 
 plausible leaders or fanatical minorities. It 
 is a kind of temporary veto which appeals 
 all matters to time and the majority. 
 
 There is always in the world a class of 
 impatient persons who possess the energy to 
 accomplish results with crude and self-taught 
 methods. But if these persons were allowed 
 to break down the traditions of the arts or 
 crafts in which they work, society in the end 
 would suffer more than it would gain, by 
 reason of the loss in efficiency of the great 
 majority who can only make their contribu- 
 tions by following the best methods. There 
 
220 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 are, of course, exceptional cases when an in- 
 dividual contribution is so great that the con- 
 fusion and bad precedent which the manner 
 of it introduces into the world of methods 
 must be overlooked. But when the mature 
 consideration of the best minds does not ap- 
 prove an exception, the observance of due 
 form means usually to bow to the wisdom of 
 not rendering an immediate, local, and tangi- 
 ble service at the expense of a greater subse- 
 quent, though possibly imperceptible, injury. 
 
 Furthermore, it must be remembered that 
 the highest talent follows good method by 
 instinct. " Every great man," said Bulwer, 
 " exhibits the talent of organization or con- 
 struction, whether it be in a poem, a philo- 
 sophical system, a policy, or a strategy. — 
 And without method there is no organization 
 nor construction. ' ' More pertinently and 
 compactly Goethe says, "Genius is that 
 power of man which, by deeds and actions, 
 gives laws and rules.' ' 
 
 One of the uses of proper form results 
 from its availability as a tangible sign in 
 classifying men and their undertakings. As 
 a symbol of talent, or a password, or badge 
 of class, it is useful when the circumstances 
 will not permit the essence of the talent to 
 
 
METHODS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 221 
 
 be more definitely proved by performance. 
 " Ceremony,' ' said Steele, "is the invention 
 of wise men to keep fools at a distance.' ' 
 
 This use is the recognition of the conveni- 
 ence, not to say necessity, of bringing exter- 
 nal symbols into harmony with essential real- 
 ities. A stock illustration of the idea is the 
 case of an officer who must in his person rep- 
 resent the dignity of an organization, or a 
 profession, or a country. Cromwell per- 
 mitted the formalities of State to proceed 
 undisturbed, even though they involved him 
 to his discomfort. George IV offended many, 
 even in the act of making friendly advances. 
 Lord Dudley, commenting on him, said, 
 "Drinking toasts, shaking people by the 
 hand, and calling them Jack and Tom, get 
 more applause at the moment, but fail en- 
 tirely in the long run. ' ' It has been said that 
 "an ambassador is a spectacle." In this 
 sense, a king is an ambassador of the state 
 to his own people. Every man should con- 
 sider his manners as the ambassadors of his 
 talents. 
 
 A similar function of form is to bring inci- 
 dentals into harmony with that which is prin- 
 cipal. No man who becomes a model in one 
 line of action can prevent being taken as a 
 
222 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 model in many other lines. So strong is the 
 tendency to consider every leader as superior 
 in all departments of life, and so as a uni- 
 versal pattern, that whoever steps out in 
 advance of the crowd, and makes himself an 
 example in any given thing, cannot avoid the 
 responsibility of regulating his entire life 
 with a new scrupulousness, not only to avoid 
 doing his followers and admirers and imita- 
 tors an injury through his incidental leader- 
 ship, but to prevent the rebound of that in- 
 jury upon himself from working a destruc- 
 tion of his usefulness in the true field of his 
 leadership. Form is, therefore, on its high- 
 est plane a kind of conscience or circumspec- 
 tion in the great, to avoid harming others by 
 the force of example. 
 
 If form is capable of becoming a safeguard 
 against the erratic use of the power of the 
 great, it is to be expected that it will owe 
 its rise and binding force not only to the will 
 of the governor, but of the governed as well. 
 Every executive finds his power censored and 
 bounded by this unwritten law of form or 
 custom or propriety. Springing from the 
 minds of the governed, it invests him, with- 
 out his volition, as a yielding, deferential and 
 somewhat indefinite but, nevertheless, a 
 
METHODS OP THE ADMINISTRATOR 223 
 
 finally serious and determined cloud of limi- 
 tations. We have already quoted Steele's 
 pungent phrase, "Ceremony is the invention 
 of wise men to keep fools at a distance.' ' 
 We may now reverse this and say, ceremony 
 is the invention of wise subjects to keep their 
 governors from foolish actions. 
 
 Courtesy 
 
 In answering the question, who is the 
 happy warrior, Wordsworth says : 
 
 'Tis he 
 Whose powers shed around him in the common strife 
 Of mild concerns of ordinary life 
 A constant influence, a peculiar grace. 
 
 "The virtue of any action," says Seneca, 
 "lies in the intent, the profit in the judicious 
 application of means, but the beauty and or- 
 nament lie in the manner of it. ' ' Courtesy or 
 tact or gentleness has been defined as gener- 
 osity in little things. Not only is it "benevo- 
 lence in trifles, "as Chatham said, but it is also 
 such a benevolence in the great things, which 
 may bring glory, that attention can be spared 
 from them for the simple elements of daily 
 life. It has been slighted as petty because it 
 deals with trifles, but its special function is 
 to rob what it touches of pettiness, by deal- 
 
224 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ing with it in a noble spirit. It is, indeed, 
 most beautiful as a virtue of strong natures, 
 for in them it is free from the suspicion of 
 interest. Whatever courtesy may lack, in 
 the significance of the individual acts, is com- 
 pensated for by the constancy of its opera- 
 tion for, as Burke said, "The law can touch 
 us here and there, now and then. Manners 
 are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, 
 exalt or debase, barbarize or refine, by a 
 constant, steady, uniform, insensible opera- 
 tion, like that of the air we breathe in," 
 
 As a sort of statesmanship in dealing with 
 details, tact is of importance in administra- 
 tion, for administration is but in small part 
 made up of the management of heroic attacks, 
 desperate defenses, and sudden and decisive 
 climaxes of success or defeat. It is much 
 more the flexible bending of the will to one 
 detail after another, the eliminating of a 
 small loss here and a small uncertainty there, 
 the daily stimulating of others by deference 
 and just praise, the guidance of others by 
 innumerable unobtrusive hints, and the con- 
 stant removal of the small differences which 
 lie in the way of united action. 
 
 One of the secrets of the efficiency of tact 
 lies in the fact that it is the expression of 
 
METHODS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 225 
 
 sympathy. Beyond the pressure of necessity, 
 and the requirements of an established 
 standard of living, the great animating force 
 which sustains men in every kind of work is 
 sympathy. Not only does it come as a wel- 
 come testimony to those who are convinced 
 of their own merits, but it acts as a stimulus 
 to arouse the discouraged to use the talents 
 others see in them. To feel understood and 
 esteemed is to feel yoked up with all vigor- 
 ous useful men, harnessed to the world's 
 great problems, and to be certain that one is 
 pulling in the right direction, along the road 
 leading to an earthly paradise. The secret 
 of saying ' l no, ' ' in such a way as to confer a 
 favor, is to hear the suitor's story with so 
 much sympathy and respect that his down- 
 cast and worried mind is eased, and he goes 
 away with increased hope and vigor to apply 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The severe, snappy, discourteous execu- 
 tive violates what Herbert Spencer calls the 
 fundamental law of rhetoric, which is, 
 "Economy of the recipient's attention is the 
 secret of effect.' ' Under the reassuring in- 
 fluence of a gracefully expressed sympathy, 
 men feel easy, the cramping influence of fear 
 dissolves, and the powers are released from 
 
226 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 distrust and discouragement to a natural un- 
 fettered vigorous action. "Thy gentleness 
 hath made me great, ' ' said David. 
 
 Courtesy is the tribute of manners to the 
 merit of others. By disposing of the prob- 
 lem of the manner in which one is considered 
 by others, it promotes ease of intercourse. 
 When men who are in negotiation become 
 reassured as to the personal aspect of their 
 mutual relations, they find their affairs 
 vastly simplified, for they are then able to 
 banish all questions of rivalry and animosity, 
 and confine their differences strictly to those 
 which arise from the nature of the interests 
 they represent. The reward of the courteous 
 man is friendship and gratitude. His effi- 
 ciency lies in part in the tribute he receives 
 of the energy he arouses in others. 
 
 We might well, in this day of enlighten- 
 ment, leave without debate the ancient ques- 
 tion whether administrative policies are 
 more efficient when based on fear or affec- 
 tion, but the subject connects itself with that 
 of discipline. Machiavelli declared for the 
 use of fear in the well-known passage of the 
 Prince : ' 'Men have less scruple in offending 
 one who is beloved than one who is feared, 
 for love is preserved by the link of obliga- 
 
METHODS OP THE ADMINISTRATOR 227 
 
 tion, which, owing to the baseness of men, is 
 broken at every opportunity for their advan- 
 tage; but fear preserves you by a dread of 
 punishment which never fails.' ' If Machia- 
 velli had trod the streets of Athens in the 
 time of Socrates he might have been an- 
 swered by the sage as was Chaerecrates : 
 "You surely are not one of those men, are 
 you, who think wealth more valuable than 
 brothers, when wealth is but a senseless 
 thing, and a brother endowed with reason, 
 when wealth needs protection, while a 
 brother can give protection, and when wealth 
 besides is plentiful, while brothers are 
 scarce ? ' ' 
 
 It may be added that as administrative 
 methods rise or fall in quality with the na- 
 ture and purposes of the governor, so they 
 do also with the nature and spirit of the 
 governed. The executive often does, not 
 what he would, but what he can. Brutal 
 punishments and a ramrod discipline were 
 required to keep the army of Frederick the 
 Great in order, for it was composed of mer- 
 cenaries hired or kidnapped by recruiting 
 officers in all the countries of Europe. Flog- 
 ging was deemed essential in Wellington's 
 army in Spain, while the English privates 
 
228 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 worked for wages to protect a country they 
 despised, against French armies they more 
 than half believed were fighting for the 
 rights of the common man. Such brutality 
 was not required in the French republican 
 armies, composed of men who eagerly sprang 
 to the colors in response to the double call 
 of the defense of the nation and the estab- 
 lishment of the liberties of the people. Nor 
 was it required during the Civil War in the 
 armies of the North and South which, with 
 terrible determination, demanded of their 
 leaders conflict again and again. 
 
 Fear may alone produce results with bru- 
 tal or unstable natures, but with men who 
 refuse to fear a nobler principle of union is 
 needed. The discipline of fear is a poor 
 substitute for the discipline of loyalty. The 
 rapid advance of the masses of men, in all 
 progressive countries, during this genera- 
 tion, into a new freedom of wealth and intel- 
 ligence, is eliminating the industrial drive- 
 master who bases his administration on the 
 lowest stratum of human motives, just as in 
 a preceding generation, a similar step in 
 progress eliminated the slave-master. 
 
 Courtesy is a sort of overflow of energy. 
 It is good measure of vital force in a man— 
 
METHODS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 229 
 
 "pressed down, shaken together, and run- 
 ning over. " It is the natural manner of the 
 man who is abundantly able to meet the 
 claims which his work lays upon him. It re- 
 quires surplus strength to command one's 
 talents to gracious action; the lack of the 
 graces is one sign of nervous exhaustion. 
 Some one has said, * ' Be polite ; perhaps your 
 family won't mind if you practice on them. ,, 
 The point of this is that to play the part of 
 the tyrant is the over-taxed man's relaxation. 
 It is the little fellow whose equilibrium is 
 being constantly upset, either into insolence 
 with his subordinates, or sycophancy before 
 his superiors. A great part of the sarcasm 
 and ridicule in the world comes from weak 
 visionaries who have been upset by the force 
 of things and have turned sour; turned into 
 cynics. The really keen intellect gladly gives 
 just praise, for it understands how much 
 more useful is the discovery and encourage- 
 ment of merit than the censure of defects. It 
 is the character conscious of the abundance 
 of its own merits which can afford to ignore 
 them in the presence of others. Samuel 
 Johnson once said, "All censure of a man's 
 self is oblique praise. It is in order to show 
 how much he can spare. ' ' The call to attain 
 
230 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 efficiency by means of courteous and gen- 
 erous methods is in no wise a call to effemi- 
 nacy, but directly the opposite. It is a call 
 to win where the rules of the game are strict 
 and one must win without a blow below the 
 belt. It is a call to greater precision and 
 elegance of means. 
 
 Compromise 
 
 "There is that scattereth and yet increas- 
 eth," says Proverbs. 
 
 Diplomacy presents the apparent miracle 
 of perpetually deferring and yet advancing; 
 of giving away and yet gaining. This illu- 
 sion is due partly to the fact that diplomacy 
 often makes its way by means of a succes- 
 sion of small steps in each of which some- 
 thing slightly more important is won, 
 through something scarcely less important 
 conceded. It arises also from the practice 
 of trading off that which is personally more 
 flattering, and temporarily more prominent, 
 for that which in the end will possess more 
 value for the essence of the negotiation. The 
 master of compromises understands that 
 most successful affairs are a process of ad- 
 justing things so that they shall be as people 
 want them; and that the majority of people 
 
 
METHODS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 231 
 
 want the immediate and the obvious and the 
 personal advantage, and readily yield the suc- 
 cess which is distant and abstract, to the one 
 who will give them such an advantage. 
 
 Compromise is a dangerous game for weak 
 men. Its tendency is to strengthen the 
 strong and weaken the weak. It has the 
 irksome indefiniteness and suspense of a 
 "politik von fall zu fall." For it is uncer- 
 tainty which is the sting of responsibility. 
 To play at compromise there is needed a per- 
 fect knowledge of what is essential and what 
 is collateral, so that the spirit of deference 
 and compromise may be constantly fed by 
 giving way on the collaterals, while solid 
 advance is nevertheless made in essential 
 matters. Without this knowledge one is in 
 danger of losing track of the balance of ad- 
 vantage, as the discussion winds from point 
 to point, and will find himself unable to esti- 
 mate the accumulated significance of his va- 
 rious concessions. Among men of the high- 
 est executive ability, it is amazing what a 
 mass of secondary matters is taken for 
 granted, or is settled in a spirit of generous 
 compromise. "The gifted man," said Car- 
 lyle, "is he who sees the essential point and 
 leaves all the rest aside as surplusage. ' ' It 
 
232 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 may be said that the diplomatic man is he 
 who sees the essential point, and uses the 
 surplusage as concessions with which to win 
 the point. 
 
 Compromise is, likewise, a hard policy for 
 men of distrustful nature, who doubt the gen- 
 eral prevalence of a spirit of fair play. By 
 nervously watching for traps, they show that 
 nothing is left to the honor of others, and 
 so lower the moral tone of negotiations. 
 Such men exhaust themselves in petty pre- 
 cautions, and yet without disarming the real 
 opposition. By the tedious turnings and 
 windings in which they hide their interest 
 they provoke others to probe it out. Those 
 who do not believe in others have not the 
 imagination to conceive that when they are 
 treated generously it can be in good faith; 
 nor can they make such bold propositions as 
 attract the special admiration of magnani- 
 mous men, and win the greatest concessions 
 from them, by implying that they are mag- 
 nanimous. 
 
 As compromise involves an advantage, 
 first to one and then to another, it is an un- 
 welcome policy to persons who cannot rest 
 contentedly under a temporary appearance 
 of being at a disadvantage. Those who are 
 restless to distinguish themselves, in small 
 
METHODS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 233 
 
 matters as well as large, and who, like chil- 
 dren, must win every time, are not apt at 
 negotiations. They will dislike to look at 
 the arguments of others, for fear of having 
 to accede; they will be loth to follow the 
 suggestions of others, for fear of appearing 
 to be led. 
 
 Just Proportion 
 
 We have advanced the idea that the char- 
 acteristic virtue of the gentleman is that 
 under the complex conditions of modern so- 
 ciety he is the one who best succeeds in select- 
 ing and proportioning the objects of life, so 
 that there results an harmonious and effec- 
 tive character, the energies of which work in 
 smooth accord with the chief uplifting ten- 
 dencies of his age. The gentleman-adminis- 
 trator can then be no other than one who, 
 when he becomes an administrator, refuses 
 to forget that he has still to be a gentleman. 
 When he is placed in authority over subordi- 
 nates for specific ends, and must work within 
 definite limits of cost and administrative ne- 
 cessity, he does not lose sight of the fact 
 that, as an intellectual being, he must work 
 for the general triumph of reason ; as a lover 
 of beauty, he must contrive to increase the 
 
234 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 sum and variety of it; and as a moral being, 
 he owes allegiance to right in every depart- 
 ment of his life. He is one who recognizes 
 with joy that an organization which brings 
 men together in intimate, permanent, daily 
 relations, as does an industrial establish- 
 ment, can accomplish, in addition to its imme- 
 diate or principal object, a thousand inci- 
 dental things to beautify the lives of those 
 who are connected with it. 
 
 Of all persons, in the present economic or- 
 der, to whom industry can look for leader- 
 ship into a more justly proportioned life, the 
 administrator has the greatest advantage. 
 His tasks are more varied and broadening 
 than those of others. By turn a commander, 
 a courtier, an educator, a confessor, and a 
 student; he exercises, now the perceptive 
 faculties, and now the creative; winning at 
 one time by clear-cut reasoning, at another 
 by warm sympathy. As the administrator 
 masters his art, he learns the wonderful va- 
 riety of human needs and aspirations, and 
 he comes to know that "man does not live 
 by bread alone.' ' The administrator's task 
 chiefly revolves around the function of bal- 
 ancing plant and personnel, inasmuch as it 
 calls upon him to select fit elements, to com- 
 
METHODS OP THE ADMINISTRATOR 235 
 
 bine them in efficient ratios, and to harmonize 
 them in performance. His mind is drawn, 
 therefore, to such a consideration of the fit- 
 ness of means to end, and of the mutual re- 
 straint in all concurrent functioning, that he 
 is specially prepared to address himself to 
 the greater task of improving the relation of 
 the various interests of life, in so far as they 
 may be reached by economic agencies. 
 Finally, the administrator is under a noble 
 obligation, for his position is a conspicuous 
 one, and it lays upon him the duty of being 
 the first gentleman of his organization, as 
 it is becoming that a king should be the first 
 gentleman of his realm. 
 
Chapter XII 
 
 THE IDEALS OF THE GENTLEMAN- 
 ADMINISTRATOR 
 
 He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of 
 
 doubting, 
 For mist and the blowing of winds and the mouthing of 
 
 words he scorns; 
 Not the sinuous speech of schools he hears, but a knightly 
 
 shouting 
 And never comes darkness down yet he greeteth a million 
 
 morns. 
 
 — Shaemas Sheet. 
 
 '""pHE ideal is a light which reveals a goal 
 A of effort, and invests all familiar means 
 with a fresh significance. It is a measure 
 which sifts men, and institutes competitions. 
 It is a courier announcing the near arrival of 
 a new reality. Its beauty softens the will to 
 flexibility, its pure humanity touches the 
 feelings, its difficulty challenges all the tal- 
 ents to awake. It is through the appeal of 
 the ideal that men are aroused, instructed, 
 and governed. We never know what a body 
 of men can do, nor what can be made of a 
 department of life, until the appropriate 
 ideal appears. It was an ideal, communi- 
 cated by the mouth of a prophet which 
 aroused the sparse population of an ignored 
 237 
 
238 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 and barren corner of the world, and caused 
 the Arab to bestir himself, to learn his let- 
 ters, to consolidate his government, to mul- 
 tiply his numbers, and to asemble the armies 
 which carried his empire from India to the 
 Pillars of Hercules. When the freshness 
 and appeal of his vision departed, he began 
 the slow process of shrinking back within 
 his original boundaries. 
 
 Every department of life needs periodical 
 renovating with new ideals, to dissolve the 
 traditions which tend to incrust it, to lift it 
 out of the drudgery into which it tends to 
 sink, and to arouse energy and reunite men. 
 No realm of human endeavor stands in 
 greater need of the invigorating effect of a 
 new group of ideals than does productive in- 
 dustry — the world of manufacturing, trans- 
 porting, and trading. It is true that great 
 things have been wrought in this field, but 
 the original program of the industrial 
 revolution has been pretty well worked out. 
 At least, what remains to do is, compara- 
 tively speaking, a matter of detail, without 
 the stimulating effect of a new conception. 
 World trade has now been carried on for 
 several generations ; the introduction of ma- 
 chinery is a process over a century old; the 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 239 
 
 creation of great units has even become a 
 menace; and the continued application of 
 science is reasonably assured. If industry- 
 is to accomplish equally great things in the 
 future, it will require a new program which 
 equally appeals to the imagination. 
 
 One reason for the intellectual bareness of 
 the outlook is the undue separation of the va- 
 rious departments of economic life from one 
 another, so that we think of one world of 
 activity as having exclusively to do with the 
 producing of wealth, and another with the 
 use of wealth to promote well-being. The 
 softening influences which should be felt 
 throughout industry, from intimate acquain- 
 tance with the process of converting wealth 
 back into terms of opportunity and health 
 and comfort, is lost. The spiritual import 
 of producing is partly disguised because the 
 process of realizing the spiritual import of 
 wealth is not associated with it. Industry 
 becomes the perpetual hewer of wood and 
 drawer of water. 
 
 If the world of industry suffers from this 
 unnatural separation, consumption is injured 
 likewise. Where spending is most com- 
 pletely divorced from industry, as in the case 
 of the idle rich and the retired rich, does it 
 
240 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 measure up satisfactorily in the sphere of 
 the intellect? It reveals to us, over and 
 over again, two or three simple expedients. 
 One is to shift the responsibility of the whole 
 problem onto others by lump-sum gifts, an- 
 other is to avoid the matter for a time by re- 
 investing income, and the third is to spend. 
 This spending is for the most part equally 
 elementary. It is a simple story of exclu- 
 sions and duplications; exclusion instanced 
 by individual parks, and galleries, and 
 launches, and cars, and other social-consump- 
 tion goods, to which an individuality is rarely 
 given by the monopolizing owner; duplica- 
 tion, in several houses instead of one, forty 
 rooms instead of twenty, over-decorated fur- 
 nishings, art collections in which one piece 
 kills the effect of the other, multiplication of 
 automobiles, etc. One is reminded of Sam- 
 uel Johnson's amusing description of the 
 "tradesman's expanded dinner,' ' "two 
 roasts, two plum puddings," etc., because 
 nothing else could be thought of. It is a 
 record of things made larger without im- 
 provement, of things made for permanence 
 and destroyed after a single use, of things 
 brought from a distant environment where 
 they harmonized and set down amid wholly 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 241 
 
 different surroundings where they are out of 
 place. 
 
 Even in the consumption of the masses, the 
 bad effect of separating the life of earning 
 from the life of spending may be seen. Over 
 against exhausted workers are those whose 
 immunity from toil they purchase — the many 
 idle girls and women preyed upon by the 
 vagaries of fashion which keep them forever 
 preening and coveting and buying. The bar- 
 renness and fatigue of the long day find their 
 sequel in the stupid evening bill for stimu- 
 lants and narcotics, which amounts to a stu- 
 pendous total for the nation. The bad taste 
 of the productive life educates a race of 
 people who are able to tolerate the bad taste 
 of our ostentatious restaurant and hotel life, 
 and our tawdry amusement industries. 
 
 Divorced from the system, and science, and 
 the habit of weighing outlay and return, 
 which productive industry so constantly em- 
 ploys, consumption seems to reel and plunge 
 as if it lacked standards and limits and clear 
 aims. And in failing it hurts the industrial 
 life, for if men are in industry only for a 
 sequel, and lose respect for the sequel, what 
 is to prevent their energies from sleeping 
 the sleep of a purposeless life? If the 
 
242 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 process of wealth-consumption falls into a 
 state of stagnation, it makes a strenuous pro- 
 ductive industry look ridiculous. It is un- 
 reasonable to expect men to cultivate heroic 
 discipline in industry, merely to furnish the 
 means of keeping up a process of consump- 
 tion which the moral sense of their own age 
 condemns. 
 
 One great remedy for these conditions in- 
 timately concerns the business executive. It 
 is a program upon which he may begin 
 at once, in his place of business, without any 
 formality of launching a new association, and 
 without intrusting his plan to the uncertain 
 winds of a "general moral awakening." This 
 plan is to stop conceiving of industry as a 
 mere process of making money, or even as a 
 process of producing and handling goods, 
 and to think of it as a true cross-section of 
 normal life, which can be made complete and 
 healthy and efficient and honorable only by 
 compounding it of many human elements, 
 and making it many-sided and well balanced. 
 Industry is more than a process, even more 
 than an art of making good and beautiful 
 things; it is an art of life. Its inevitable 
 product is some sort of human character. 
 As an art it should aspire, as all other arts 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 243 
 
 do, to simplicity, skill, obedience to form and 
 method, to symmetry and elegance; aspire 
 to be a recreation as well as an expending 
 of energy, a life beautiful and pleasurable 
 in itself, as well as disciplinary and utili- 
 tarian. A business organization should be 
 conceived of as a real standing-together of a 
 company of brothers to take care of each 
 other, and enjoy a portion of their lives to- 
 gether. 
 
 In bringing such a point of view to bear 
 upon his life work, the administrator should 
 aim to utilize the equipment of his industrial 
 organization, including its staff of experts, 
 its administrative skill, its buildings, 
 grounds, credit, and influence, for the in- 
 crease of the happiness and welfare of all 
 the associates, in non-economic lines not al- 
 ready efficiently provided for, and to the 
 maximum consistent with the productive 
 functions which must be carried on. Espe- 
 cially, perhaps, can the producing organiza- 
 tion be used to obtain the advantage of group 
 consumption, in those lines where the econ- 
 omy of joint use is great, as in the case of 
 entertainments, baths, gymnasia, parks, etc. 
 A producing organization which produces 
 only something for the market, and does 
 
244 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 nothing else avoidable, should be looked upon 
 as an abuse of human nature. 
 
 The administrator should aim to break 
 down the thought-tight partition which has 
 established itself, in so many minds, between 
 working and living; and endeavor to redis- 
 cover, for himself and his men, the art of 
 living by the way, realizing that a great part 
 of the really fine opportunities for spending 
 spring out of the association of men together 
 in earning. He should break the strain of 
 work seasonably with recreation. He should 
 think it right and normal if more art works 
 get into offices than into homes or galleries, 
 and if more stained-glass windows are put 
 up in shops than in churches. In short, he 
 should mix the pleasures of life in with its 
 work, and take pains to crowd as many kinds 
 of opportunity as possible right in demo- 
 cratically among the delivery men, and the 
 machinists, and the clerks, and the traveling 
 men. 
 
 Such a course of action on the part of the 
 administrator will bring the process of con- 
 sumption into sobering contact with the 
 science and discipline of productive industry. 
 Through the organized agencies necessary in 
 the making processes, it will subject men's 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 245 
 
 actions in using wealth to the wholesome 
 moral sense of their fellow workers. In re- 
 turn, industry will lose its drudgery, and 
 become enlivened with something of the 
 gaiety and variety and art hitherto much 
 too exclusively monopolized by the world of 
 consumption. New sources of energy will 
 be developed among the workers, by making 
 the rewards of effort more prompt, more 
 objective, more social, more refreshing in 
 variety and more stimulating of loyalty to 
 the industrial organization through which 
 they come. Men will even be able to work 
 together more intelligently, because they will 
 know each other on some other than the 
 work side of character, production, in this 
 way, will be humanized. It^wilT~guin ends 
 which, in realization, will not kill desire and 
 stagnate in ennui, but will open out upon 
 ever more attractive vistas of future possi- 
 bility, and become a real programme of life. 
 Well-being will be increased in variety, and 
 will be distributed with greater directness, 
 good-will, and generosity. 
 
 Industry and Art 
 
 One of the changes which must be grad- 
 ually introduced into industry, if we are to 
 
246 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 prepare the way for a fresh outburst of 
 human spirit in it, is to increase the element 
 of pleasure. There are parts of industry 
 which are now fascinating to the workers. 
 Western America glows with the enthusiasm 
 of the conquest of nature by the mind. Our 
 Captains of Industry, as a class, have been 
 developed to a certain rugged heroism by the 
 fascination of imparting discipline to great 
 aggregations of men, equipments, and ma- 
 terials. Many engineering conceptions, 
 many smoothly interlocking systems of ad- 
 ministration, and many conserving plans of 
 financing, have been accompanied, in the do- 
 ing, with thrills of delight which have bound 
 the performers like lovers to their tasks. 
 
 Good work and joyous work are, in the 
 long run, the same. Wherever in industry 
 good things have been done — wherever 
 achievements have been characterized by 
 vigor and largeness of plan, simplicity and 
 directness of method, and nervous beauty 
 and finish of detail — we may be sure that we 
 have to do with work which has permitted 
 the performer to experience joy, freedom, 
 and an exulting sense of strength, while it 
 was being accomplished. And, contrariwise, 
 when we find the worker intelligent and joy- 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 247 
 
 ous we may expect superior results, for then 
 the psychological conditions are right. "Te- 
 diousness," says George J. Romanes, "by 
 the painful class of emotions which it 
 arouses, is the most wearisome or exhausting 
 of the influences that consume the nervous 
 energies. ' ' On the other hand, ' ' a prolonged 
 flow of happy feelings does more to brace up 
 the system for work than any other influence 
 operating for a similar length of time." 
 Pleasure in work produces a sympathetic, 
 teachable mental attitude toward the task. 
 It makes the attention involuntary, and 
 eases the strain of attending. It stops the 
 nervous leaks of worry. One of the secrets 
 of lasting well is to avoid getting stale and 
 tired and in a mental rut. Pleasure gives a 
 sense of freedom that is a rest, as a wide 
 road rests the driver. To know a thing thor- 
 oughly and attain mastership in it, one must 
 be drawn back to it repeatedly by its attrac- 
 tions, and must find one 's powers evoked and 
 trained by its inspiration. 
 
 To introduce pleasure into work means to 
 make of industry an art. "Real art," as 
 William Morris says, "is the expression by 
 man of his pleasure in labor." Instead of 
 conceiving of the productive process simply 
 
248 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 as the shortest road to an economic good, it 
 plans to conserve human powers by the way, 
 and to make labor a welcome part of life, ad- 
 justing the demands of economic efficiency 
 to the remaining demands of civilization. To 
 bring art into union with labor is to give 
 increased intellectual depth to tasks, for in- 
 stead of simply calculating the structural 
 form required in an object by physical prin- 
 ciples, the problem involves the devising of 
 ornament which conforms to esthetic prin- 
 ciples, and finally the harmonizing of struc- 
 ture and ornament. 
 
 Again, art here as elsewhere gives play to 
 that finest of all faculties, imagination; for 
 while the most efficient utilitarian form of an 
 object which is to be made of a given mate- 
 rial and to perform a given work is a com- 
 paratively definite thing, the modifications 
 which may be made in the interest of grace, 
 and the ornament of artistic merit which 
 may be added, may be of infinite variety. 
 Art, therefore, brings into employment many 
 faculties, insuring for each faculty the relief 
 of alternate activity, and the discipline of 
 concurrent activity. It stimulates all the 
 faculties with the delights of sensuous beauty 
 and the near approach toward ideals of per- 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 249 
 
 fection. "Life without industry is guilt; 
 industry without art is brutality.' p 
 
 The conditions required to bring art and 
 labor to live harmoniously together are: to 
 believe in the large possibilities of the thing 
 one is doing, to have a well-grounded belief 
 in one's powers as equal to these possibili- 
 ties, to have time and an unharassed mind 
 to master methods or find the way to the 
 attainment of these possibilities, and, finally, 
 to be granted the freedom and means of ex- 
 pressing, in the work itself, the knowledge 
 and talent one has achieved. 
 
 The industrial administrator who en- 
 deavors to fulfill these conditions, and make 
 his management a ministry to labor, will find 
 that one of the first steps is to discover the 
 possibilities of the work assigned to each 
 person, and the scope offered by it for pa- 
 tience, dexterity, close reasoning, and imagi- 
 nation. Especially should the possibility of 
 a fine perfection be diligently sought in 
 those tasks which are now despised as drudg- 
 ery. Drudgery is work done in darkness of 
 spirit; it is labor shut off from intelligence. 
 The administrator's task is to cause intelli- 
 gence to shine upon the dark spots of indus- 
 try, until drudgery disappears in enthusiasm 
 
250 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 for a newly revealed perfection. The admin- 
 istrator should lay hold of every possible 
 help, including the history and technique of 
 the crafts involved, and of related crafts, 
 and should bring to his employees treasure 
 from his store of knowledge, as rapidly as 
 they are able to assimilate it and put it into 
 practice. 
 
 Another portion of the administrator's 
 task will be, while maintaining efficiency, to 
 allow sufficient freedom for the growth of 
 talents. It is only when variations in design 
 and methods of work are permitted, that men 
 have an opportunity to think. Freedom to 
 think must include the freedom to make mis- 
 takes, for it is only through mistakes that 
 there can be any conception of better and 
 worse. The daring conceptions of American 
 engineering testify to the fact that the tech- 
 nical expert has been given an exceptionally 
 free hand. The rich and varied details with 
 which the Gothic cathedrals are embellished 
 prove that the artisans were free spirits en- 
 joying the confidence of the masters. 
 
 There will, of course, be many difficulties, 
 for difficulties are a chief means of recogniz- 
 ing a worthy ideal. One of these is to prove, 
 by the doing of it, that the pleasure of artis- 
 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 251, 
 
 tic work can be made to accord with the 
 profit of industrial work. A dictionary dis- 
 tinction is: "The arts are distinguished as 
 the esthetic or fine arts, or arts of beauty, 
 which call for the exercise of taste and imag- 
 ination, and which furnish the sphere of the 
 artist ; and the useful, industrial, or mechan- 
 ical arts, or arts of utility, which require 
 chiefly manual labor or skill, and which en- 
 gage the ingenuity of the artisan. ' ! Can the 
 artist be revived in the artisan, as in the 
 wonderful architectural and decorative work 
 of the middle ages? 
 
 One of the several forms in which this dif- 
 ficulty presents itself is to overcome the im- 
 pression that the understanding and practice 
 of art requires rare talents, so that artistic 
 activity must forever be confined to the few. 
 On this point William Morris says : 
 
 The art of the future will not be an esoteric mystery 
 shared by a little band of superior beings ; it will be no 
 more hierarchical than the art of past time was, but like 
 it will be a gift of the people to the people, a thing which 
 everybody can understand and every one surround with 
 love, it will be a part of every life, and a hindrance to 
 none. * * * There is the hard business for us! To 
 get all simple people to care about art, to get them to in- 
 sist on making it part of their lives, whatever becomes of 
 systems of commerce and labor held perfect by some of us. 
 
252 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 Another phase of the same difficulty is to 
 overcome the conviction that art means only 
 the few best known fine arts, such as paint- 
 ing, sculpture, architecture and music. It 
 means rather the application of a body of 
 principles capable of being carried into a 
 thousand fields of human endeavor. The 
 proof of this may be found in any museum 
 in which examples of metal work, pottery, 
 furniture and textiles are preserved, which 
 were made where the "wage and machine" 
 system did not interfere with the normal 
 exercise of human talents. 
 
 But the question must finally be faced, how 
 can we afford to introduce art into industry? 
 How can we, who are struggling with the 
 high cost of living, and the cost of high liv- 
 ing, give the workman leisure to enjoy his 
 work and to think, and arrange for him a task 
 broad enough to keep his powers in balance f 
 Can modern times expect to be able to have 
 the common products of industry again made 
 beautiful, as they were in classical and medie- 
 val times? 
 
 The answer clearly is that, if we could 
 simplify our requirements as much as good 
 taste would dictate, we could afford to have 
 our requirements conform to good taste. 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 253 
 
 This does not mean to sacrifice a great frac- 
 tion of the refinements of life. It means to 
 abandon excess and ostentation and bad art, 
 in order to be able to afford better artistic 
 quality in things, and in the process of pro- 
 ducing things. 
 
 The artist as a consumer is one who has 
 such joy in worthy material and fitting form 
 that he is able, without sacrifice, to dispense 
 with size, cost, unnecessary duplication, false 
 and artificial ornament, and all other osten- 
 tatious qualities in things. He has such mis- 
 ery at the thought of the drudgery of those 
 who must work blindly, and produce ugly 
 things, that he receives no pleasure from 
 abundance of things purchased at such cost. 
 He acts on Ovid's advice: "Let us have more 
 good taste than expense. ,, It is the artistic 
 nature, therefore, which obtains much from 
 little, and uses the scale of pleasure and pain 
 with the finest economy. It is the crude taste 
 which constantly demands something new to 
 catch its roving childish attention, and which 
 requires superabundance to sufficiently 
 stimulate its undeveloped perceptions. It 
 is the individual who realizes the failure of 
 his personal resources, who requires osten- 
 tatious qualities (cost without merit) in 
 
254 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 goods, in order to bring his brute buying 
 power into evidence. 
 
 It is, then, the quality of crudity in the con- 
 sumer which drives the producer into drudg- 
 ery. That portion of society's resources 
 which is wasted in consumption must be 
 made good by robbing the productive process 
 of its rightful charms. If we could learn to 
 know good work, and appreciate it properly, 
 we could be happy in such simplicity that 
 there would be abundant time and energy 
 to make the conditions of working pleasur- 
 able, and to evoke the talents of the workers 
 more fully, so that only good and beautiful 
 things should be produced. 
 
 How can the consuming public be educated 
 to that skill and discrimination in consump- 
 tion called "good taste"? The answer brings 
 us back to the original undertaking. A great 
 part of the general debasement of taste, 
 which is responsible for poor economy among 
 the poor and criminal waste among the rich, 
 is the result of the narrowing effect of a 
 machine, division-of-labor, cash-profits kind 
 of industry. It is dreary industry which 
 drives men to wealth, as an end, or way of 
 escape. But in the driving process the devel- 
 opment of the faculties is sacrificed, so that 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 255 
 
 when the industrialist turns to use his wealth, 
 he wastes so much that he must continue to 
 starve his industrial life to supply his spuri- 
 ous needs as a consumer. 
 
 The strategic point of attack upon this 
 vicious circle is in industry, where the cap- 
 tains of industry are, and where there are 
 organizations which, with their discipline, 
 science and technical efficiency, are able to 
 bring the mass of men under the influence 
 of the intelligence of the leaders. Since the 
 workers are a great majority of the consum- 
 ers, any advance accomplished by these lead- 
 ers in making the productive process refining 
 and satisfying, will revive the artistic sense 
 of the workers, and will be felt at once in the 
 wiser choices of consumers. If the captains 
 of industry will enter upon a new leadership, 
 there is a chance that the wonders of the 
 industrial revolution may be eclipsed by the 
 wonders of an industrial humanization. 
 
 Industry and Ethics 
 
 One of the demands of our time is to bring 
 industry into line with the ethical advance 
 of society. The more generally knowledge 
 is distributed with reference to the nature 
 and effects of our present industrial process, 
 
256 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 the more it is felt that productive power is 
 now so great that the claim of necessity is no 
 longer a sufficient excuse for disregard of 
 the moral code. Industry is no longer a 
 moral infant; there must be free trade with 
 the world of moral judgments. 
 
 Unselfishness of end and efficiency of 
 means is the formula of every fine human 
 ideal. Unselfishness is the chief impulsive 
 power of culture, that "disinterested en- 
 deavor for man's perfection. ' } As Matthew 
 Arnold says, 
 
 Culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness 
 and light. It has one even yet greater! — the passion for 
 making them prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come 
 to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light 
 of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled 
 masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light. 
 
 Unselfishness has uniformly been the cen- 
 tral virtue of the ideal conceptions of men 
 in all ages. It showed itself in the harsh 
 fortitude of the pagan hero, in the submis- 
 sion of the Greek ideal citizen, in the pa- 
 triotic eloquence of the Eoman orator, and 
 in the gentle resignation of the Christian 
 saint. It appeared upon the field of battle 
 in the romantic honor of the knight of chiv- 
 alry, and struggled against duplicity and 
 luxury in the winning courtesy of the cour- 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 257 
 
 tier. It is today the spirit which shines in 
 the reasonableness and fine balance of the 
 gentleman, and flashes forth in his contempt 
 for all that violates fair play. 
 
 The general message of ethics to this day 
 of social differentiation, specialized aims, 
 and division of occupations, is to avoid going 
 astray in the multiplicity of life's interests, 
 and of being enticed out of the main highway 
 of life, down some by-path which leads to 
 means and not to ends. It is to avoid any 
 form of half -life; for ethics is whole-living. 
 It calls, therefore, to the business adminis- 
 trator not to lose the fine possibilities of his 
 industrial career, by getting lost in the mak- 
 ing of goods or the accumulation of profits. 
 
 From generation to generation, the pro- 
 portional value attaching to different virtues 
 is altered by the changing needs of the times. 
 Military ardor is now less necessary than in 
 ancient civilizations. In a complicated so- 
 ciety, promptness of decision is less needed 
 than forethought. In a day of enormous 
 inanimate productive agencies, thrift and in- 
 dustry in producing are less essential than 
 fair play and compassion in distributing. As 
 prosperity brings a people out from under 
 the hand of necessity, a negative, threaten- 
 
258 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ing theology gives way to the attraction of 
 splendid approaching consummations. Men 
 learn to do fine things, not because they are 
 scared into it, but because they want to. 
 
 As a special case of the changing ethical 
 import of social life, industry, which has 
 passed through amazing transformations, is 
 having prepared for it, by the social con- 
 science, a new ethical code. The progress 
 of economic and sociological studies, and the 
 devising of such instruments of precision as 
 accounting, is giving to every one a more 
 definite idea of the nature of social action 
 and reaction. It is supplanting the vague 
 pious generalizations by which we once ex- 
 pressed our hopes, and is putting in their 
 place efficiency reports and sociological sur- 
 veys. It is proving why certain things do 
 not pay, and doing it with a cool and deadly 
 certainty like the soldierly advance of a 
 piece of mathematical reasoning toward 
 Q. E. D. Bacteriology, for example, now 
 makes it clear why it is a crime to produce 
 impure milk for children. Physiological 
 chemistry has made adulteration of products 
 look very different than it did when it was 
 merely a fine little trade secret. In a similar 
 way, economic analysis is probing out the full 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 259 
 
 significance of the plan of running a business 
 in such a way as to throw upon the public 
 the cost of skinned natural resources, of an 
 embittered labor policy, and of the frenzied 
 consumption which drowns the memory of 
 drudgery. The thing is now seen through; 
 the tax payer is "onto the game. ,, It is 
 understood that a business which injures the 
 men who are in it is trying to wind up 
 other businesses by injuring their possible 
 future executives, or mechanics, or stock- 
 holders, or consumers. 
 
 The large size of modern business units 
 has transformed their internal affairs into 
 social issues. By a simple process of multi- 
 plication of significance, it has lifted what 
 was once conceived as technique into the 
 realm of political economy, and what was 
 political economy into the realm of ethics. 
 A small employer drops a disaffected 
 clerk, and it is a personal matter; but 
 a great corporation confronts, in an of- 
 fended official staff, an esprit de corps which 
 is a consolidated power of expert opinion, 
 able to draw down the condemnation of scien- 
 tific societies. A disgruntled laborer, who is 
 one of a dozen, communicates his secret to 
 his wife in the evening; a thousand em- 
 
260 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ployees of a great concern saturate a city 
 with opinion, and make their grievance a 
 municipal issue. 
 
 The first step toward changing adminis- 
 trative methods, which was made in response 
 to new conditions, was the private better- 
 ment or welfare work of the more far-sighted 
 employers. The second was the publicity 
 movement, in which business interests began 
 to take the public into their confidence. The 
 third step is the more definite and avowed 
 partnership of interest, upon which the pub- 
 lic is now insisting. 
 
 While the minister of the Gospel can reach 
 his flock periodically, in a formal assembly 
 where no man (of the few present) answers 
 back, the administrator has intimate, natural, 
 and specific daily relations with his people, 
 about matters in which they are in dead 
 earnest. He determines where they shall 
 work, the persons with whom they shall asso- 
 ciate, and the matters of which they shall 
 think. While the minister's energy becomes 
 the fugitive word, the administrator stamps 
 his principles upon his customer's mind in 
 a long remembered profit or loss, and em- 
 bodies them in the materials and workman- 
 ship of the things which in the using will 
 
IDEALS OP THE ADMINISTRATOR 261 
 
 daily remind the user of the point. The 
 executive has no back-sliders nor non-con- 
 tributors among his forces, and he carries 
 on his services, not five or six hours a week, 
 but fifty or sixty hours. The administrator 
 at the head of a great business enterprise 
 stands as the modern analogue of the tribal 
 chief, who allotted estates, or of the master 
 craftsman who preserved traditions of the 
 art. As he advances his affairs, backed by 
 staff, and operatives, and system, and rec- 
 ords, and apparatus, and stock, and working- 
 capital, he resembles a commander at the 
 head of his troops. With such a relation to 
 his fellow men, the administrator can no 
 more make good the claim that his power 
 means only business, and so get himself hid- 
 den from observation in the moral world, 
 than a city which is set on a hill can be hid. 
 He must in spite of himself be some kind of a 
 "Shepherd of the People." His leadership 
 is of many kinds rolled into one. There rests 
 upon him the responsibility of trusteeship of 
 his capital, leadership of his men, and states- 
 manship in dealing with the public interests. 
 One of the objections raised, when it is 
 proposed to hold the executive to an account- 
 ing for the use of his moral power, is that 
 
262 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 geniuses are abnormal men, with certain im- 
 pulses stronger than ordinary, and certain 
 inhibitions weaker, so that if society would 
 have the benefits which their powers can ren- 
 der, it must allow their natures a certain 
 liberty not granted to others, to work after 
 their own fashion. "What is genius? Long- 
 fellow said, "infinite painstaking"; Matthew 
 Arnold said, "mainly an affair of energy"; 
 Buff on said, "superior aptitude to pa- 
 tience ' ' ; Johnson said, ' i a mind of large gen- 
 eral powers ' ' ; Euskin said, ' ' superior power 
 of seeing" ; a writer on military strategy 
 says, "intuitive power of grasping things as 
 they are"; and George Eliot said, "the ca- 
 pacity for receiving and improving by dis- 
 cipline." Where is the warrant for moral 
 license and riot of the faculties in this ? The 
 general fallacy underlying the proposition 
 here advanced was pulverized by John Stuart 
 Mill in the following passage in the essay 
 "On Liberty": 
 
 It is not because men's desires are strong that they act 
 ill; it is because their consciences are weak. There is no 
 natural connection between strong impulses and a weak con- 
 science. The natural connection is the other way. To say 
 that one person's desires and feelings are stronger and 
 more various than those of another, is merely to say that 
 he has more of the raw material of human nature, and is 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 263 
 
 therefore capable, perhaps of more evil, but certainly of 
 more good. Strong impulses are but another name for 
 energy. Energy may be turned to bad uses; but more good 
 may always be made of an energetic nature, than of an 
 indolent and impassive one. Those who have most natural 
 feeling are always those whose cultivated feelings may be 
 made the strongest. The same strong susceptibilities which 
 make the personal impulses vivid and powerful, are also the 
 sources from whence are generated the most passionate 
 love of virtue, and the sternest self-control. 
 
 Even if it be granted that allowance should 
 be made for the vagaries of the so-called i l ar- 
 tistic temperament, ' ' it must at once be plain 
 that unrestrained passions and distorted 
 views, resulting in erratic conduct, entirely 
 unfit an individual for administrative func- 
 tions. The administrator should be, in char- 
 acter, at the opposite end of the scale of hu- 
 manity from the neurotic unbalanced type of 
 person, for whom the phrase " artistic tem- 
 perament" is sometimes indulgently used as 
 an apology. 
 
 A second objection to the introduction of 
 ethical considerations into business manage- 
 ment frames itself in the oracular and wise- 
 looking axiom, "Business is business." 
 What does this mean? What would it mean 
 if we said religion is religion, and politics 
 is politics, and baseball is baseball? For one 
 thing, it would mean that there is a technique 
 
264 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 in each of these fields of activity peculiar to 
 itself, and that the technique of other sub- 
 jects does not apply. This is a hazardous 
 statement ; for while there is, for each organ- 
 ized activity, what appears to be a special 
 technique, it is constantly being shown by 
 experience that technical principles have a 
 wider application than was previously real- 
 ized. By this means, the realm of exclusive 
 technique is being progressively narrowed 
 to smaller matters of detail. To mention 
 only one or two illustrations: the rules of 
 motion study, which originated in business, 
 have been applied to baseball, with revolu- 
 tionary results. And, recently, the technique 
 of the motion-picture drama has revolution- 
 ized motion study. A prominent divine has 
 shown the significance of the principles of 
 business efficiency for religious organiza- 
 tions, in a book entitled ' l Scientific Manage- 
 ment in the Churches. ' ' A few years ago no 
 one would have thought that census-office 
 methods could concern the cost accountant, 
 nor that the "reaction time," measured in 
 psychological laboratories, could determine 
 the selection of many industrial employees. 
 The experience of scientific research is that 
 experts tend constantly to under-estimate the 
 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 265 
 
 wide range of practical knowledge, and to 
 restrict unduly the confines of their field of 
 observation. 
 
 Again, the wise-sounding phrase, " Busi- 
 ness is business,' ' may be taken to mean that 
 the ideals and larger principles of judgment 
 of other fields of human endeavor cannot be 
 applied in business. This is still less de- 
 fensible than the assertion that there is an 
 exclusive technique ; for, as we advance from 
 the plane of restricted and specific rules to 
 that of general principles and ultimate stand- 
 ards, we leave those ideas which are based 
 upon peculiarity of materials, or special 
 equipment, or limitations of time and place, 
 and have to do with the applications of the 
 general laws of thinking and feeling to which 
 all men, in every realm of activity, are sub- 
 ject. If the business executive will atten- 
 tively study Machiavelli's "Prince," he will 
 find that many of the policies of the Captains 
 of Industry were old in Italian politics of 
 the fifteenth century. Let him do the same 
 with Jomini's "Art of War," or Von Clause- 
 witz's "On War," and he will find that, by 
 somewhat changing the phraseology, many 
 principles of strategy may be converted into 
 principles of business administration. And 
 
266 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 again, if he will listen to the close reasoning 
 upon human virtues and vices, presented in 
 the addresses of Eev. G. Campbell Morgan, 
 he will realize that, at bottom, the moral 
 leader counts upon the same human forces 
 and safeguards against the same weak- 
 nesses as does the business leader. If there 
 is scope in business for the comprehensive 
 use of human talents, then the moral law is 
 there, presiding over the special technique 
 and over the peculiar applications of princi- 
 ples, in the interest of an efficient general 
 life. 
 
 The smug little phrase, " Business is busi- 
 ness," is sometimes used by two classes of 
 men to raise a false issue and provide an 
 escape from duty. These classes are small, 
 but it takes but few persons to keep in cir- 
 culation a fallacy which hides a duty. One 
 of these classes is composed of business men 
 who wish to continue dishonorable practices, 
 or who do not believe that they can make a 
 success with better methods. The other 
 class is composed of certain exponents of 
 culture who aspire to conform to Matthew 
 Arnold's definition of persons who "know 
 the best that has been thought and said in 
 the world," but who have no desire to spend 
 
IDEALS OP THE ADMINISTRATOR 267 
 
 energy in the attempt to beautify industry, 
 and therefore find it convenient to call the 
 task hopeless. They have no "greater pas- 
 sion' ' to "kindle the masses of humanity 
 with sweetness and light," but prefer to eat 
 the lotus of unused learning, while ' ' the world 
 is in torment for the want of living thought 
 about its present affairs." "The Christian 
 ideal,' ' says G. K. Chesterton, "has not been 
 tried and found wanting. It has been found 
 difficult and left untried. ' ' The same may be 
 said of many cultural ideals. 
 
 The word "unselfishness" means to small 
 natures loss, but to great ones the saving of 
 life from inferior things so that it may be 
 expended upon that which is better. Un- 
 selfishness brings directly many of the high- 
 est values, such as self-approval, relations of 
 mutual confidence with one 's fellow-men, and 
 emulations and co-operations to beautify the 
 long day of duty. It brings other gifts in- 
 directly. There are some good things which 
 can be reached by direct effort, but others 
 come to us in the rebound. Those who aim 
 at happiness rarely attain it, but those who 
 aim at the best self-expression receive happi- 
 ness as a gift, just as those who aim at kind- 
 liness attain courtesy, and those who aim at 
 
268 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 truth attain art, and those who aim at up- 
 rightness attain power. 
 
 An Administrator's Creed 
 
 Let us set down a few items of a possible 
 creed for a business administrator, doing so 
 not to "lay down the law," but to stimulate 
 a little friendly reasoning together. 
 
 I. A broader study of the art of adminis- 
 tration should be made than heretofore. The 
 executive should acquaint himself with the 
 history of the different forms of the art, as 
 it has developed in war, politics, ecclesiology, 
 discovery, and other lines of joint endeavor ; 
 and he should draw inspiration and breadth 
 of view from the lives of great leaders in all 
 lines. 
 
 II. The administrator should strive in 
 every way to ennoble the conception of his 
 calling, mindful of the rule of art "dignify 
 your subject.' ' Eesponsibility forms the dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic of all professional 
 work; recognition of it, the root of profes- 
 sional ethics; and pride in its discharge, a 
 large part of the reward of professional ser- 
 vices. The first paragraph of the American 
 Medical Association code is: "A physician 
 should be imbued with the greatness of his 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 269 
 
 mission, and the responsibility he habitually 
 incurs in its discharge/ ' 
 
 III. The hours of life devoted to industry 
 should be made more beautiful and pleasur- 
 able. A beginning may be made in behalf 
 of those classes which most need the cordial 
 of joy, utilizing first of all the incidental op- 
 portunities, such as an existing vocational 
 aspiration to distribute good reading, the 
 presence of unused rooms and equipment to 
 increase sociability, and the existence of 
 joint purchasing power to improve consump- 
 tion. "Men have no pleasure in the work 
 by which they make their bread," says Rus- 
 kin, "and therefore look to wealth, as the 
 only means of pleasure/ ' 
 
 IV. The administrator should conceive of 
 himself more as the leader of the men with 
 whom he is associated, than as the trustee 
 of the property he manages; for men are 
 more valuable than things. He should be 
 thought of by the men as a friend and ad- 
 visor and just judge. It is a real adminis- 
 trative triumph to make one and the same 
 program promote the efficiency of an industry 
 and the welfare of its force by securing the 
 increased efficiency as a result of a healthier 
 and happier force. 
 
270 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 V. The chief executive may well give spe- 
 cial thought to his function as a representa- 
 tive of public interests. His neighborhood 
 should be able to feel that any increase of 
 his prosperity and influence will not only 
 mean a finer policy inaugurated in his estab- 
 lishment, but will "benefit the town/' 
 strengthen the hands of good government, 
 help the park and play-ground movement, 
 and the public library, and all the general 
 interests. 
 
 VI. The conditions of work should receive 
 attention, not only to provide heat, light, ven- 
 tilation, and sanitary features, which pay on 
 a horse-power basis, but to insure an efficient 
 co-operation between management and men 
 in the support of welfare features. 
 
 VII. The beautification of the industrial 
 environment merits special care, because of 
 the ugliness which a century of unrestrained 
 utilitarian construction has wrought in the 
 world. Factory and store buildings, because 
 of their intermediate character between pub- 
 lic and private edifices, should partake of 
 the internal comfort of private homes, and 
 of the external dignity of public buildings. 
 Particularly should the inexpensive beauty 
 of graceful general proportions; of harmoni- 
 
IDEALS OP THE ADMINISTRATOR "271 
 
 ous colors, and of landscape gardening, be 
 availed of. 
 
 VIII. The ideal administrator will take 
 pains to establish the fact that the aims 
 sought in his business enterprise are joint 
 or common ones. Spontaneous and inde- 
 pendent thinking for the common welfare 
 should be invited from each individual, and 
 prized as the finest expression of the spirit 
 of loyalty. 
 
 IX. In this age of strenuous publicity, the 
 gentleman-administrator will scrutinize his 
 advertisements with vigilance to make them 
 helpful to the consumer, and truthful, and 
 to make certain that they do not mar the 
 beauty of any natural scene, nor exact an 
 unnecessary toll of attention from the public. 
 
 X. The standard of duties and rewards, 
 or the principle used in the distribution of 
 income, should be revised by the adminis- 
 trator in the light of the new principles of 
 efficiency, and of the knowledge available 
 from psychology and ethics. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 One of the objects toward which the in- 
 dustrial leader's intelligence should direct it- 
 self is to keep industry in the full perform- 
 
272 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 ance of its functions, not only as a producer 
 of goods, but as a school of the virtues, and 
 as a means of joyful self-expression. The 
 administrator should change the emphasis in 
 his aims to accord with the progressive ten- 
 dencies of the times, striving now less to ac- 
 quire rapidly than to distribute justly, and 
 thinking less of the mechanical elements of 
 industry than of its spiritual forces. As the 
 times call for it, he should feel himself chal- 
 lenged to a nicer discrimination in the use of 
 methods, to a greater prudence in adopting 
 plans which work well in the long run, and 
 to a more social intuition in following indi- 
 vidual policies which " might safely be made 
 a law for the whole world.' * 
 
 Is it too difficult a task to bring modern in- 
 dustrial conduct into harmony with modern 
 thinking? In this latest century of enlight- 
 enment, in the freest and richest country of 
 the globe, must it be said of the leaders of 
 the great industries that there is any ancient 
 model of bravery, any principle of middle- 
 age chivalry, any Eenaissance standard of 
 culture, or any modern gospel of service, 
 which is too fine, too difficult, or too expen- 
 sive, for them to translate into reality? Is 
 there an ideal country toward which society 
 
IDEALS OP THE ADMINISTRATOR 273 
 
 is moving, but from which the Captain of 
 Industry must be excluded, as an "undesir- 
 able immigrant," because his estate is too 
 small in spiritual riches? 
 
 Such a thing is impossible. The business 
 administrator is the leader by right of ability 
 in what the great majority have thought it 
 most worth while to struggle for in recent 
 generations. The aristocracy of the past 
 sprang from industrial administrators, — 
 landed proprietors, — who made themselves 
 defenders of the people. The earls were 
 jarls or strong ones, the dukes leaders, and 
 the lords law-wards or executors of justice. 
 The greatest patrons the arts ever had were 
 the merchant-princes of Florence and Ven- 
 ice. In comparison with what an age of hand 
 labor accomplished in the cathedrals, and 
 with what sailing caravels did in the discov- 
 ery of the new world, what can not a great 
 modern corporation accomplish in this age 
 of power and accounting and quick communi- 
 cation and easy publicity, — if it is led by men 
 of imagination? The industrial functions 
 now carried on by business corporations are 
 astonishing in mass and variety. What these 
 corporations are able to do, in the sphere of 
 their traditionally conceived interests, re- 
 
274 BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 
 
 veals a grasp of administrative methods, an 
 accuracy of accounts and internal reports, 
 and a command of capital resources, which 
 can certainly be turned to account in many 
 new ways in enriching the lives of their 
 members. 
 
 A great department store is able to oper- 
 ate carpet mills in India and lace works in 
 Switzerland, and can, without confusion, sell 
 anything from a paper of pins to the furnish- 
 ings of a house. Is it not powerful enough 
 to be a big brother to its young girl em- 
 ployees, protecting them in their distress, 
 and pursuing their enemies to the ends of the 
 earth? 
 
 A board of directors which can under- 
 standing^ manage mines and railways and 
 stores and factories, separated by hundreds 
 of miles, can certainly find the point of dan- 
 gerous fatigue for its men, can consume 
 smoke and injurious gases, and can rival a 
 German State with its benefit funds. Cannot 
 such administrators, from the expert knowl- 
 edge of their staffs, give a little timely ad- 
 vice to their communities on architecture, and 
 domestic sanitation, and city planning and 
 government? Can they not, in a thousand 
 ways, so multiply the uses of expert talent 
 
IDEALS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 275 
 
 and accumulated experience and nation-wide 
 credit as to transform employment with 
 them, for the common man, from a mere 
 temporary cash-nexus, into a coveted patent 
 of nobility in the industrial world? 
 
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