d
out.

Far-reaching changes have taken place, of late, in the type of men who
have held the reins of control over industry. During its early years the
economic machinery was constructed by men who had worked at their
trades; men who had begun at the bottom and climbed into a place of
authority; men who had a first-hand knowledge of the processes
underlying their industries. Latterly, however, with bankers and other
professional manipulators in control of economic life, the engineers,
with their intimate knowledge of forces and processes have been pushed
into the background, and the actual work of direction has been shifted
from producers to money makers.

Again, the present economic system, built for the profit of the builder
rather than for the welfare of the community, represents, not the
science of organization for production and use, but the science of
organization for exploitation and profiteering.

These are some of the reasons why the economic life of the modern world
has grown at haphazard. Each industrial director put his own ideas into
his business, and as it grew in response to them, the various businesses
differed as much in shape, size and character as did the early factory
buildings.

The time seems to have arrived when a new working plan of economic life
may be adopted. The faults and failures of the old are glaring and the
clamor for the new is reasonable and insistent.

The construction of factory buildings has been evolved into a science.
Why cannot the same thing be done with the whole scheme of economic
organization? Men no longer erect factory buildings according to
personal whim or to the chance ideas of some budding architect. Instead
they consult scientists in factory construction who have devoted years
to the study and to the practical supervision of the detail of factory
building. Can less be demanded of the community which hopes to build its
economic life soundly and solidly?

A modern steel plant, like that at Gary, Indiana, is carefully planned
before a sod is turned. The organization of the works is thought out,
sketched, drawn in detail, blue-printed, so that each group of workers
that participates in the construction is given a blue print that
specifies what is to be done, and where and how. When all of the tasks
are completed a steel plant has been called into being. But suppose that
each of the eighty gangs of workers, busy on the plant, had followed the
lines of its fancy or o