lan. It
is this task of leveling up rough places in the combined work of
department specialists, that puts the training and insight of both the
executive and the director of research to the most severe test. It is a
mark of a well-trained executive that in performing his task he
instinctively follows principles instead of trusting alone to momentary
intuitions, however valuable and necessary these may be.

And here it is that the second article in the creed of business
training appears. The executive's task is primarily to adjust human
relations, and the nature of the principles by which these adjustments
are made, determines the relations of a concern to its laborers, to
competitors, to customers, and to the public. If the executive comes to
his task without a mind and spirit trained to an appreciation of human
relations, he is not likely so to synthesize the work of his
subordinates as to make for either maximum efficiency within the
business or its maximum contribution to the life of the State.

The term "executive" in large and highly organized concerns is likely
to mean the head of a department. A large proportion of the department
heads now in business are men of purely empirical training. Their
horizon is likely to be limited and to center too much in the
departmental viewpoint. They may perhaps be able to see the whole
business, but if they do, they will probably see it exclusively from
the inside. There is frequently nothing in their business experience
that has made them think of the great forces at work in society at
large. As the bulk of business has been organized in the past, there
has been no department in which, automatically and in the regular
course of business, a view looking outward is brought to bear. If it
came at all, it was reflected back from the larger relations and the
larger social contacts of the head of the business. Many general
executives have been promoted from the position of head of department
at a period in life when their habits of thought had become
crystallized, and it was not natural that they should entirely change
those habits with the change in their responsibilities.

Besides, the economics of competition and a strong group sentiment
among business men have tended to make them resist social influences
which might react upon the policies of their own business. Superficial
conclusions drawn from such experiments as those of Pullman and of
Patterson, to which reference has bee