1. The organizer and director of industry must first have technical knowledge of methods, processes, and materials. The qualities required in the direction of industry are implied in the foregoing section, but they may be more specifically enumerated. Knowledge of technical processes is relatively more important in the direction of industry in the earlier stage. In the single independent producer it is the quality most desirable. He must know the quality of the materials with which he works and the best modes of combining them. But, as industrial organization becomes more complex, only a broad knowledge and ability to judge of the results of different processes and to compare plans are necessary in the organizer. He can hire the technical knowledge of details required in the larger management of business. Draftsmen, engineers, pattern-makers, men with far more education and capacity in certain lines than the business manager, work under his direction.

Technical knowledge and skill.

Judgment of men.

2. The organizer requires ability to judge men and tact in relations with them. In the small group, ability to get on well in personal contact with workmen is of great importance. Especially rare is the genial manner that wins the confidence and even the affection of the men. A sense of humor and the ability to turn a joke are said to have obviated many a strike and thus to have prevented losses both to the employer and to the men. In large affairs much of this managing tact can be hired in good foremen; but the organizer must still have a knowledge of men, ability to judge of human nature, to select his subordinates, and to animate them with his own purposes and plans. Mr. Carnegie has said that an appropriate epitaph for himself would be, "He was a man who knew how to surround himself with men abler than he was himself." That seems too modest; but in a sense it is not, because he claims for him-self, and justly, the highest of all industrial qualities. A great administrator in political or industrial affairs can dispense with everything else rather than with this, the supreme quality of the great organizer.

Foresight in commercial affairs.

3. The organizer must have unusual foresight and the ability to form a large commercial policy. This proposition is to be interpreted relatively to the task before the organizer, and to the size of the business. Modern industry anticipates demand far more than did primitive industry. Large amounts of materials and energy are embarked in directions from which they cannot be recalled. With the progress of electrical engineering it soon may become possible to recall at any moment a cargo embarked for a distant port. But no wireless telegraphy is able to recall the great masses of capital that are embarked on distant and definite journeys in modern business. The organizer anticipates future demand, and prepares for it. The process has been figuratively expressed somewhat as follows: the enterpriser throws into the crucible great quantities of material; they melt, and an industrial result is secured, but whether the deposit is greater in value than the material is a question that cannot be answered for years. The need of anticipating demand is greater today than ever before, and this requires large investments months and even years in advance. The losses are proportionally large if there is miscalculation of demand. A large commercial policy is one that takes into account the more distant factors, and anticipates the new conditions. The rare ability to do this is rightly called statemanship in economic affairs.

4. The organizer need not himself have great wealth, but he must have ability to command financial resources. Business today is done in many cases with borrowed capital. Even a subscription to stock is frequently as much in the nature of a loan, made in reliance on the reputation of the organizer, as an investment for profits. There are many temporary needs that require sudden loans. The confidence of investors, whether banks, trust companies, individual shareholders or investors in bonds, must be secured by the organizer. Good judgment of the money market often is as vital as judgment of the market for the particular product. In some of the largest corporate enterprises this quality becomes the most essential.

Command of financial resources.

Scarcity of great organizing ability.

The industrial leaders.

5. Organizing ability of the highest order is rarely found. This is almost a superfluous statement after the foregoing. According to the theory of chances, such a combination and balancing of qualities is likely to occur in very few cases. Even where it exists, it may not be discovered or developed. The man may not find his opportunity, nor the task the man. There are many misfits in the world. On the occasion of the visit of Prince Henry of Prussia to America, in 1902, he was entertained at luncheon in New York with one hundred of the leaders in invention, finance, and industry, wherein have been the most characteristic achievements of America. In jocular reference to the French Academy, whose members are the forty most noted literary men of France, the newspapers called this the meeting of America's one hundred immortals. There were J. P. Morgan, the great financier; Vanderbilt, Hill, and Harriman, the railroad kings; Carnegie, the iron magnate; Irving Scott, "the man who built the Oregon" - nearly all the company deserving a place at the table mainly by reason of excellence as business organizers. Such a gathering has a dramatic interest as presenting the greatest leaders of industry, but about other tables might be gathered thousands of other less notable figures worthy to be accounted captains of industry in their several fields. One may well ask, How did they come into the important places they occupy?

Various roads to industrial leadership.