or director. He brings education and science to his work, combined with business capacity. He has all the finer qualities of an ideal boss.

Whatever other gifts and advantages an American may have, he is not likely to reach the front rank unless he is also a first class boss-a born ruler of men. It would be difficult to mention a railroad builder, an ironmaster, or an engineer at the head of his profession who does not include that among his strong points; often they owe to it their first step upward. Somehow they will get men to do things for them which they would not do for an ordinary boss. They command their confidence, and never abuse it. Sometimes they consult them and get very useful suggestions for their pains. President Hill of the Great Northern railway, when he was pushing his road across to the Pacific, owed a good deal to magnetic influence discreetly exercised on his men. He knew most of them personally, and seized every chance of a few minutes' chat with them. They were encouraged to express their opinions about the road and its affairs, which were not always flattering. The engine drivers were valuable scouts, and Mr. Hill would often stroll into the engine stables and have a talk with any of them who chanced to be around. It was his way of "keeping close to the men all the time." Now his assistants do that for him, and find it still worth doing.

The boss is so interesting and important a figure in American industrial life that he would be seriously missed were he to disappear from it. At the same time, such an event is not at all impossible. Even now he may be in a state of transition, for the conditions which produced him are undergoing rapid change. The uneducated, half civilized foreign laborer over whom he lorded it so grandly is finding other rulers. He is being drawn into the sphere of influence of another boss, the trades union leader. Already a stubborn fight is being waged over him by the employers on the one hand and the trade unions on the other. There can be little doubt who will secure him in the end, and what use will be made of him. He is marked out as the spoil of the union leaders, and he will be a prize for them not industrially only but politically as well.

American employers are to-day fighting for independence-or, as they call it, "for the management of their own business." It is the same fight that British employers had to go through with the unions a few years ago, and from which they emerged if not complete victors with at least a moderate degree of success. They are now masters in their own homes, which many American employers are not. In the United States it is to be a harder battle than it was here, because on a larger scale and with a more doubtful prospect. The stake is also much greater in the United States than in our own case. It involves political as well as industrial mastery. The fact of their having their workmen so well in hand has been undoubtedly of great value to American employers, not only in the workshops but in other connections as well. It made them good voters as well as good workmen. But if they are going to break away in one capacity they may do it also in the other. There may be an electoral revolt combined with a labor revolt. In that case the reign of the boss would be over. With "walking delegates" coming and going all the time, and union rules drawn tighter every year, "bossing" as hitherto practiced would soon become impossible.

The change when it arrives will be bad for the masters, and in many ways for the men themselves. It will destroy the wonderful discipline and method which are the glory of American industry and the secret of its exceptional results. Neither the boss nor "Pinkerton's man" will have an easy life in the teeth of an organized labor party sending their own representatives to congress and having laws made for themselves instead of helping to make laws to suit their employers.

ENGINEERING IN INDUSTRIAL WORKS.

BY WILLIAM D. ENNIS.

[William D. Ennis, engineer; born in New Jersey in the early seventies; apprenticed to the Rogers Locomotive company; connected as engineer, salesman, and construction superintendent, with various works, including the Passaic Rolling Mill company, Walworth Construction and Supply company, Consolidated Gas company of New Jersey; graduate of the Stevens Institute of Technology; formerly engaged in private and associate practice in connection with the installation and economical operation of steam power plants; for some time located in the state of Washington in behalf of the Everett Pulp and Paper company, where he was engaged in modernizing the power equipment of that and of several allied industries; at present engineer to the American Linseed company. A frequent contributor to technical literature, British, American, and Continental, on subjects connected with steam and electrical engineering chemistry. The following article is from the Engineering Magazine, and is published by special arrangement.] Copyright 1901 by John R. Dunlap

The supreme control of industrial enterprises, including the general management of all phases from the purchase of supplies to the sale and delivery of finished product, is classically in the hands of the expert accountant. The line of promotion in the past has been usually from the bookkeepers' desk toward the higher chairs. An innovation was practiced, when instead of the clerk, the private secretary, or stenographer of higher degree, who of all others had opportunities to become familiar with the motives and methods of his chief, was marked as the legitimate successor of that chief.

A still more marked innovation has lately been evident. The managers of to-day are technicists. Engineers-mechanical and civil-make it their ambition to become, not consulting experts, but executives. Among military and naval cadets, the most brilliant and successful students enter the engineering corps of the service, and become in after years the most thorough and successful officers. The same tendency is pervading commercial life. To refer to a single one of the older American engineering colleges as an examplethe Stevens institute of technology, in New Jersey, founded in 1872 by an engineer: of the 600 graduates prior to 1896, 230 (or 38 per cent) were in 1900 occupying positions not technical but executive. The functions of many others who fill nominally professional offices are in reality purely those of

management. The chief engineer of a large manufacturing company often becomes as little of an engineer (excepting in his methods) as his typewriter.

This state of affairs is becoming more and more prevalent. The managers of street railway, gas, electric lighting, and similar companies are, in the main, men of engineering training. The general management of broader manufacturing industries is being concentrated in the same direction. The departmental organization of commerce requires men who shall be, first of all, able executives; second, experts in the departmental work. In all excepting purely specialized branches-such as the legal or financial use is being made of the trained engineer. Salesmen of mechanical goods, railway transportation department officials, and incumbents of many other apparently unrelated fields, are made from engineering timber. The highest executive positions in the great industries are accessible to men of mechanical training and common

sense.

The United States are confronted with an era of industrial consolidation, of which we have thus far seen but the inception. A line of succession must sooner or later be established, leading to the posts of responsibility. These consolidations may properly be viewed as just so much labor saving machinery which, like similar developments of the past, have met with much unintelligent condemnation, and which have been rendered possible to no small extent, because of specialized engineering talent. Much of this is due to the almost invariable consequences of engineering training. It gives thoroughness first of all, for no progress is possible in mechanical operations without thorough mastery of each step. It gives a command of details. It develops a graphic habit of thought, an ability to picture abstract things, and to make mere conceptions real. It emphasizes the necessity of recording, transcribing, comparing, and perfecting one's observations until the elementary facts have been clearly sifted out and the basic principles mastered. And at no stage, especially if coupled with rational and competent scientific study, is it other than broadening to every faculty of the mind. More than all these, it creates the courage and ability to grapple with new

conditions with a confidence born of a thorough understanding of the natural laws involved, that unerringly define, limit, and control even uninvestigated phenomena.

The fundamental engineering concept is that of efficiency -the quotient of work performed by work imparted, of value by cost, of effect by cause. This concept is fundamental, not in engineering alone, but in every phase of business management. A cost keeping system may be never so accurate, but if it stops short at dollars and cents on record, it lacks life. Beyond this, where the analysis is of value only as a comparison, there is the question of what each particular cost should be, or the question of a theoretical efficiency toward which experimental efficiencies must constantly approach. It is not sufficient to insist that costs shall bear a constant ratio to output. The ratio under ideal conditions must be determined by calculation and should be gradually but steadily approached in practice by bringing about conditions resembling ideal ones. With a few conspicuous exceptions, neither the expert accountant nor the stenographer is qualified by his training to perform such calculations.

In the broadest sense, the efficiency of a manufacturing industry is equal to its receipts divided by its expenses. This industrial efficiency, is however, the product of the several efficiencies of the departments in entire production, in each of which there must be struck a balance between commodities furnished to and by it. With each department normal, the combined efficiency is normal; and an abnormal condition of things shown by the sum total can only be satisfactorily analyzed by one who can apply the touchstone of his own training and experience to the offending element. The three processes,―consumption, manufacture, disposition of product,-form two gaps for loss. Incompetent superintendence of plant makes the first element high, unintelligent sales keep the third element low, both in proportion to the second. To reduce both losses to normal (when that normal has once been ascertained) there must be quantitative knowledge of the operation of all three departments. This knowledge must consider not only the bulk of commodities in each, but their cost or value as well. The former data-consumption of raw