Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1915-06-11

fairs of life which at first thought
may seem beyond his sphere.
In a recent course of lectures an
lexpert on industrial management
said that manufacturing involved
material, labor and capital. In the
past the engineer has dealt with ma
terials; he has determined their
properties and has devised the ma
Ichinery for transforming them into
useful products. He has found how
to secure efficiency and economy.
Now the engineer is studying labor;
he is finding how men may work
more efficiently; he determines what
conditions, what methods, what mo-
ltiyes will secure efficiency and out
put The same methods he has APP
lplied to material forces he can APP
lply to human forces. Observation,
analysis, the conclusion and the de-
vising of new methods, the over
looming OF difficulties-all these
apply to the human as we'll as the
physical.
There is new interest in the
human element in industry Safety
first is one Indication; scientific
management, compensation laws,
old age pensions are others. Eff
ficiency has been the ideal of the
engineer in dealing with mechanical
things. Efficiency is solely lacking
in human work. The engineer is
best fitted to introduce it.
The third element in snanufac-
ture is capital and the lecturer on
management predicts that the eff
| ficient application and use of cap
| ital would be far better obtained if
| it received from the engineer the
same kind of study and scientific
application that he has given to the
mechanical and is now devoting to
the human elements.
Not long ago the head of a syndi-
cate which acquires and develops
properties told me that in building
up his organization they found that
the type of man who could best de-
termine the financial as we'll as the
physical value of operating compan-
les and who could best devise con-
structive financial plans and super
intend reorganization and opera
ton were men of engineering train
ing.
An increasing factor in govern
ment is its relation to public util-
tiles, the railroads, street railways,
electric service companies, telegraph
and telephones, gas and water sup
ply, sewers, streets. We need en-
gineering managers and not polit-
.ical bosses as our public servants.
We are in a state of unrest and
reimbursement. Nearly 80 years
ago book appeared entitled Re
cent Economic Changes 1t re-
counted a worldwide depression,
extending over dozen years, being
particularly acute in this county in
the panic of 1873. A hundred ex-
plantations and causes had been as
signed by as many people, repre-
senting all classes in various coun-
tries. The author found the real
cause in the difficulty of economic
and human readjustment to the new
methods of manufacture and trans
ortation-me thods which increased
production with reduced labor and
shifted markets.
And many of our present prob
lens of labor. of capital, of trusts
and interstate commerce, of conser-
walton and of municipal government
are problems of human re-adjusut-
ment to the new conditions which
the engineer has brought about. We
try to put new wine in old bottles.
Interstate commerce labors with
theories of state rights laid down a
generation before the railroad wiped
out economic boundary lines. Water
rights involving power, have been
ad1udicated by laws passed years be-
fore the electric motor was invenet-
ed. Lawmakers insist that bust
ness shall be done by rivals in COM
petition, while steam and electric
ity have decreed that cooperation
is the method for efficient accom-
plishment. The great problem is
adjustment, legal, economic and
human, to the appliances and the
methods which the engineer has
produced. This requires recogni-
ton of facts rather than traditions
and of justice and right rather than
selfish purpose. We need to apply
to these problems the same prin-
lclples and methods that the engin-
eer has employed in solving his