analyzed or described. The ingenuity and experience of each
generation--of each decade, even, have without doubt handed over better
methods to the next. This mass of rule-of-thumb or traditional knowledge
may be said to be the principal asset or possession of every tradesman.
Now, in the best of the ordinary types of management, the managers
recognize frankly the fact that the 500 or 1000 workmen, included in the
twenty to thirty trades, who are under them, possess this mass of
traditional knowledge, a large part of which is not in the possession of
the management. The management, of course, includes foremen and
superintendents, who themselves have been in most cases first-class
workers at their trades. And yet these foremen and superintendents know,
better than any one else, that their own knowledge and personal skill
falls far short of the combined knowledge and dexterity of all the
workmen under them. The most experienced managers therefore frankly
place before their workmen the problem of doing the work in the best and
most economical way. They recognize the task before them as that of
inducing each workman to use his best endeavors, his hardest work, all
his traditional knowledge, his skill, his ingenuity, and his
good-will--in a word, his "initiative," so as to yield the largest
possible return to his employer. The problem before the management,
then, may be briefly said to be that of obtaining the best initiative of
every workman. And the writer uses the word "initiative" in its broadest
sense, to cover all of the good qualities sought for from the men.

On the other hand, no intelligent manager would hope to obtain in any
full measure the initiative of his workmen unless he felt that he was
giving them something more than they usually receive from their
employers. Only those among the readers of this paper who have been
managers or who have worked themselves at a trade realize how far the
average workman falls short of giving his employer his full initiative.