I made myself master of chemistry and of the laboratory, which proved of lasting value."

The Mastery of a Business

These men all possessed the problem-solving type of mind which, early utilized in dealing with small matters, enables the business man to move with firm confidence in large affairs. For the vagueness in which these large enterprises at first appear enshrouded disappears upon analysis and there is revealed instead a number of questions so specific that the mind cannot fail in due time to assert its mastery over them.

"Forty years ago I was impressed with the value of analysis in business," says John H. Hanan, the Brooklyn manufacturer, "and that hour was the beginning of whatever success I have had."

The outstanding fact about the problem-solving mind is that it is invariably the result of a considerable period of training and practice. A man can not develop a sound judgment overnight, but he can in time develop it through solving the actual problems of the small place, the limited job. The subordinate position, in consequence, is not only a perfectly adequate place to learn to handle the big enterprises; it is practically the only place.

Getting at the Essentials

Each problem the executive is called upon to solve constitutes a little world in itself within whose labyrinths the reflecting mind could stay interminably-running over the numberless phases of the question at issue, seeking out fresh points of view, developing whole crops of new suggestions, guessing, and comparing. The true executive invariably cuts short this Hamlet-like process. With him the selection and survival of fit thoughts, the elimination of the unfit, is vigorously attended to; he thinks with a purpose.

The following incident, chosen from many of its kind, in the career of Thomas A. Edison well illustrates positive thought in operation. On this occasion Mr. Edison had decided to study a certain part of the mechanism of typewriters. "Have a model here next Tuesday of every typewriter made," he said to one of his assistants. "Have each company send an expert to explain its machine. And get me out all the books in the library about this piece of mechanism."

Monday evening the assistant called Mr. Edison's attention to a stack of books several feet high, and reminded him of the appointment next day.

"Send the books up to the house. I'll look them over tonight," said Mr. Edison.

The next morning he appeared at the exhibition, and so thoroughly had he read the books that he frequently corrected the experts' explanation of how their own machines worked. The assistant, out of curiosity, tried reading the references that Mr. Edison had absorbed in one evening, and it took all his spare hours for eleven days.

Mr. Edison in his swift pace had cut straight to the mark. This method is characteristic of men who do things; they push directly along the great highways of thought.

Keeping the Right Road

In the business world, which to the beginner seems a maze and which is sufficiently complex even to the officials of great and successful corporations, the importance of distinguishing essentials from non-essentials increases year by year. The ability to manage a business demands the application to its problems of the same habits of thought which in the physical and natural sciences have again and again demonstrated their effectiveness. In other words, the business men advancing to the helm of affairs in this country must be scientists-not that they must work in laboratories, but that

they must apply the method common to all branches of learning, the procedure of a logically trained mind.

Amid phenomena mingled in endless diversity, as we find it in business, science has for its aim the discovery of true relationships. Order and system normally follow in its train however diverse may be the field, since the scientific mind, immersed as it may be in apparently heterogeneous details, is alert in detecting similarities and differences, in weighing the evidence for and against any idea or statement which may present itself. Those items which are not essential in a given case are eliminated and those which are actually of importance are revealed.

In this process the scientific mind is first of all ever on its guard against weaknesses within itself: indolence, prejudice, fear of looking unpleasant facts in the face. All these are errors to which human nature in every age is subject. "Men believe easily what they wish to believe," said the greatest man of the greatest empire of antiquity, Julius Caesar.

Lord Bacon's Warning

Centuries afterward Lord Bacon elaborated the warning in his "Novum Organum.”

The human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet it either does not observe or despises them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions. It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than negatives, whereas it ought duly and regularly to be impartial; nay, in establishing any true axiom the negative instance is the more powerful.

The human understanding resembles not a dry light, but admits a tincture of the will and passions, which generate

their own system accordingly; for man always believes
more readily that which he prefers. He, therefore, rejects
difficulties for want of patience in investigation; sobriety, be-
cause it limits his hope; the depths of nature, from super-
stition; the light of experiment, from arrogance and pride,
lest his mind should appear to be occupied with common
and varying objects; paradoxes, from a fear of the opinion
of the vulgar; in short, his feelings imbue and corrupt his
understanding in innumerable and sometimes imperceptible

ways.

The Danger of Deceiving Oneself

The danger so impressively pointed out here is real. The inevitable consequence, should one not take the proper steps to avoid it, is the appearance of that most serious of all defects in the otherwise practical man-self-deception.

"When a man's affairs are not going well, he hates to study the books and face the truth," says Mr. Rockefeller in explaining his procedure. "From the first, the men who managed the Standard Oil Company kept their books intelligently as well as correctly. We knew how much we made and where we gained or lost. At least, we tried not to deceive ourselves."

"Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be; why then should we desire to be deceived?" asks Bishop Butler. The victim of this ostrich-like ignoring of the facts is able to make no satisfactory reply to the Bishop.

We as business men must recognize the warping effects upon the judgment both of prejudice and of prepossessions, must seek to retain the open-mindedness with which as children we were endowed, and yet, in fulfillment of the responsibilities resting upon us, must investigate systematically and without ceasing each problem which is ours to solve.

"Separate the problem from yourself; think of it as a fascinating episode that happened years ago," is the advice

of Dean Gay of the Harvard School of Business Administration.

Procedure at the General Electric Plant

When the problem-solving type of mind faces some new problem, what, in general, is its method of operation? The answer to this question, in terms familiar to the business man, appears clearly in this incident which took place in the shops of the General Electric Company. The manager of one of the departments had observed the need for a new type of circuit breaker, as the breaker then in use-an electrical switch consisting of a handle and three copper prongs fitting into grooves -was not satisfactory. His procedure according to the account in World's Work was thus:

At eleven o'clock an idea occurred to him and by two in the morning he had worked out three definite forms.

The next morning, he called in one of his assistants, explained his third form to him, and told him not to report at the works again until he had made the sketches that would put it in shape to be explained to the management. Two days later the assistant brought in the sketches. The two men discussed them. Changes had to be made. Two more trials were necessary before the sketches were in shape to show to the technical director of the works.

Then the invention went through these steps; a conference with the sales department to determine at what price the device must be sold to be successful; an appropriation to cover the development of the device (working drawings and models); the making of an original set of working drawings; discussion of the drawings by the management and their approval; the making of a model by the model shop; another conference on objections from the sales department to the form of the device; tests of the model for practical work; the correction of the defects shown by the model in practice; the correction of the drawings to correspond to the revised model; the designing of models of the device in different sizes; an appropriation for the manufacturing of the device in lots of 100 for general sale; the drawing up and filing of an application for a patent; the giving of instructions how to build it, from the engineering de