ABSTRACT
The modern point of view, with its constituent principles of equal opportunity, self-help, and free bargaining, was given its definitive formulation in the eighteenth century, as a balanced system of Natural Rights; and it has stood over intact since that time, and has served as the unquestioned and immutable ground of public morals and expediency, on which the advocates of enlightened and liberal policies have always been content to rest in their case. Under the new order the first requisite of ordinary productive industry is no longer the workman and his manual skill, but rather the mechanical equipment and the standardized processes in which the mechanical equipment is engaged. Under the new order the going concern in production is the plant or shop, the works, not the individual workman. The plant embodies a standardized industrial process. Since the modern era began, the state of the industrial arts has been undergoing a change of type.
