Page:Gilman human-work 1904.pdf/237

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XI

SPECIALISATION

Human work being an organic process, it must of course specialise. Those who cry out against specialisation and seek to uphold a mythical "all-around man are ignorant of the nature of social functions. The very first condition of organic life is division of labour, and as the organism develops the complexity of that division develops with it. The strength and efficiency of any organism depends not so much on its bulk and weight as on the prompt and perfect co-ordination of its parts.

This is a truism in military organisation, which is an old game with us, but we do not seem to understand it in industrial organisation, which is a new one. In the military body we have long ago learned to consider the whole before the part and the purpose of that whole as a measure of action for each part, but in the economic body we are yet a mob of savages. The ego concept is perforce set aside in military life; in economic life it still rules. In military ethics one never hears that "self-preservation is the first law of nature"; no soldier thinks of justifying rank cowardice and insubordination with the plea that "a man must live!" Neither is there any objection to the widest specialisation, to careful grading of officers, to the

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