In the early days of factory management, when the problems and conditions were relatively simple, it fell to the lot of all sorts of human folk to manage the various jobs involved. Each used his own peculiar method and, naturally enough, it came into general belief that ability in management was an instinctive knack, that managers were born, not made, that few if any rules could be laid down, and that little could be learned by one from another. Even in the earliest days, a small handful of men called attention to the fact that management measures and forms of organization could be better or worse adapted to their uses; but for generations the suggestion passed unheeded.

As the problems and conditions of factory management grew more complex and exacting, more men came to believe that the art of management was something more than an intuitive and highly personal knack. Before the Great War, a fair nucleus was beginning to study the art from the point of view of the forces involved, and with an eye to causes and effects. And the war experience of manufacturing strange materials, shifting conditions upside down, built up this nucleus into a very fair working minority.