many voters the word efficiency has gained a disagreeable connotation from its use in connection with the management of business for private profit. Efficiency, essentially, has nothing to do with profit seeking and is not necessarily a business term. The lone farmer is inefficient if he lacks ability to plan and co-ordinate his work in a way to achieve the greatest result with the least effort. A business corporation is inefficient unless all departments, and the workmen and management in each department, so co-operate as to achieve a maximum result with least effort. A government is likewise inefficient unless its work is so co-ordinated as to achieve a maximum result with least effort. Most governmental work is purely administrative and should be taken out of politics because the currents of political rivalry prevent its being done efficiently.26 Efficiency requires the employment of expert knowledge in connection with legislative," judicial 28 and executive work. Government officials should regard themselves as elected not to represent their class or party but to do business efficiently for the whole people. But the people themselves must first cease to acquiesce in a party rivalry which results in officials being the creatures of egoistic party organizations. The voters must rise above partisanship through grasping a rational conception of efficiency and realizing the necessity of expert knowledge. But this requires education. "Is it fair to ask millions of democrats to have a profound respect for scientific accomplishments whose possession is denied them by the prevailing social and educational organization? It can hardly be claimed that the greater proportion of the millions who are insufficiently educated are not just as capable of being better educated as the thousands to whom science comes to have a real meaning. Society has merely deprived them of the opportunity. . . . The best way to popularize scientific administration, and to enable the democracy to consider highly educated officials as representative, is to popularize the higher education. An expert administration cannot be sufficiently representative until it comes to represent a better educated constituency."29 26 Beard, A Government Employment Policy, Good Government, XXXVI: 15. 27 McCarthy, The Wisconsin Idea, 214-225. 28 Pound, Legislation as a Social Function, Pub. Amer. Social, Soc., VII: 160-161. 29 Croly, Progressive Democracy, 376-377. A CHAPTER XV THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE PROFESSIONAL AND THE BUSINESS ATTITUDES PROFESSION is distinguished from business by the fact that it requires technical knowledge that can be acquired only by extended study by persons who have an aptitude therefor. A vocation is denied professional recognition if it does not require this knowledge and training, or if its members as a class get along without it, though it is necessary for the highest efficiency, as in social work.1 A distinct body of knowledge must be mastered in order to practice successfully a real profession. Wherefore the professional man is apt to be of a more pronounced intellectual disposition and capable of a keener interest in problems for their own sake than the business man, who, lacking the purely intellectual interest, is more apt to be moved by the profit-seeking motive. This distinction does not hold in all cases. There are business men who make business a profession in the sense of finding their main interest in its problems instead of its profits, and there are professional men who lack capacity for a keen interest in problems and are mainly moved by the impulse to make money. But the fact remains that a vocation that requires a good deal of technical knowledge is apt to select the more intellectual type of man. The technical knowledge may be acquired by men of good memory, who have little capacity to apply it, and little of the problem interest; but the distinctly professional man is one who glories in his command of the exact knowledge of his profession as that which guides him unerringly in the solution of problems. All professions have, to be sure, in addition to the purely intellectual interest, other motives: the doctor, his impulse to save life, the lawyer, his impulse to secure for his client legal justice. The intellectual interest is distinct from these other motives. It rests on the possession of exact knowledge. Often there is a pride in this exact knowledge, which is contrary to the intellectual motive. For instance, natural scientists sometimes ridicule the knowledge of the 1 Bogardus, Methods of Training Social Workers, 5. social scientist as inexact, and, for that reason, take no interest in social science and, in their opinions on economic and political problems that face all men, show as entire a lack of intelligence as uneducated men. Pride in the possession of a restricted specialized knowledge limits the intellectual interest of the professional man to his own little field and hampers the exercise of the intellect in other directions. The distinction between the intellectual interest of the professional and the business man must not, therefore, be carried too far. The interest of the former is apt to be very restricted. The professional man enjoys greater advantages than the business man so far as the free use of the intellect is concerned. He has greater freedom, for he requires little capital. His chief assets are his professional education and his own ability, whereas the business man is dependent on financial institutions for loans, and on a variety of business connections. 2 Furthermore, the professional man works largely by himself or has his own distinct problems, even when a member of a large organization, while the business man's function is less distinct and often the records fail to distinguish his performance from that of others. Consequently there is less incentive to creative activity in business than in the professions. In the absence of the independence conferred by technical ability, and of the incentive to creative work that comes from opportunity for distinct performance, employés in business are more apt than professional men to find their main interest in pull, promotion and pay. Here again the distinction is not invariably true for, where independence and distinct performance is possible in business, positions are apt to be won by men who can make wise use of independence and are capable of distinction in performance. But, on the whole, the employé in business is less free and independent and less capable of independent creative work than the professional man. Professional men consider themselves to be distinguished from business men by their greater freedom, by their primary interest in problems and their comparatively disinterested attitude, by their possession of specialized knowledge-which has not until recently been thought necessary for business, and which is not now generally thought necessary, and by a high sense of moral obligation. The high class lawyer does not plead a cause according to the pay he expects nor does a high class physician treat a case according to pay. 2 Gerstenberg, Principles of Business, Chs. VI-X. 3 Carnegie, Empire of Business, 159. 8 While he works |