The Workers Help Bring Success.
The inventor, the officers, and mayhap the foreman, taken all together, do not and cannot make a successful machine or business without this supplemental work or ideas that come from actual work of all workers.
This new kind of knowledge should not take away a man's courage; on the contrary, it should give him a true sense of value of existing, "going" things. With this knowledge he can confidently and earnestly push a machine that is the product of a good organization. He will know the great value of much experience and practise of each of the many men in the organization. He will neither kill the business by half-hearted indorsement, nor increase the hazard of investment by urging this or that modification. Nor will he advocate this or that machine being added to a line that is already too great.
The invention, the general organization, the proper direction of the business, are essential to success. But without that organization which is only obtained by actual, thoughtful experience of the men who do things, all the knowledge and industry of the leaders are utterly useless.
This knowledge produces a new kind of confidence that has greater faith in the existing and running things than in the claims for something that has not had the development of practice. It is the confidence that knows that the right fundamental ideas and the policy of "sticking to one thing" will accomplish the best results.
This is not a doctrine of optimism that holds there is no inferior machine. The "best" implies the existence of the inferior. In nearly all lines there are many grades from the best to the worst, but the loss of faith in the relative value of a machine is most commonly due to a lack of full knowledge of the other types, and it is this kind of loss of courage, confidence, or whatever it may be, that this chapter is intended to offset.