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Show INTRODUCTIO RESIDENT ROOSEVELT, in his address to the Governor at the White House, prophetically remarked that "The conservation of our national resources is only preliminary to the large question of national efficiency. The whole country at once recognized the importance of conservin our material resources and a large movement has been started whic will be effective in accomplishing this object As yet, however we have but vaguely appreciated the importance of ‘"the large our national efficiency. question of increasin We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste our soil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coa and our iron is in sight. But our larger wastes of human effort which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient, and which Mr. Roosevelt refers to as lack of "national efficiency," are less visible, less tangible, and are but vaguely appreciated ' We can see and feel the waste of material things. Awkward inefficient, or ill-directed movements of men, however, leave nothin visible or tangible behind them Their appreciation calls for a act of memory, an effort of the imagination And for this reason even though our daily loss from this source is greater than from ou waste of material things, the one has stirred us deeply, while th other has moved us but little As yet there has been no public agitation for ‘‘greater nationa efficiency," no meetings have been called to consider how this is t be brought about And still there are signs that the need for greate efficiency is widely felt The search for better, for more competent men, from the president of our great companies down to our household servants, was neve more vigorous than it is now And more than ever before is th demand for competent men in excess of the supply What we are all looking for, however, is the ready-made, competen man; the man whom some one else has trained. It is only whe we fully realize that our duty, as well as our opportunity, lies i systematically cooperating to train and to make this competen man, instead of in hunting for a man whom some one else has trained that we shall be on the road to national efficiency |