ection, of
the executive. He is the keystone of the social arch--the binding force
that holds the various parts of the group apart and together. Upon his
decisions may depend the success or the failure of an entire enterprise,
because, tie him with red tape as you will, he still has a margin of
free choice in which he registers his success or failure as an
executive.

The executive is put in office to do the will of a constituency and to
carry out a certain policy. But what is the will of the constituency,
and which one of a half dozen lines of action will most completely and
effectively carry out the policy in question? The executive must find an
answer to those questions, and he must find it hour after hour and day
after day.

Society has striven for ages to devise a successful method of picking
executives, and of keeping a watchful eye on them after they assume the
reins of government. There are three general ways in which the selection
may be made:

1. Through heredity--the leadership descending from one generation to
the next in the line of blood relationship.

This is the method practiced in all countries that have kings,
aristocrats, plutocrats or others who automatically inherit power from
their ancestors.

2. Through self-selection--the leadership being assumed by those who
are the quickest to seize it.

Primitive, disorganized or unorganized societies or associations pick
their leaders in this way. The strongest, the most courageous, the most
cunning, press to the front in an emergency, and their leadership is
accepted as a matter of course by those who are less strong or
courageous or cunning. The leaders of a miscellaneous mob are apt to be
thus self-selected. The leaders of new activities, like the organized
business of the United States and Canada, have been, for the most part,
self-selected. Seeing opportunities for economic advantage, they have
grasped them before their fellows realized what was happening. The great
accumulations of economic power that were made in this way during the
past generation are now being passed from father to son, and the
leadership in American economic life is therefore tending to fall into
an hereditary caste or class. There is still, however, a considerable
margin of self-selection of American economic leadership.

3. Through social selection--the right and duty of leadership being
assigned by the group, after some form of deliberation to a
des