uilding,
there is a girl placing tablets in boxes and bottles. They come to her in
huge bins. One tablet looks very much like another. Upon her faithful,
conscientious and unerring attention to every minute detail of her rather
routine and monotonous work may depend the fate of empires.

In an office on the main floor of this same building sits a man directing
the policy of the entire industry. Upon him rests the responsibility for
the success of the enterprise a year, five years, twenty years ahead. He
gives an order: "Purchase land. Build a factory for the making of carbolic
acid. Equip it with the necessary machinery and apparatus. Purchase in
advance the needed raw materials. Be ready to put the product on the
market by the first of September." The execution of that order involves
minute attention to thousands of details. Yet, if the man who gave it were
to consider many of them and render decision upon them, the business would
rapidly become a ship in a storm with no one at the helm.

The work of the girl in the basement, sorting tablets, may turn out to be
far more important in the world's history than the work of the man in the
front office, managing the business. It is just as important, therefore,
that she should be fitted for her vocation as that he should be fitted for
his.

GENERALS AND DETAIL WORKERS

Fortunately for carrying on the business of the world, there are many
people who love detail, take delight in handling it, find intense
satisfaction in seeing that the few little parts of the great machinery of
life under their care are always in the right place at the right time and
under the right conditions. Since there is such an incalculable mass of
these important trifles to be looked after, it is well that the majority
of people are better detail workers than formulators of policies and
leaders of great movements. Tragedy results when the man with the detail
worker's heart and brain attempts to wear the diadem of authority. He
breaks his back trying to carry burdens no human shoulders are broad
enough to bear. He is so bowed down by them that he sees only his mincing
footsteps and has no conception of the general direction in which he is
going. Nine times out of ten he travels wearily around in a little circle,
which grows smaller and smaller as his over-taxed strength grows less and
less.

When you put a man of larger mental grasp in charge of a wearying round of
monotonous details, you have mingl