whole
engineering staff, and is left to them as a group for independent and
associated experimentation. But even in such cases the technological
content does not necessarily supply the impulse to solve the problem
or secure a free and voluntary participation in its solution. Those
who are interested in its solution are inspired by its economic value
for them. In all technological laboratories, either where the problem
is broken up and its parts distributed among the employees of the
laboratory, or where it is given to them as a whole for solution, it
is given not as a sequence in the creative purpose of the individuals
who are at work on it, nor is its final solution necessarily
determined by its use and wont in a community. Problems brought to
the laboratory are tainted with the motive of industry which is not
creative, but exploitive.

The tenure of each man employed in production is finally determined
not by any creative interest of his own or of his employer but by
whether in the last analysis, he conforms better than another man to
the exigencies of profits. If profits and creative purpose happen to
be one and the same thing, his place in an industrial establishment
has some bearing on his intrinsic worth. Under such circumstances his
interest in the creative purpose of the establishment would have a
foundation, and he himself could value better than he otherwise would
his own part in the enterprise.

The economic organization of modern society though built on the
common people's productive energy has discounted their _creative
potentiality_. We hold to the theory that men are equal in their
opportunity to capture and own wealth; that their ability in that
respect is proof of their ability to create it; a proof of their
inherent capacity. It is a proof, as a matter of fact, of their
ability to compete in the general scheme of capture; their ability to
exploit wealth successfully. While the prevailing economic _theory_ of
production takes for granted men's creative _potentiality_ there is no
provision in our industrial institution for the common run of men to
_function_ creatively. There is no attempt in the general scheme for
trueing-up or estimating the creative ability of workers. In the
market, where the value of goods is determined, a machine tender has a
better chance than a craftsman. The popular belief is that the ability
of workers has native limitations, that these limitations are absolute
and that the