Examples, ranging all the way from accepted and enforceable legal restrictions to the interplay of the most subtle group sentiments, could be multiplied at will to bring out the presence of the social factor in efficiency standards. Were it not that internal business policies, on the one hand, and public policy toward business, on the other, are so frequently vitiated by failure to reckon with the probable reactions which a particular measure will call forth, I should not retard the discussion to emphasize a point so obvious. But though the presence of social factors is obvious, how to measure them is not obvious. General principles that bear on a specific case are hard to locate and difficult to apply. Even the broad lines of social and business policy are not always clear, and the probable trend of future policy is still less clear. Just what are the principles that are being worked put in order to determine the forms and the limitations under which business energy shall be expended, and how do they differ from those followed a generation ago? Take the other side of the efficiency ratio: toward what results are we trying to have business energy directed? Again, what are the instruments with which society is enforcing its purpose? How effective are they, how effective are they likely to become? Finally, what bearing will this social effectiveness or lack of effectiveness have on standards of business efficiency for the generation about to begin its work? Even though we cannot answer these questions to-day, we have, to-day, the task of educating the generation that must answer them. More than this, the education we provide for the generation about to begin its work will determine, in no small measure, the kind of answers the future will give. It is, therefore, of great importance that in our ideals and our policies for educating future business men we should try to anticipate the social environment in which these men will do their work. We are in the habit of speaking of the present as a time of transition--the end of the old and the beginning of the new. In a very real sense every period is a period of transition. Society is always in motion, but that motion at times is accelerated and at other times retarded. Clearly we are living now in a period of acceleration--a period which must be interpreted not so much in terms of where we are, as of whence we came and whither we are going. This means that we cannot hope to prepare an educational chart for the future without understanding the past.