The Administrative Staff has not yet attained to a true conception of their great part in industry. I often found that, so far as their relationship to Labour is concerned, they are inclined to regard their general functions as solely to maintain discipline. The preservation of robust discipline is a vital matter. Too often discipline is bolstered up by arbitrary and dictatorial methods, to which means weak men usually have recourse. That, if not productive of immediate friction, certainly sows broadcast the seeds of trouble and unrest. The vital matter, the atmosphere of the shop, is mainly dependent on the conciliatory personalities of the Administrative Staff. What has to be remembered in industry is that despotism is not leadership, and arbitrariness is not good government. “The moral effects of good leadership,” as Professor McDougall truly says in _The Group Mind_, “work throughout a mass of men by subtle processes of suggestion and emotional contagion rather than by a process of purely intellectual appreciation.” This many employers have yet to learn; they regard courtesy on the part of the Administrative Staff in dealing with Labour as cowardice, and consideration as subversive of good discipline. But consideration is the oil which makes shop wheels go round, and there never was more scope for its application in industry than at the present time, especially in such things as interviewing, selecting and taking on, promoting and dismissing men, and dealing with shop complaints. Industry and the Consuming Community