In Covington's opinion, Gorham was carrying the principles upon which the Consolidated Companies was based beyond all reason. The corporation had passed the experimental stage, and now possessed ample strength to take advantage with safety of its unique position. Gorham was right, he admitted, in his idea that public necessities ought to be reduced in price when once controlled by the Companies. The public approval and general confidence which this established were of distinct value, but there was absolutely no reason for continuing to give the public so large a share of the saving. It was not so much the amount that was saved as the fact that a saving was actually accomplished which served to advertise the Consolidated Companies. Gorham's real motive could be only to strengthen his personal prestige. Several of the other directors shared this conviction with Covington, and he made it his business to discover just where each one stood against the time when this information should serve him in good stead. The executive offices of the Consolidated Companies occupied an entire floor in one of the most spacious buildings on Broadway, yet to a casual visitor they gave little indication of the vast power which centred there. The rooms were substantially furnished, but everything evidenced a restraint equal almost to the conservatism which is so distinguishing a mark of the old-established English houses. This was an expression of Robert Gorham's individuality, and the Companies itself reflected it in its modest exterior appearance as in all other features, emphasizing the one influence which held together and amalgamated into a composite unit the many factors which necessarily formed the integral parts. Gorham's ideas of business management were scientific, and his first step, after absorbing a new concern, was to have the principles of science introduced. He insisted that the workman should be supplemented by close co-operation on the part of the management in laying out his work for him in advance; by showing him how to eliminate unnecessary motions; by teaching him to make every portion of his work, however simple, a scientific performance; by studying his own individuality to the extent of assisting him to correct methods which militated equally against his own highest efficiency and the obtaining of the highest efficiency of the machine he operated; by bringing him to a realization that traditional knowledge of his specialty was a lower grade of skill than that knowledge gained by modern scientific study.