The existing economic order has grown to its present proportions competitively and nationalistically, without any centralized supervisory control (without any board of strategy) just as one of the Canadian cities out upon the plains has grown, or rather sprawled over the prairie--each man building how and when and where he liked, each industry choosing its own location, stores, schools, churches, theatres, squatting at those points that seemed to be the centres of the crowd life. Mines have been opened, factories established, railroads built, electric plants constructed, by some individual or corporation interested in making a profit on the investment, and with little or no relation to the well-being of the community. There has been no recognized intelligent guidance behind the development of the industrial system. In so far as the present economic life was planned, it was planned locally, by the directors of one industry, by the chamber of commerce of some city, by a far-sighted banker or financier who insisted upon thinking in terms of the coming business generation. For the most part the system grew, however, like stalks of corn in a field, each stalk drawing its own nourishment from the soil and making what progress it could along its own path toward the zenith. Another serious drawback in the growth of the present economic system is that much of it was developed as an underground organization. Even had they decided to do so, individual business men have not been free to plan ahead and work out a business policy in the light of day. On the one side were the jealous competitors, watching every move and eager to profit by any bit of information that they could secure with regard to the plans of their rivals. On the other side was the government, with its conspiracy laws and its anti-trust laws, ready to swoop down on the business director who planned too broadly or thought too far into the future. Then, too, there was an ever-growing force in a public opinion that was suspicious of profiteers, no matter what their professions. With competitors on the watch here, and government officials yonder, there was nothing for it but to work in secret, to shadow the new policies in mystery and to get as far as possible without being found out. Far-reaching changes have taken place, of late, in the type of men who have held the reins of control over industry. During its early years the economic machinery was constructed by men who had worked at their trades; men who had begun at the bottom and climbed into a place of authority; men who had a first-hand knowledge of the processes underlying their industries. Latterly, however, with bankers and other professional manipulators in control of economic life, the engineers, with their intimate knowledge of forces and processes have been pushed into the background, and the actual work of direction has been shifted from producers to money makers.