According to a statistical survey of graduate engineers from universities and technical colleges, the total number of engineers in Japan in 1920 was 1, 400, 2.8 times as many as ten years earlier; of these 73% were employed in private industry. Employment in metal, electrical, chemical and engineering industries marked 5-13 times increases in ten years, indicating the rise of heavy and chemical industries during the First World War.
Seventy firms, of which 20 were founded between 1910 and 1920, employed more than 20 engineers, against 20 firms in total in 1910; and 11 firms employed more than 100. Increasing the number of engineers within a firm would naturally lead to the ordering of engineers by age.
Thirty-six large firms hired engineers in specific subjects who had graduated almost every year from 1905 until 1919, suggesting the origin of the “Japanese management” practice of employing freshmen each year and letting them climb up the ladder of positions.
More than 100 firms had several engineers in top management with the title “manager” or “chief engineer”; most of them had graduated during the 1890's, although few of them had seats on the board with their capitalist employers.
Recently established steelmaking or shipbuilding companies had recruited veteran engineers through transfer from related Zaibatsu firms or through head-hunting from public or private concerns.
For the first time in Japanese business history, several firms erected laboratries during the war. These firms were employing young physicists and chemists who had graduated from science faculties of the universities in addition to engineering faculty graduates.

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