Work, wages and profits

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INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT LIBRARY
WORK, WAGES, AND
PROFITS
SECOND EDITION
EEVISBD AND ENLARGED
BY
H. L. GANTT
NEW YORK
THE ENGINEERING MAGAZINE CO,
1919
Copyright, 1913,
By THE ENGINEEEING MAGAZINE CO.
INTEODUCTION TO SECOND EDITION
The first edition of Mr. Gantt's book appeared in
1910 as a volume of 194 pages, with seven charts,
the graphic illustrations and most of the specific
examples being drawn from results secured in the
textile industries. Since that date a rapid rise has
taken place in public attention to the methods used
and the results secured, and in the active effort (evi­denced
by inquiry and undertaking) to obtain ad­vantages
corresponding to those so substantially
realized in the cases cited.
This interest and inquiry have been the principal
influence inspiring the enlargement of this book, not
only by inclusion of additional instances, but by
more detailed development of some features of the
work, and the summation of the argument into a
comprehensive and entire (even if broadly sketched)
outline of a plan of systematic management, based
on the policies and methods defined by Mr. Gantt.
His experience in the field of labor management
covers a quarter-century of close practical applica­tion.
His special methods, which even yet are but
partially and imperfectly understood by many, have
been identified with his name for at least half this
period. These methods are sometimes incorrectly
supposed to be summed up in the bonus system of
wage payment; but the inducement of increased
earnings is only one factor, and almost the last fac­tor,
in the complete statement of Mr. Gantt's meth-
3
4 INTEODÜCTION TO SECOND EDITION
ods. His whole concept of scientific investigation,
careful standardization, individual instruction, and
interconnected reward to both instructor or super­visor
and workman, must be clearly grasped before
any adequate idea of task work with bonus can be
obtained.
This full concept is set forth in the present vol­ume,
multiplied by ample exhibition of practical re­sults.
The added material is drawn from the me­chanical
industries, from machine-shop, metal-work­ing
and locomotive-building plants. The colored
charts, which have been received with so much in­terest,
are increased in number from six to twelve,
the whole number of illustrations being brought up
to twenty-seven, and the original nine chapters being
enlarged by expansion and supplement to twelve.
The larger portion of the first edition was gath­ered
by compilation of a series of articles published
in The Engineering Magazine from February to
June, 1910, with incorporation of three of Mr.
Gantt's important earlier contributions on the same
subject. To this are now added a new chapter on
"The Task Idea," adapted from Mr. Gantt's paper
before the Tuck School Conference; an enlargement
of the discussion on "Fixing Habits of Industry,''
based upon results observed since the former volume
was issued; a new chapter on "Eesults," inspired by
comment and inquiry addressed to the author dur­ing
the last three years; and a concluding chapter,
condensed from an article on "A Practical Example
of Scientific Management," published in The Engi­neering
Magazine for April, 1911.
It is natural, and indeed inevitable, in the present
active development of the philosophy of efficiency
and the practice of scientific management, that such
revisions should be made. The underlying ideas are
INTEODUCTION TO SECOND EDITION 5
vital; and, like all live things, they are still grow­ing,
and will continue to grow. Growth means ex­pansion,
if not change of form, and this makes final
definition impossible, because definition means limi­tation.
In the following pages, however, Mr. Gantt
gives the fullest exposition ever put forth of his ma­ture
thought and work. He gives to the world here
the latest word (though happily far from the last
word) on his principles and practice. His grasp
of fundamentals is scientific. His association of ef­fects
with their causes is philosophic. In its entirety
the work offers an interpretation of industrial con­ditions
and a promise for betterment that make it
a classic—a classic of optimism—in the literature of
industry.
CHAELES BUXTON GOING.
PEEFACB TO SECOND EDITION
The law of development is evolution. Revolution
is justified only when evolution is impossible.
If the most complete system of scientific manage­ment
which has ever been devised could be installed
in a manufacturing plant over night, it would prob­ably
be impossible to operate that plant at all the
next day, and for weeks, perhaps months, it would
be operated in such an inefficient manner as un­doubtedly
to cause very serious losses.
A system of management especially designed for
economical production is a mechanism which is suc­cessful
only when all parts work in harmony. The
men who form a part' of this mechanism must be
trained individually and collectively.
At the battle of Santiago, individually capable
men, serving good guns, under high-class officers,
made an average of three per cent in their hits, at
an average distance of not over two miles. These
same men, under the same officers, properly trained
to use the best scientific knowledge and methods of
today, would easily score in hits eighty per cent of
the shots at the same range, at the same time firing
five times as rapidly.
To attempt to operate a new system of gun-fire
control from rules and instructions, without train­ing
the men, would result in the loss of even the
three per cent efficiency which existed before the
introduction of the new system.
7
8 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
While I do not believe that, in an ordinary manu­facturing
establishment, a sudden change of manage­ment
would be quite as disastrous as such a change
would have been in the navy, yet it would unques­tionably
be very detrimental to the business, per­haps
for a long time.
The principles of modern industrial organization,
popularly known as "Scientific Management," are
getting to be pretty well understood by those who
have studied the subject thoroughly. Even the meth­ods
of operating the various mechanisms used for
this purpose are becoming more clear to people who
are in the habit of investigating new methods and
ideas. These methods, however, can never be util­ized
properly until the rank and file have been trained
to operate under them. This training necessarily (
takes time; but, if it is properly done, I have yet'
to find anybody more enthusiastic than the workmen
themselves operating under it. They have the same ^
kind of enthusiasm that the gunner in the navy has
acquired since he learned that shooting is no longer
guess-work.
The man who undertakes to introduce scientific
management and pins his faith to rules, and the use
of forms and blanks, without thoroughly compre­hending
the principles upon which it is based, will
fail. Forms and blanks are simply the means to an
end. If the end is not kept clearly in mind, the use
of these forms and blanks is apt to be detrimental
rather than beneficial.
This book is an effort to explain the principles of
"Modern Industrial Organization," and to give some
idea of how to utilize the methods of evolution in
the introduction of a system of management based
on these principles.
PREFACE TO SECOKD EDITION »
A system of management is an asset, and a good
system is a valuable asset.
The cost of acquiring such an asset cannot be
legitimately charged to operating expenses.
H. L. GANTT.
April, 1913.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE APPLICATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC
METHOD TO THE LABOR PROBLEM
Economical Utilization of Labor the Great
Modern Problem for Engineers and Managers—
Limitation of Output by Workers—Limitation
of Workmen's Allowable Earnings by Employ­ers—
How These Tendencies Militate against the
Common Good—Permanently Successful Man­agement
Must Be Beneficial to both Employer
and Employee—The Inefficiency of Ordinary
Management Systems—The Inefficiency of Ordi­nary
Labor—The Possible Betterment Obtaina­ble
through Scientific Study—The Attainable
Output Generally Three Times the Present
Average—Realization of This Large Possible
Productivity Depends on the Manager—His
Guide Is Scientific Investigation—The Three
Parts of the Problem Defined—The Benefits
Secured. 19
CHAPTER II. THE UTILIZATION OF LABOR
The Commercial Axiom that Good Bargains
Benefit both Parties—The Same Principle now
Realized in Industrial Relations—Efiicient
Work Goes with High Wages—Inefficient Plant
Design or Equipment Makes Efficient Labor
Impossible—Common-Sense Methods in Improv­ing
Plant Efficiency—Scientific Study Necessary
to Determine the Efficiency of Operations—In­stances
of Uneconomical Methods—The Ele­ments
of Operation Study—How Operation
Times are Standardized—How the Workman Is
Induced to Reach Standard Times—The Four
11
12 CONTENTS
Conditions 'cessary to Secure Best Results—
Exact Knowledge oï the Best Way of Doing
the Work—Instructing the Workmen how to
Do It—Wages as an Inducement—Loss of
Bonus as a Preventive of Faihire—Manage­ment
and Wages.
CHAPTER III. THE COMPENS. CION OF WORKMEN
The Passing of the Age of Force—The Con­flict
between Employer and Employee—^Trade
Unions; Why They Exist—Collective Bargain­ing
the Inevitable Accompaniment of a Class
Wage Rate—Its Disadvantage to the Employer
—Its Disadvantage to the Progressive Work­man—
Possibility of Offering the Individual
Worker Something Better than the Union—
Ordinary Methods of Wage Payment and Their
Tendencies.
CHAPTER IV. DAY WORK
Day Work Deflued—What Regulates Day
Wages—The Class Wage Rate Destructive to
the Efficienc.v of Labor—Keeping Individlual
Efficiency Records—The Difficulties and the Pos­sibilities—
Practical Methods Outlined—The Re­sults
Secured in Practice—The Suggestion of
a System that can Supplant the Union
CHAPTER V. PIECE WORK
How It Differs from Day Work—How Ordi­nary
Piece Work Involves the Same Evils as
the Day Wage—Why Ordinary Piece Work Pro­duces
Labor Troubles—Unreliability of Ordi­nary
Time Records and Foi'emen's Estimates—•
How the Efficient Worker under the Ordinary
Piece-Rate System Is Penalized—A New and
Better System Proposed—Its Essentials—Ex­pert
Investigation, Standard Methods, Capable
Workers, Proper Instruction, Sufficient Com­pensation—
Why the Ordinary Foreman can not
Do the Work of the Expert—Ordinary Shop
Difficulties in Introducing the System—How
They may Be Overcome—Training of Work­men—
Compensation of Workmen and of Ti-ain-
CONTENTS 13
ers—Keeping Good Faith with the Men—The
Value of the Efficient Man to His Employer—
A Modern Counterpart of the Apprentice Sys­tem
77
CHAPTEE VI. TASK WORK WITH A BONUS
A Review of the Wage Conditions That Lead
to Labor Unions and Labor Conflicts—A Survey
of What Has Been Accomplished in Reward­ing
Efficiency and Promoting Labor Peace—
The History of the Bonus System—Its Early
Results—How It Succeeded at the Bethlehem
Steel Works—How Its Abandonment There
Brought Back Labor Troubles—A Recapitula­tion
of the Elements of the Successful System. 103
CHAPTEB VII. THE TASK IDEA
Fundamental Principle Underlying Task
Work with a Bonus—Its Essential Difference
from the "Drive" Method—The Task Idea Sug­gested
by Proved Experience in Training Chil­dren—
The Inspiration of Working for an Ob­ject—
Task and Bonus in Accord with Human
Nature—Task and Bonus Therefore a Proper
Foundation for Successful Management—The
Problem Is to Set the Proper Task—Obstacles
Discovered in Practical Experience—Schedules
as Tasks—Scheduling Miscellaneous Work—In­dividual
Efficiency Rapidly Raised by Simple
Schedules—Practical Introduction of the Sched­uling
System—Preparation for Task Setting—
What Steps It Is Necessary to Take—How Hard
the Task Should Be—Performing the Tasks—
Obligations of the Management—Task Work in
a Machine Shop—Actual Experience in a Bleach-,
ery—Planning and Task Setting Often Increase
Output Threefold—Maintaining Proper Condi­tions
121
CHAPTEE VIII. TRAINING WOEKMEN IN HABITS OF
INDUSTRY AND CO-OPERATION
Habits of Industry More Valuable than Knowl­edge
or Skill—How These Habits Are Culti­vated
by the Bonus System—Its Practical Ap­plications
Explained in Detail—How Habits of
Work Are Practically Cultivated—How Quality
14 CONTENTS
as Well as Quantity of Output Improves—^The
Setting of Tasks—The Standardization of Work
—Obstacles to the Introduction of the System—
Helps to Its Stability after It Has Been Intro­duced—
The Co-operation of the Men Secured
—The Reasons Why Work Is Better as Well as
Larger—Method of Introducing the System into
a New Plant 147
CHAPTER IX. FIXING HABITS OF INDUSTRY
Records of Specific Cases Since 1905—^The
Task and Bonus System in a Cotton Mill—Indi­vidual
Records of the Weavers Exhibited on a
Colored Chart—The Chart Explained and Dis­cussed—
Experience in a Weave Shed Exhibiting
Great Success—Colored Chart Showing the
Bonus System Applied to Winding Bobbins—
Discussion—Colored Chart Showing Conditions
in the Same Department Three Years Later—
Colored Chart Showing Task and Bonus System
Applied to Spoolers—Progress of Efficiency
Pointed Out—Chart Showing Task and Bonus
System with Inspectors—Chart Showing Actual
Results on Wages, Output, and Unit Costs in
Folding-Room—How the Results Were Main­tained
for Three Years Continuously—Colored
Chart Showing Results in a Worsted Mill—Col­ored
Chart Showing Increase in Efliciency of
Weavers—Colored Chart Showing Maintenance
of Result for Several Years—How the Spirit
of Co-operation Is Established 175
CHAPTER X. RESULTS
Diagram Showing Comparison Between Old
Conditions and New—Improvement in Ratios of
Output, Wage Costs, and Wage Rate—Better­ment
of Quality as Well as Quantity of Output
—Reorganization Effected in a Packing-Box Fac­tory—
Chart Showing Results Secured with
Automatic Screw Machines—Chart Showing
Betterment in Miscellaneous Machine Work—
Similarity of Effects in All Cases—Effect on
Reduction of Overhead Expense—^Treatment of
Mistakes in Task Setting—Universality of the
Principles Proved by Charts—The Essentials of
the Methods Employed—Favorable Physical and
Mental Effects Observed Among Bonus Workers 207
CONTENTS 15
CHAPTER XL PRICES AND PROFITS
The Trust Movement of 1890—Effects of Con­solidation
on Economy of Operation—Effects of
Union Labor on Increase of Production Cost—
Two Ways of Increasing Profits: Increasing
Selling Price or Decreasing Production Cost—•
The Vicious Cycle of Increased Prices—Horizon­tal
Rise of Wages Not a Cure but a Transient
Expedient—^Necessity of Adjusting Prices to
Value—The Economic Law That Permanent
Large Profits Can Be Secured Only by BflBcient
Operation—American Reliance on Huge Na­tional
Resources Most Unsafe—Increased Ef­ficiency
a Question of National Importance—
Scientific Methods Must Be Applied to Manufac­turing
Problems—Difficulties Inherent in the
Factory System—How Task and Bonus Restores
the Advantages of the Older Order—The Ele­ments
of Manufacturing Cost—Profits Can Be
Greatly Enlarged Only by Increasing Efficiency
of Operation—The System of Management Ad­vocated
Insures Efficient Control—The Cost Is
Small 227
CHAPTEB XII. A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE
Origin of the Task and Bonus System—Ele­ments
of the System—The Limitation of Bonus
—Making Out Instruction Cards—How Task
Times and Work Methods Are Determined^Ad-vantages
of Bonus over Piece Rates—Application
of Instruction Cards to a Machine Shop—Illus­trations
of Typical Cards—The Man Record—
Daily Balance of Work—A Foundry Schedule
and Balance—Illustration of Balance Sheet—
The Daily Balance as a Permanent Record—A
Machine-Shop Balance and Schedule—Illustra­tion—
Value of Balance Not Dependent upon
Method of Compensation—Cost of Keeping Bal­ances—
Illustrations of Time Cards—Time Rec­ords—
Cost Determinations—Cost of Time-Keep-ing
System—Determining Progress of Produc­tion—
Difficulties of Getting a Daily Balance—
Values of the Balance when Obtained—The
Schedule System—Routine and Expert Work—
General Principles and Details 253
TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Man Record Sheet 68
Weavers' Achievement of Task 182
Fixation of Habits of Industry 182
Disappearance of the Slack Monday Habit 186
Maintenance of Conditions for Three Years 189
Disappearance of Slack Saturday Habit 190
Betterment of Output by Bonus to Foremen 190
Twelve Months' Improvement under Task and Bonus
System, Girls Working in a Folding Room 192
Bonus Record of Girls in a Worsted Mill 194
Same Room Later, Showing Progress of Betterment 194
Results of Too Great Haste in Putting Workers on
Bonus 196
Errors of Hasty Start Corrected by Perseverance 200
Very Recent Record Showing Success of Task and
Bonus in Spite of Hostility of Workers 204
Improvement of Ratios of Production, Wage-Cost,
and Earnings by Task and Bonus Methods in
Pillow-Case Factory 208
Improvement of Output, Wage Earnings, and Pro­duction
Cost of Small Automatic Machines 213
Improvement of Output, Wage Earnings, and Pro­duction
Cost of Large Automatic Machines 214
Improvement of Output, Wage Earnings, and Pro­duction
Cost in Miscellaneous Machine Work 217
Instruction Card for Turning a Crank Shaft 264
Instruction Card, Planing Locomotive Frames 265
Instruction Card, Drilling Cylinder Cover, (Front). 267
Instruction Card, Drilling Cylinder Cover, (Back).. 267
Graphical Balance for Foundry Records 273
Graphical Record, Building 15 Locomotives 276
Graphical Record, Showing Effect of Deficient
Frame-Drilling Capacity 277
Time Card for a Machine Shop 282
Time Card Used in a Bleaohery 283
Rack for Time Cards 284
16
THE APPLICATION OF SOIENTIFIC
METHODS TO THE LABOE
PEOBLEM
WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
CHAPTER I
THE APPLICATION^ OP SCIENTIFIC METH-ODS
TO THE LABOR PEOBLEM
' I ''HE greatest problem before engineers
-*• and managers today is the economical
utilization of labor. The limiting of output
by the workman, and the limiting by the em­ployer
of the amount a workman is allowed
to earn, are both factors which militate
against that harmonious co-operation of em­ployer
and employee which is essential to
their highest common good.
Scientific investigation is rapidly putting
at our disposal vast amounts of knowledge
concerning materials and forces, which it is
the business of the engineer to utilize for the
benefit of the community. Well-designed
plants and efficient labor-saving devices, to
be seen on every hand, bear testimony that
19
20 WOBK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
he is doing at least a portion of his work
well. When, however, it comes to the opera­tion
of these plants and the utilization of
these labor-saving devices, the lack of co­operation
between employer and employee,
and the inefficient utilization of labor, very
much impair their efficiency.
The increase of this efficiency is essen­tially
the problem of the manager, and the
amount to which it can be increased by
proper study is, in most cases, so great as to
be almost incredible.
In considering the subject of management
we must recognize the fact that in this coun­try,
so long as a man conforms to the laws
of the State, he has a right to govern his
own conduct, and to act in such a manner as
his interests seem to dictate. Grranting this,
it follows that any scheme of management to
be permanently successful must be beneficial
alike to employer and employee, and neither
labor unions that regard their interests as
essentially antagonistic to that of employers,
nor employers' associations whose only ef­fort
is to oppose force with force, can ever
eifect a permanent solution of the problem
of the proper relations between employers
and employees.
SCIENTIFIC METHODS FOK THE LABOR PROBLEM 31
Boards of arbitration are temporary ex­pedients,
and the results of tlieir work are
seldom better than a sort of Missouri com­promise,
to be fought out later; for although
they be composed of men of the highest in­telligence,
and of the greatest integrity, the
conditions under which they are organized
and the means at their disposal never enable
them to get more than a superficial knowl­edge
of the subject. The information such
a board gets is all in the form of testimony,
which, although it may be honestly given, can
never produce a complete understanding of
the subject; for, as a rule, neither employer
nor employee knows exactly in detail the best
way of doing a piece of work, and, as far as
my own experience goes, they never Jcnoiv ex­actly
hotv long it should take a good man
fitted for the work, and provided tvith proper
implements. Before intelligent action can be
taken in any case these facts must be known.
In order to get a general idea of the con­ditions
that exist in the mass of our manu­facturing
industries it is necessary to review
briefly the manner of their development.
The expert mechanic, who, with a business
growing to larger proportions than he could
take care of, hired a few men to help him,
23 WORK, AVAGES, AND PROFITS
and directed them all by his personal ex­ample
and skill, first gave place to the small
factory, which he could run on the same lines.
Today, however, even the smaller fac­tories
have grown beyond the point where
they can be directed or controlled by one
man, and methods which were successful on
the smaller scale fail now to apply on the
larger. The factory is divided into depart­ments,
each directed by a foreman, who, in
many cases, has had no training in manage­ment,
and often has no capacity for it. He
is invariably overworked if he attempts to
do his duty, and the manager seldom has
time to inquire into his troubles, but fre­quently
tries to remedy matters by appoint­ing
another foreman, often making matters
worse.
Again, if expenses are too great, and it
seems impossible to meet competition, there
is seldom any serious effort made to find out
why expenses are too high, but it is assumed
that the way out of the difficulty is to reduce
wages. It never appears to occur to a man­ager
that perhaps the cause of the excessive
expense may not lie with the workman, but
with the management. Managers rarely seem
to suspect that, if the workmen were more
SCIENTIFIC METHODS FOR THE LABOR PROBLEM 23
intelligently directed, the output per man
might be largely increased without a corre­sponding
increase in expense.
Those who have given even superficial
study to the subject are beginning to realize
the enormous gain that can be made in the
efficiency of workmen, if they are properly
directed and provided with proper appli­ances.
Few, however, have realized another
fact of equal importance, namely, that to
maintain permanently this increase of effi­ciency,
the workman must be allowed a por­tion
of the benefit derived from it.
To obtain this high degree of efficiency
successfully, however, the same careful scien­tific
analysis and investigation must be ap­plied
to every labor detail as the chemist or
biologist applies to his work. Wherever this
has been done, it has been found possible to
reduce expenses, and, at the same time, to
increase wages, producing a condition satis­factory
to both employer and employee.
The great difficulty in instituting this
method of dealing with labor questions is
that usually neither employer nor employee
has sufficient knowledge of the scientific
method to realize either the amount of detail
work necessary, or the extent of the benefits
2 4 •\VOEK, WAGES, AXD PROFITS
to be derived from it. In general, their in­clination
is to adhere to the methods with
which they are familiar, and to distrust all
others, even though their methods have failed
to bring them appreciably nearer the solu­tion
of their problems, and the newer
methods have produced results far more sat­isfactory
than they even hoped for. A scien­tific
investigation into the details of a condi­tion
that has grown up unassisted by science
has never yet failed to show that economies
and improvements are feasible that benefit
both parties to an extent unsuspected by
either.
The scientific laboratory for the study of
materials and forces, originally considered
as belonging only to educational institutions,
has recently become a recogTiized necessity
in all our large industries, and to it princi­pally
the great advance of recent years has
been due. As yet, however, in but few cases
has any definite attempt been made to study
in a scientific manner the most efficient way
of utilizing the human labor. Of how much
work of various kinds the ordinary man has
done, we have many records; but of how
much a man specially suited to any class of
work can do, we have almost no knowledge.
SCIENTIFIC METHODS FOR THE LABOR PROBLEM 25
Enough study has been spent on the subject,
however, to determine that men specially
suited to any particular kind of labor, if sup­plied
with proper implements and intelli­gently
directed, can do on the average at
least three times as much as the average
workman does, if the limiting factor is physi­cal
exertion; and, if assured sufficient com­pensation,
the average workman will do this
increased task, day after day.
The ratio of what can be done to what is
done is even greater than three to one in
work requiring skill and planning. Well
thought out plans alone, if accompanied by
complete instructions for doing work, often
produce an increase of more than 100 per
cent, over what is usually done. This is par­ticularly
true in complicated work, which
should be planned most carefully, but which
is often not planned at all. It is usually left
to the judgment of a busy foreman, whose
first knowledge of what is to be done reaches
him with the order to do it. In such a case,
it is the exception when the work does not
cost in wages several times what it should,
and this with no fault of the foreman or
workman.
These facts have been established in num-
36 WORK, WAGES, AND PHOFITS
erous cases of ordinary labor, in doing ma­chine-
shop work, in building engines, and in
the erection of structures of yarious kinds.
Similar possibilities haye been indicated
whereyer the slightest effort has been made
to study or to plan, showing that in many in­stances
a condition of affairs exists which is
not only wasteful to the owners, but discour­aging
and unjust to the workmen, most of
whom would be willing to do more work to
earn increased pay if only the opportunity
to do so were offered, and they were gTiaran-teed
that they would not ultimately lose by
doing so.
Mr. E. F. Du Brul, formerly the Commis­sioner
of the National Metal Trades Asso­ciation,
an organization of employers formed
to protect themselyes from the unjust de­mands
of the labor unions, stated some time
ago that a large majority of strikes were
produced by mismanagement. Mr. Du Brul
has perhaps had more general experience
with striking employees than any other man
in this country, and his conclusion is that the
best insurance against strikes is good man­agement.
He, therefore, strongly adyises
managers to study the subject. The neces­sity
for this adyice will become eyident when
SCIENTIFIC MKTIIODS FOK THE LABOR PROBLEM 27
we realize that hardly any two managers, un­less
they have been trained under the same
influence, agree as to the proper way of deal­ing
with any of the intricate questions that
are constantly arising between employer and
employee; much less will they agree on any
general principles of management.
There have been in the past and are today
great managers. Are there not some general
principles by which they either consciously
or unconsciously are governed? In other
words, are there not some general principles,
applicable, at least to a large number of
cases, according to which substantial equity
can be insured between employer and em­ployee,
and a higher degree of efficiency re­alized
from their harmonious co-operation?
The only successful method of determin­ing
general laws has been that of scientific
investigation, and, in the study of questions
involving human labor, enough has been done
to show that the same method is applicable
to at least a large number of individual cases,
and there is good reason to believe that it is
universally applicable.
Labor unions demanding all they can get,
and employers' associations organized sim­ply
to oppose the demands of the unions, can
2 8 •WORK, AVAGES, AND PROFITS
never evolve a satisfactory system of manage­ment
; for, altliough each, in its way, may be
(and undoubtedly ia) often beneficial to its
members, both are formed with the idea of
using force only, which can never be a substi­tute
for knowledge.
Although a board of arbitration may be
useful in averting a crisis, the decision of
such a board founded on such facts as are
available should be professedly only tempo­rary
in character, to be revised later accord­ing
to the results of a scientific investigation
of the matter in dispute, to be undertaken
at the earliest possible date.
This problem consists of three parts:
First.—To find out the proper day's task
for a man suited to the work.
Second.—To find out the compensation
needed to induce such men to do a full day's
work.
Third.—To plan so that the workman may
work continuously and efficiently.
The problem is difficult, for a man suited
to the work must be found and induced to
work at his full capacity. The details of the
work must be arranged so that he can work
most efficiently, and the time to do each de­tail
must be carefully studied with a stop
SCIENTIFIC METHODS FOR THE LABOR rROBLEM 29
watch. From such detail observations it is
possible to determine what a good man can
do, day after day, and there is but little diffi­culty
in finding out what men have to be paid
to make them do all they can; for, although
men prefer, as a rule, to sell their time, and
themselves determine the amount of work
they will do in that time, a large proportion
of them are willing to do any reasonable
amount of work the employer may specify in
that time, provided only they are shown how
it can be done, trained to do it, and guaran­teed
substantial additional amounts of money
for doing it. The additional amount needed
to make men do as much as they can depends
upon how hard or disagreeable the work is,
and varies from 20 to 100 per cent, of what
they can earn when working by the day, ac­cording
to their own methods and at their
preferred speed.
The cost of these initial investigations is
necessarily large, for they can be made only
by capable men who have had the special
training necessary, and hence the expense
must be borne by the employer; but the re­turns,
when the results of these investiga­tions
begin to be applied, are so great as to
pay in a short time for the investigations, to
30 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
allow a substantial increase of wages to the
employee, and to leave a good margin of
profit to the employer.
The benefits which have been derived from
such investigations are:
An increase of output.
A decrease in cost of product.
Better workmen attracted by higher
wages.
Improvement of quality of product due to
better workmen and more careful super­vision.
These results are well worth striving for,
and the fact that they have been obtained by
the application of the scientific method to
the ordinary problems indicates strongly
that progress is to be made in such matters
by the scientific method, which has been re­sponsible
for other kinds of progress in the
past.
^
EFFICIENT UTILIZATION OF LABOR I
CHAPTER II
EFFICIEISTT UTILIZATION OF LABOE
T T has become an axiom in the commercial
-^ world that in the long run those transac­tions
most promote prosperity which are ad­vantageous
alike to buyer and seller. It is
coming to be realized in the industrial world
that the same thing is true regarding the ar­rangements
between employers and em­ployees,
and that no arrangement is perma­nent
that is not regarded by both as being
beneficial. In other words, the only healthyi,
industrial condition is that in which the em­ployer
has the best men obtainable for his
work, and the workman feels that his labor
is being sold at the highest market price.
The employer who insists on more service
than he pays for, and the employee who de­mands
excessive wages for his work, both
lose in the long run. The former worries
continually about how to manage dissatis­fied
workmen, who are continually on the
verge of a strike, and in dull times the lat­ter
lives in constant dread that his employer
33
3é WOKK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
may no longer be able to continue business,
and he may be out of work. In other words,
unless efficient work goes with high wages,
the result is apt to be disastrous to both em­ployer
and employee, and if we would have
satisfactory workmen we must learn how
to make their liabor efficient, for it is to effi­cient
labor only that high wages can be uni­formly
paid.
Again, if a plant is badly laid out, if it
contains inferior or antiquated machinery,
or if the management' is inefficient, it may be
impossible for the best workman to do an
amount of work really entitling him to good
wages. Any one of these causes and others
may explain why a plant, whose name for
years has been a synonym for prosperity,
has gradually become less prosperous, until
finally it scarcely holds its own by decreas­ing
the wages of its employees. The final
stage of such a plant is to close down in­definitely,
and to remain for years a monu­ment
to the short-sighted policy of its own­ers
and the misfortune of its employees.
The time to make provision against such
a fate is not when sharp competition begins
to show the need of it, but when prosperous
times produce a large surplus of earnings.
EFFICIENT UTILIZATION OF LABOR 35
Out of such earnings ample provision should
be made to take full advantage of all im­provements
in apparatus or management
that are available.
Improving a plant does not necessarily
mean enlarging it, but equipping it with the
best and most efficient apparatus scientific
investigation can suggest and ingenuity can
devise.
Improving the system of management
means the elimination of elements of chance
or accident, and the accomplishment of all
the ends desired in accordance with knowl­edge
derived from a scientific investigation
of everything down to the smallest detail of
labor, for all misdirected effort is simply
loss, and must be borne either by the em­ployer
or employee.
In a proper system of management prac­tically
all loss of this character is eliminated,
and the saving effected by this alone will
usually pay all the expenses of the system
and leave a handsome profit.
Wherever any attempt is made to do work
economically the compensation of the work­man
is based more or less accurately on the
efficiency of his labor. Very fair success in
doing this has been accomplished in day
36 WORK;, WAGES, AND PROFITS
work by keeping an exact record of the work
done each day by every man, and by fixing
his compensation accordingly. This method,
however, falls very far short of securing the
highest efficiency, for very few workmen
know the best way of doing a piece of work,
and almost none have the time or ability to
investigate different methods and select the
best. It often happens then that a man work­ing
as hard as he can falls far short of what
can be done on account of employing in­ferior
methods, inferior tools, or both.
We can never be certain that we have de­vised
the best and most efficient method of
doing any piece of work until we have sub­jected
our methods to the criticism of a com­plete
scientific investigation. Many people
who have been accustomed to seeing an oper­ation
performed in a certain way, or to per­forming
it in that way for a number of years,
imagine they know all about it, and resent
the intimation that there may be some better
way of doing it. Anybody, however, who
carefully analyzes the sources of his
methods will find that the mass of them are
either inherited, so to speak, from his prede­cessor,
or copied from his contemporaries.
ITe will find that he knows but little of their
EFFICIENT UTILIZATION OF LABOR 37
real origin, and consequently has no ground
on which to base an opinion of their effi­ciency.
Even such a simple operation as shoveling
is done very uneconomically in many places.
I have seen the same shovel used for coal,
ashes, and shavings, and this when coke forks
were available for the shavings. The fore­man
had apparently given the subject no
study, and was content if the men were at
work. The idea of working efficiently had
never occurred to him. This is, of course,
an extreme case, but it is a real one, and all
degrees of efficiency exist between this and
the case where each workman is provided
with the proper implement and given a spe­cific
task, for the accomplishment of which
he is awarded extra compensation.
The knowledge needed to set a task, even
in such a simple ease as shoveling, is much
greater than is at first realized, for hardly
any two substances can be treated exactly
alike, and the same substance is often much
harder to shovel from the top of a pile than
from the bottom, which rests on a smooth,
hard surface. In studying shoveling the first
thing to be determined is the size of shovel,
which must be gauged to hold the weight
38 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
which it is most economical to handle. The
second step is to find how long it takes to fill
the shovel. For sand, fine coal, ashes, etc.,
it makes no difference in loading the shovel
whether the material is taken from the top
or the bottom of the pile; but in egg coal,
broken stone, or lump ore, the difference is
very great; for, while it is quite easy to get
a full shovel from the bottom of the pile
which rests on a smooth, hard surface, it is,
in some such cases, practically impossible to
fill a shovel from the top of the pile without
actually raking the material onto the shovel.
Again, the distance or height to which the
material is thrown is a factor in all cases,
not only because the higher or longer throw
takes slightly more time, but because it takes
more energy.
This analysis shows that each such opera­tion
is composed of a number of elements,
which may be studied separately. Having
determined each element, they may be com­bined
in a number of ways to show the time
needed to fill and empty a shovel, with any
material, under a variety of conditions.
Knowing the time needed for an operation,
we can add to it the percentage of time
needed for rest, etc., which has been deter-
EFFICIENT UTILIZATION OP LABOR 39
mined by a long series of tests, and calculate
just how many shovelfulls a good man can
average per minute without over-exerting
himself. Having determined thus the amount
of work that a man can do, we can usually
get it done if we offer the proper wages for
doing it, and furnish an instructor who will
teach the workman how to do it.
Having determined the best method and
taught it to a capable workman, to whom
good wages are paid for its successful opera­tion,
would seem to be enough to assure that
the work should be done that way perma­nently.
Such, however, is not the fact, for
while these conditions will usually produce
the desired result, they will not always main­tain
it, but must be suioplemented by another
condition, namely, no increase in wages over
day rate on the part of the ivorkman unless
a certain degree of efficiency is maintained.
The importance of maintaining a definite
degree of efficiency is readily understood
when we consider that a properly equipped
plant has only its proper complement of each
kind of machine, and if the output of any
one falls below a certain amount the output
of the whole plant is diminished in propor­tion
and the profits fall off in a much greater
40 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
ratio. This fact does not appeal to the work­man
who has made good wages for several
days and concludes to take it easy for a while,
unless he also feels the loss his easy going
causes his employer.
In order to get the best results these four
conditions are necessary:
First—Complete and exact knowledge of
the best way of doing the work, proper ap­pliances
and materials. This is obtainable
only as the result of a complete scientific
investigation of the problem.
Second—An instructor competent and will­ing
to teach the workman how to make use
of this information.
Third—^Wages for efficient work high
enough to make a competent man feel that
they are worth striving for.
Fourth—No increase of wages over day
rate unless a certain degree of efficiency is
maintained.
When these four conditions for efficient
work are appreciated their truth seems al­most
axiomatic. They are worthy of a very
careful consideration.
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIOK.
The first condition is an investigation of
how to do the work and how long it should
EFFICIENT UTILIZATION' OF LABOR 41
take. The fact that any operation, no
matter how complicated, can be resolved
into a series of simple operations, is
the key to the solution of many prob­lems.
Study leads us to the conclusion that
complicated operations are always composed
of a number of simple operations, and that
the number of elementary operations is often
smaller than the number of complicated op­erations
of which they form the parts. The
natural method, then, of studying a complex
operation is to study its component element­ary
operations. Such an investigation di­vides
itself into three parts, as follows: An
analysis of the operation into its elements;
a study of these elements separately; a syn­thesis,
or putting together the results of our
study.
This is recognized at once as simply the
ordinary scientific method of procedure when
it is desired to make any kind of an investi­gation,
and it is well known that until this
method was adopted science made practical­ly
no progress. The ordinary man, whether
mechanic or laborer, if left to himself seldom
performs any operation in the manner most
economical either of time or labor, and it has
been conclusively proven that even on ordi-
43 "WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
nary day work a decided advantage can be
gained by giving men instructions as to bow
to perform the work they are set to do. It
is perfectly well known that nearly every
operation can be, and in actual work is, per­formed
in a number of different ways, and
it is self-evident that all of these ways are
not equally efficient. As a rule, some of the
methods employed are so obviously inefficient
that they may be discarded at once, but it is
often a problem of considerable difficulty to
find out the very best method.
To analyze every job and make out instruc­tions
as to how to perform each of the ele­mentary
operations requires a great deal of
knowledge, much of which is very difficult to
acquire, but the results obtained by this
method are so great that the expenditure to
acquire the knowledge is comparatively in­significant.
INSTRUCTIONS.
As a result of our scientific investigation,
we find in general that it is possible to do
about three times as much as is being done;
the next problem is how to get it done. No
matter how thoroughly convinced we may be
of the proper method of doing a piece of work
EFFICIENT UTILIZATION OF LABOR 43
and of the time it should take, we cannot
make a man do it unless he is convinced that
in the long run it will be to his advantage.
In other words, we must go about the work
in such a manner that the workman will feel
that the compensation offered will be perma­nent.
When we have established this condition
of affairs, we are ready to start a workman
on the task, which, when properly set accord­ing
to our investigation, can be done only by
a skilled workman working at his best normal
speed. The average workman will seldom
be able, at first, to do more than two-thirds
of the task, and, as a rule, not more than one
out of five will be able to perform the task
at first. By constant effort, however, the
best workmen soon become efficient, and
even the slower ones often learn to perform
tasks which for months seemed entirely be­yond
them. If our people have confidence
in us and are willing to do as we ask, the
problem of getting our task work started is
easy. This, however, is frequently not the
ease, and a long course of training is neces­sary
before we can teach even one workman
to perform his task regularly, for workmen
are very reluctant to go through a course of
44 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
training to get a reward, especially when
they fear that the high price will be cut when
they can earn it easily.
BXTYING LABOB.
Buying labor is one of the most important
operations in modern manufacturing, yet it
is one that is given the least amount of study.
Most shops have expert financiers, expert
designers, expert salesmen, and expert pur­chasing
agents for everything except labor.
The buying of labor is usually left to people
whose special work is something else, with
the result that it is usually done in a manner
that is very unsatisfactory to buyer and
seller. It is admitted to be the hardest prob­lem
we have to face in manufacturing to-day,
and yet it is only considered when the man­ager
"has time," or has " t o take time," on
account of "labor trouble." The time to
study this subject is not when labor trouble
is brewing, but when employer and employee
have confidence in each other.
Men, as a whole (not mechanics only), pre­fer
to sell their time rather than their labor,
and to perform in that time the amount of
labor they consider proper for the pay re­ceived.
In other words, they prefer to work
EFFICIENT UTILIZATION OF LABOR 45
by the day and be themselves the judges of
the amount of work they shall do in that day,
thus fixing absolutely the price of labor with­out
regard to the wishes of the employer who
pays the bill. While men prefer as a rule to
sell their time, and themselves determine the
amount of work they will do in that time, a
very large number of them are willing to do
any reasonable amount of work the employ­er
may specify in that time, provided only
they are shown how it can be done, and paid
substantial additional amounts of money for
doing it. The additional amount needed to
make men do as much work as they can de­pends
upon how hard or disagreeable the
work is and varies (as previously stated)
from 20 to 100 per cent, of their day rate.
If the work is light and the workman is
not physically tired at the end of the day he
will follow instructions and do all the work
called for if he can earn from 20 to 30 per
cent, in addition to his usual day's wages.
If the work is severe and he is physically
tired at the end of the day he requires from
40 to 60 per cent, additional to make him do
his work. If in addition to being physically
tired he has been obliged to work under dis­agreeable
conditions or in intense heat, he
4fi WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
may require 70 per cent, or even 100 per cent,
additional. These facts are derived from ex­perience
and give us a key to the intelligent
purchase of labor. If we wish to buy the
amount of labor needed to accomplish a cer­tain
task, we must find out exactly, and in
detail, the best method of doing the work,
and then how many hours' labor will be
needed by a man suited to the task working
at his best normal rate. This is simply get­ting
up a set of specifications for the labor
we wish to buy, and is directly comparable
to a set of specifications for a machine or a
machine tool. The man who buys the latter
without specifications is often disappointed
even though the manufacturer may have
tried earnestly to anticipate his wishes; and
the man who buys the former under the same
conditions has in the past almost universally
found that a revision of his contract price
was necessary in a short time. The relative
importance of buying labor and machinery
according to the best knowledge we can get,
and the best specifications we can devise, is
best illustrated by the fact that while the
purchase price of a machine may be changed
whenever a new one is bought, that of the
EFFICIENT UTILIZATION OF LABOR 47
labor needed to do a piece of work should be
permanent when it is once fixed.
As was said before, few men can work up
to these specifications at first, if they are
properly drawn, but many men will try if
they are properly instructed and assured of
the ultimate permanent reward. Most men
will not sacrifice their present wages to earn
a higher reward in the future, and even if
they were willing few men could aiford to.
Therefore^ while they are learning to per­form
the task, they must be able to earn their
usual daily wages, and the reward for the
accomplishment of the task must come in the
form of a bonus above their daily wage.
Increase in efficiency makes the payment
of high wages possible, and it may be added
that without efficient labor, high wages can­not
be paid indefinitely, for every wasteful
operation, every mistake, every useless move
has to be paid for by somebody, and in the
long run the ivorhman has to hear his share.
Good management, in which the number of
mistakes is reduced to a minimum, and use­less,
or wasteful operations are eliminated, is
so different from poor management, in which
no systematic attempt is made to do away
with these troubles, that a man who has al-
48 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
ways worked under the latter finds it ex­tremely
difficult to form a conception of the
former. The best type of management is
that in which all the available knowledge is
utilized to plan all work, and when the work
is done strictly in accordance with the plans
made. The best mechanical equipment of
a plant that money can buy avails but little
if labor is not properly utilized. On the
other hand, the efficient utilization of labor
will often overcome the handicap of a very
poor equipment, and an engineer can have
no greater asset than the ability to handle
labor efficiently.
The subject of wages is then inextricably
bound up with that of management. Poor
management usually means poor wages.
Good management means good wages, for
the high efficiency demanded by good man­agement
can only be maintained by such
wages as will attract good men and induce
them to work at their highest efficiency.
The manager who boasts of the low wages
he is paying for his work would generally
find, if he had a reliable cost system, that his
costs were greater than those of his compet­itor
who paid better wages.
THE COMPENSATION OF WORKMEN
CHAPTER III
THE COMPENSATION OP WORKMEN
"IXT'E all like to feel that we are passing
away from the age of violence, and
approaching an age when justice and equity
will have more influence in the world than
brute force. If we rely too much upon the
progress already made, however, we are
bound to get into trouble. Kipling sounded
a world note in his lines:
"An' what 'e thought 'e might require,
'E went and took, the same as me."
As far then, as acquiring property was
concerned, he put the ancient Greek and the
modern Briton in the same class. The Jap­anese-
Russian war was caused by the fact
that each of two powerful nations wanted
the property of a third weak one. Neither
had any right to it, but the fact that each
wanted it was enough to set aside all ques­tions
of right. Recently the seizure of the
provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina by
Austria was another example of an act done
51
53 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
because the aggressor had the power to do it.
The present alarm in Great Britain over
Germany's armaments is not due to the fact
that England thinks there is any real cause
for a war, but the fear that if Germany has
the power it will be used to the detriment of
Britain. In other words, it is still accepted
as common practice that "they should take
who have the power and they should keep
who can."
To come a little nearer home, we find that
large corporations are not very much more
squeamish, or particular, than large nations.
The Standard Oil Company, the Beef Trust,
the Sugar Trust, and any number of others,
have absolutely no regard, apparently, for
right or wrong. They get what they can
by any means available. The difference be­tween
the savage and civilized communities
is largely that the civilized communities have
enacted laws which tend to restrain individ­ual
greed. Inasmuch, however, as it is im­possible
to foretell all the forms individual
greed may take, it is impossible to enact in
advance laws to cover all possible cases, and
the best that can often be done is to make
new laws to restrain new forms of greed as
fast as they develop. Laws were msde lov^
THE COKPENSATION OP WORKMEN 53
ago that restrained robbers, sneak thieves,
and even the "robber barons," but none
have so far been framed that restrain the
"high financier," who, without giving any­thing
in return, taxes the community for his
own benefit to an extent that makes all other
forms of acquiring without giving an equi­table
return seem utterly insignificant. One
of the foremost American patent lawyers not
long ago stated that the tremendous indus­trial
success of the United States had been
largely brought about by its beneficent pat­ent
laws, and yet the greatest part of the
legal talent among the patent lawyers is en­gaged
in evading those very patent laws,
which are so beneficent to the community.
These statements only go to show that in
general it is only in so far as the laws re­strain,
that men fail to take advantage of
each other. Certainly there are many hon­orable
exceptions. There are many people
who are actuated by higher motives, and
who are doing a great deal to advance the
cause of equity and justice, and to .establish
proper relations between human beings, and
we give them all credit. But if we consider
their methods the rule, and base our plans
on them, we shall find that others, not quite
54 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
SO scrupulous as we are, will get the better
of us. Therefore in discussing the relations
between employer and employed, we must
recognize the fact that in the majority of
eases, men still act on the principle that
"they should take who have the power and
they should keep who can."
This is true whether you are speaking of
employer, or employed. Labor unions are
just as insistent in their demands for things
that do not belong to them, as the Sugar
Trust is in its efforts to evade duties that it
ought to pay. One of the best illustrations
of this spirit of which I ever heard, was in­cident
to the ending of a strike in a West­ern
State, where the labor union had won.
Soon after the men had gone back to work,
one of the employers said to a workman, " I
hope you are satisfied now." "No!" said
he, "we are not satisfied, and we nevei- shall
be, until we come to the works in our car­riages,
and you walk!"
As long as the interests of the employer
and employee seem antagonistic there will
be conflict, and in any discussion of the sub­ject,
we must recognize that antagonism
means conflict. Until we can find some means
of doing away with the antagonism, the con-
THE COMPENSATION OF WORKMEN 55
flict will continue. Our search, then, must
be for such means.
If the amount of wealth in the world were
fixed, the struggle for the possession of that
wealth would necessarily cause antagonism;
but, inasmuch as the amount of wealth is not
fixed, but constantly increasing, the fact that
one man has become wealthy does not neces­sarily
mean that someone else has become
poorer, but may mean quite the reverse, es­pecially
if the first is a producer of wealth.
The production of wealth can be so greatly
facilitated by the co-operation of employer
and employed that it would seem that if the
new wealth were distributed in a manner
that had in it even the elements of equity,
neither party could afford to have the work­ing
arrangement disturbed.
As long, however, as one party—no mat­ter
which—tries to get all it can of the new
wealth, regardless of the rights of the other,
conflicts will continue.
On account of the disregard of law and
order that unions so frequently show in their
strikes, it is the fashion in many places to
condemn them as utterly bad, when they are
only human. As a matter of fact, they are
not all bad by any means. They have done a
56 WOKK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
great deal for the cause of workmen. If it
had not been for them, the working people
of today would probably be in the same con­dition
as were those of England sixty or a
hundred years ago. The average workman
is a good citizen, just as loyal to his country
as the capitalist, and just as proud of its po­sition
in the world. He is even more inter­ested
in its prosperity, for in times of de­pression,
when the capitalist loses his sur­plus,
the workman loses his means of living.
It is a realization, perhaps, of the small mar­gin
that they have above their absolute
needs, that makes workmen so liberal to each
other, for it is a well-known fact that the
wage earner is far more liberal than the cap­italist.
He will go much further out of his
way to help a friend than the rich man will,
although it is much harder for him to do so.
Our method of studying labor problems
in detail, and studying the individual work­men,
has taught us much about them and
given us a high opinion of them as men. The
proportion of high-minded and honest men
is just as great among them as among any
other class, and far greater than among
those people we continually hear complain­ing
of them. Of course there are worthless
THE COMPENSATIOlsT OP WORKMEN' 57
and dishonest men among them, but the pro­portion
is no greater than among those who
have better opportunities. There are many
individuals who do what they can to lielp
their less fortunate friends, and there may
be unions formed to help the poor workman;
but as a business proposition, such a union
cannot long be successful. Unions are
formed, as a rule, by men of energy to help
each other, and the poor workman is taken in,
not for the good he does in the union, but
the harm he does if not in. The poor work­man
is thus advanced with the good, and the
employer pays the bill.
It is undeniable that unions have advanced
the cause of workmen in general, and we
must not blame them for using force to ac­complish
their ends. It was the only means
they had. If we wish them to use any other
means we must provide them with a means
that they will consider more desirable, and
that will give better results, for in this coun­try,
so long as a man conforms to the laws
of the State, he has a right to govern his
actions in such a manner as his interests
seem to dictate. Men join the union because
they think they will be better off in the long
run for being in the union. The idea of the
58 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
union is to get a higher rate of wages for
the whole class, because in general nobody
in that class can get a substantially higher
rate unless the whole class gets a higher rate.
The employer usually pays but one rate of
wages to one class of workmen, because, as
a rule, he has no means of gauging the
amount of work each man does. It is exceed­ingly
difficult to keep an exact record of what
each of a number of men does each day; and
even if he had such records, the difficulty of
comparing them would be very great, unless
the work done by each man was of the same
nature, and done under the same conditions.
The result is that he keeps no individual
records, but usually treats all workmen of a
class as equals, and pays them the same
wage. There may be 20 per cent, who are
very much more efficient than the rest, but he
has no way of distinguishing them from the
others with any degree of certainty; hence
he declines to increase any wages, or makes
the difference in wages insignificant as com­pared
to the difference in efficiency.
In hiring men he offers the wages he can
get the cheapest man for, and if the good
man stood out for higher wages, he would not
get any wages at all. Hence if the good
THE COMPENSATION OF WORKMEN 59
man is to get high wages, the whole of his
class must get high wages. This is the
strongest argument for the formation of la­bor
unions, and when they are successful in
raising the class wage, as they have repeat­edly
been, the employer is forced to pay the
poor man more than he is worth.
The desire of the union to take in all the
members of its class is not philanthropic.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Under ordinary conditions a man will ad­vance
himself first, and his neighbor next.
He will join the union to advance his own in­terests,
and it is only right and natural that
he should advance his own interests. Any
community made up of people who did not
advance their own interests would very soon
go to pieces. If a workman thinks it is to
his interest to join a union, he has a legal
right to do so. If we wish to prevent him,
we must make it to his interest not to do so.
In other words, we must provide him with
means of advancing his interest that is su­perior
to what the union offers. If any such
scheme is to be permanently successful, it
must be beneficial to the employer also.
Under ordinary conditions where there is
no union, the class wage is practically gauged
60 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
by the wages the poor workman will accept,
and the good workman soon becomes dis­couraged
and sets his pace by that of his
less efficient neighbor, with the result that
the general tone of the shop is lowered.
On the other hand, when the union has had
the class wage raised, the inefficient work­man
is demoralized by getting more than he
is worth, while the efficient man still does
less than he could, for it is not absolute
wages that stimulate exertion, but difference
in wages.
Thus under both non-union and union con­ditions,
where no individual records are kept,
the employer fails to get the efficiency he
should, and the general tone of the shop runs
down. This is very marked in many old
shops which have been successful in the past.
If shops are to be continually successful
the efficiency of the workmen must not only
not be allowed to decrease, but must be sys­tematically
increased. Increase of efficiency
is essentially a problem of the manager, and
the amount to which efficiency can be in­creased
by proper management is in most
cases so great as to be almost incredible.
Decrease in efficiency is not, as a rule, the
fault of the workmen, but of the manage-
THE COMPENSATION OF WORKMEN 61
ment, and the manager who continually com­plains
of the decreasing efficiency of labor is
simply advertising his own incompetence.
There are only two methods of paying for
work; one is for the time the man spends on
the work, and the other is for the amount
of work he does. The first is day work. The
second is piece work. All other systems,
whatever may be their name, are combina­tions
of these two elementary methods in dif­ferent
proportions. It is natural that the
employer should wish to get all the work he
can for the money he spends. It is also nat­ural
that the workman should wish to get all
the money he can for the time he spends.
Any other condition would be wrong, would
be almost suicidal. These two conditions
seem to be so antagonistic that most people
give up any attempt to harmonize them, and
adopt a scheme of bargaining. Bargains, as
a rule, are made for a definite length of time,
at the end of which they are revised. Under
such a system the most aggressive group, or
the one that has the most favorable condi­tions,
wins in the long run.
CHAPTEK IV
DAY WOKK
DAY WORK, or that in which men are
paid for the time they spend, may be
divided into two classes: first, ordinary day
work in which there is no attempt made to
keep individual records, and every man of
a class receives the same wages regardless
of the amount of work he does; second, that
in which the work is carefully planned be-forhand
so that each man can have contin­uous
work, and so that an exact record can
be kept of what he does, and his rate of pay
adjusted accordingly.
The day rate of any class of men, such as
laborers, weavers, machinists, moulders, etc.,
is regulated by supply and demand, except
where it is regulated by the union; and in
times of extreme depression even the unions
are unable to keep up the rate. The rate
may be, and usually is, different in different
localities. Under the condition where no in­dividual
records are kept, it does not make
much difference whether one man is more
65
66 ITORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
efficient than another or not; it is almost
impossible for him to get a higher rate of
wages than the rest of them. If the pay of
one is raised, others are apt to claim that
they also are entitled to an increase, and in
the absence of records it is impossible often
to disprove their claim. To save discussion,
then, and possible trouble, the employer de­clines
to sanction any increase of pay. The
industrious and efficient man naturally be­comes
dissatisfied and gradually slackens his
pace to that of the poorer workman. Thus
the employer, who pays only the rate the
poorer man can earn, gets only the efficiency
he pays for, even from his capable man, who
thus works far below his capacity.
This method of buying labor is similar to
buying all materials sold under the same
name at the same price, without regard to
quality; but it is much more wasteful, as the
difference in the quality of materials is sel­dom
as great as the range of efficiency in
workmen.
The result of this policy—and it is the
logical result—is that the efficient man, the
man with boundless energy to spare, says:
" I can't get any more money by doing more
work I am going to see if I can get it some
DAT WORK 67
other way." Then he organizes all his fel­lows
into a union, and they all say, "We
want more money!" and they get it, and no
man cares whether he does more work or
not. The moral tone of the shop and the
community is lowered, as is always the case
when there is a resort to force.
In the second class of day work some intel­ligent
man studies the work to be done, lays
it out carefully, perhaps several days ahead,
provides the proper appliances, divides it up
in such a manner that it can be done by in­dividuals
or by men in small gangs, so an
exact record can be kept of what each indi­vidual
or gang does, and compensation be
made accordingly. Such a method of hand­ling
workmen has exactly the reverse ef­fect,
and their efficiency begins to increase at
once. When we increase one man's wages
because his record shows he deserves it, it
not only does not cause trouble with the other
workmen, but it acts as a stimulus to them,
and we are glad to have each workman know
what the others are making.
It is difficult and often impossible, es­pecially
at first, to plan all the work of a
plant and to keep a record of each workman,
but some planning can be done, and some rec-
0 0
1
MACHIKE REOOR» j
Day Order No Description of Work
Card
Drawing
Inst. Tim©
Allowed
Timo
Taken Plnish'd
.
InchlnK Krt
Gemarks
FIG. 1. MAN-RECORD SHEET AS INTRODUCED AT THE AMERICAN LOCOMOTIVE WORKS IN 1902.
These cards must be modified to suit conditions, but this form carries practically all that is
ever needed on a time card. Much less will sometimes suffice.
u ^. ^ ^ g. ^ ^,, g- s^ i a r ^- r r a ^ L ^ 3 5\s „f ^ §
I
DAT WORK 69
ords kept in almost eyery case; and if a few
steps in this direction are taken, the advan­tage
of taking more will soon become evident.
Some years ago it became necessary to
lay off about ten moulders in a foundry work­ing
on day work with the record system.
The superintendent sent for the records, and
having inspected them, he sent the foreman
a list of the men to be laid off. There was
a great complaint, in which the foreman
joined, that the wrong men had been se­lected,
and that some of these men were the
best in the shop. The superintendent in­vited
an inspection of the records, which the
foreman had never been willing to pay any
attention to before, with the result that
everybody was satisfied, and the efficiency of
those remaining soon showed a very marked
improvement.
If the conditions are such that we can
plan out the work ahead of time, we will get
a fair degree of efficiency by keeping indi­vidual
records of the workmen, and raising
their day rate accordingly. As a matter of
fact, a better efficiency can be obtained by
this method than by the ordinary system of
piece work, where the rates are set by past
70 WORK, WAGES, AXD PROFITS
records or the estimates of the foreman; and
the tone of the shop is far better.
We began the use of individual records in
a steel foundry in 1888, and have since al­ways
tried to plan our work so that records
could be kept. With the introdtiction of our
task and bonus system in the Bethlehem
Steel Works, in 1901, the method of keeping
these records became standardized. Page 68
shows a sample of the man-record sheet in­troduced
in the works of the American Loco­motive
Co. in 1902.
Not long ago a large contractor in New
York, who had been studying methods of
handling his workmen efficiently, spent some
time on one of his large excavating jobs.
He provided a sufficient number of buckets,
so that each man was always shoveling into
a bucket by himself, and kept track of the
buckets filled by each man. At once the num­ber
of buckets that came out of the hole was
doubled.
No record can, as a rule, be kept of men
doing miscellaneous work unless it is prop­erly
planned ahead of time with that object
in view. If it is intelligently planned and
an increased compensation given for in­creased
efficiency, an improvement will re-
DAT WORK 71
suit which will far more than pay for the
expense of planning and record-keeping.
If, then, you train a man to be efficient and
adopt a system of management which en­ables
him to utilize all of his energies in pro­ductive
work, you can afford to pay him far
higher wages than he can get where the
workmen are not trained and where the sys­tem
of management is not such as will en­able
him to work continuously and efficiently.
A weaver in a cotton mill accustomed to
having his warp ready and filling properly
supplied, complains very bitterly if anything
goes wrong. A man accustomed to having
materials and appliances provided, objects
strongly to being obliged to hunt up his own
materials or appliances, even if he is re­quired
to get a correspondingly smaller
amount of output. We have had many ex­amples
of workmen trained to work under
an efficient system of management, who ob­jected
to working under an inefficient system.
One of the best examples of this occurred
at the Bethlehem Steel Works, where men
were unloading coal from cars at a rate of
four cents per ton. They heard that men
were getting six cents a ton in Pittsburgh for
this work, and six of them left and went to
73 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
Pittsburgh. At Bethleliem they were work­ing
two men on a car. At Pittsburgh six or
seven men were put on a car, and these Beth­lehem
men were spread around, so that there
were always strangers on the car with them.
They started to work just as hard as at
Bethlehem, but the other fellows didn't. The
harder these trained men worked, the less
the others did. The faster workers very
soon slowed up, and in about two months the
whole gang came back, and said they could
not make as much money at Pittsburgh in the
large gangs at higher wages as they did at
Bethlehem at lower wages. It is a well-known
fact that men in large gangs do not
work as efficiently as men do individually, or
in small gangs, but the m_an in charge of the
work in Pittsburgh apparently did not know
it.
To summarize: If you keep an exact rec­ord
of what each worker does, surround the
men with conditions under which they can
work at high efficiency, and compensate the
efficient ones liberally, no man will spend his
spare time trying to find out how to raise the
wages of the other fellow. Workmen, as a
rule, will do more work if their earnings are
increased by so doing, and you will find great
DAT WORK 73
difficulty in getting the efficient ones into la­bor
unions if tliey are not benefited by join­ing.
The point that seems very clear is that the
employer is quite as much responsible for
the labor unions as the men are themselves,
and that he can never expect to adjust his
difficulties with the employees until he fur­nishes
them with a means of accomplishing
their ends (namely, bettering their condition
and getting more money) which will appeal
to them as being better than the means that
they are now using; for as was said before,
so long as he conforms to the laws of the
State the workman has a right to govern his
actions in the manner that will best subserve
his own interests. As we cannot make him
do anything, we must accomplish our object
by convincing him that what we otïer is bet­ter
than what he already has. When he is
convinced, the problem is solved.
T
pree
men
siste
burs
in h
tem
worl
is. '
ably
thel
if b;
we (
we 1:
couL
twic
worl
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comi
der
sion
CHAPTER V
PIECE WORK
THE one fact underlying the philosophy
of labor managem.ent developed in the
preceding chapters, is that it is not the work­men
who are chiefly at fault for the incon­sistency
and inefficiency of most payroll dis­bursements,
but the system generally used
in handling the workmen. Under the sys­tem
that oftenest exists we cannot expect the
workman to be much different from what he
is. If we were in his place, we should prob­ably
do as he does. We should want to make
the best living we could for our families, and
if by working honestly and conscientiously
we could not make any more money, and if
we had tried it over and over again, and still
could not get any more, even though we did
twice or three times as much as the poorer
worker beside us, we should do the same
thing the average worker now does; namely,
come to the conclusion that the system un­der
which we were working had no provi­sion
for compensating the individual accord-
77
78 -n-ORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
ing to his deserts, and that the only way we
could get more money for our services was
to get the wage rate of our class raised, and
take steps to this end.
This is exactly what the men do. The em­ployer
has forced them into a class by keep­ing
tbeir wages uniform, and it is but a short
step from such a class to a union. With the
union comes first collective bargaining, then
demands, then strikes. This is a logical
series, for a successful bargainer always
wants a better bargain next time, and the
demand that is successful is very apt to be
followed later by one that will yield more
still, even if it takes force to sustain it.
As was said in a previous chapter, most
workmen are good citizens, and if we can
show them peaceful means by which they can
get equitable compensation, they will have
but little desire to resort to force. As has
been said before, we recognize that our
method of keeping individual records and
compensating the individual accordingly is
not easy, and in many cases may be impossi­ble,
but we have found that an honest ef­fort
to do it has always produced a feeling
of confidence and loyalty among the work­men,
which added much to their efficiency.
PIECE WORK 79
So far our discussion of the subject lias
related only to day work. An investigation of
the subject of piece work also reveals incon­sistencies
similar to those already consid­ered.
In the term piece work we include all
the various schemes for compensating men
for what they do, instead of for the amount
of time they ivork. It may be divided into
two general classes.
The first is that in which a price for a job
is set from previous records or from the es­timate
of a foreman, who generally considers
his duty done when he has set the price.
This method is the one in general use and
until recently it has been almost exclusively
employed. In recent years, however, it has
been very generally modified in order to
avoid the troubles that have so frequently fol­lowed
such piece work in the past. The fol­lowing
reasons seem to be amply sufficient
to account for the labor troubles that have
been caused by this kind of piece work.
EECOEDS of what has been done are only
a very poor indication of what can be done
by a capable and industrious workman, and
still may be far beyond the possibilities of
an ordinary workman who has not had spe­cial
training in the work.
80 WOKK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
ESTIMATES of a busy foreman as to how
long it should take to do a new job must
necessarily be inaccurate, and rates set by
his estimates are practically guesses. After
the workmen have become skilled, their earn­ings
will increase greatly and will often be
out of all proportion to the exertion put
forth.
Under these conditions an adjustment of
the prices based on the new records is made;
and, as the workmen become more skillful,
it is done again. Thus the more skilled the
workman becomes, and tlie more progress he
makes, the greater the penalty he has to suf­fer,
for his prices are being continually re­duced
so that he earns but little more than
the incompetent man, who has never been
able to do his work in such a manner as to
exceed greatly the old records.
The effect of this method of penalizing the
good workman in proportion to his increased
effort is to discourage him so that he learns
ultimately to limit his output by that of the
poor workman. This result is so natural
that we should not be surprised at it, nor
should we condemn it, unless we make it to
the interest of the workman to do otherwise.
His desire for more money continues, how-
PIECE WORK 81
ever, and when he finds his piece rate re­duced
whenever he earns much more than
the average workman, he comes to the con­clusion
that as his employer seems deter­mined
to keep him in his class so far as com­pensation
is concerned, he will see what he
can do to better the financial condition of
the class.
The fact that he has had to suffer a pen­alty
for trying to advance himself by legit­imate
methods, however, has caused him to
feel that might is more powerful in the world
than right. No better way could possibly
be taken to teach him the value of force in
accomplishing his ends.
We cannot blame him if he now spends his
extra energy in forming his union, for in the
past unions have done more for the work­man
than he could do for himself. If we
wish him to abandon the use of force, we
must assure him of an equitable return for
his efforts without it. Inasmuch as in the
union, as was previously shown, the good
man seldom gets all he is worth, we can get
the good men on our side, if we can convince
them that their efforts will be adequately
rewarded.
This brings us to the second system of
83 WOEK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
piece work, which when properly operated
provides a complete system of instruction
for the workman, equitable compensation for
his efforts, and opportunity for advance­ment
on his own merits, and not through
" p u l l " or friendship. So far this system
has never failed to create a strong spirit of
harmony and co-operation.
The essentials of this system are:
FIRST, to have the best expert available
investigate in detail every piece of work,
and find out the best method and the shortest
time for doing it with the appliances to be
had.
SECOND, to develop a standard method for
doing the work, and to set a maximum time
which a good workman should need to ac­complish
it.
THIED, to find capable workmen, who can
do the work in the time and manner set, or
to teach an ordinary workman to do it.
FoxjETH, whenever the high efficiency is ob­tained,
to compensate liberally not only the
workman actually doing the work, but also
those who supply him with materials and ap­pliances
to enable him to maintain the effi­ciency
specified.
FIFTH, to find among the workmen who
PIECE "WORK 88
have learned the best ways of doing work,
some that can investigate and teach, and thus
gradually to get recruits for the corps of ex­perts,
so that the system may be self-per­petuating.
SIXTH. The ordinary foreman of the shop
•must not be called upon to do the work of
the expert. His business under the usual
conditions of management is that of an ex­ecutive,
and he is invariably so busy attend­ing
to his routine duties that he has but lit­tle
time to make investigations into the best
method of doing work. He can only give in­structions
according to the experience he has
had in the past, or according to the knowl­edge
he may pick up at odd times. Again,
he frequently feels compelled to allow work
to be done inefficiently because he has no man
that can do it better, and no time to train a
new man. For these reasons it is desiral:)le
that the development of improved methods,
the setting of tasks in accordance with these
methods, and the training of workmen to
perform these tasks, should be in the hands
of some one other than the foreman.
For this purpose the best expert mechanic
available should be selected. Such a man
may not have qualities at all fitting him to
84 AVOKK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
be a foreman—in fact, the best expert usually
makes but a poor foreman. He is generally
so absorbed in the mechanical operations
themselves that the improvement of them
becomes a passion with him, and nothing
pleases him more than to see numbers of
machines operating at their highest efficiency,
the result of his work. On the other hand,
the foreman with this kind of a mind often
sacrifices other sources of efficiency for this
object. The expert must be a good mechanic,
with fair education. He must have indus­try,
originality, persistence, and an ability
to remove obstacles, not once, but repeatedly.
Such an expert in a shop will study the
machines individually and teach workmen to
bring each up to its highest efficiency.
While the policy advocated in the above
paragraphs cannot be called a system of
management, the elements described must be
parts of any good system. Each individual
problem of manufacture must be studied in
such a manner as to determine how the work
can be done in the most efficient way.
There is no use in attempting to increase
efficiency, however, unless it is done in a sys­tematic
manner. Managers will often tell
you that you cannot put into their shops
PIECE WORK 85
methods of this character, and, under the
conditions that exist, they are right. In
many places you cannot at once better the
evident inefficiencies that exist, for the ma­chinery
is often so arranged that it is ex­tremely
difficult to do an>i;liing different
from what is already being done.
Most plants have grown from small begin­nings,
and have been added to without any
definite plan, or any real idea of the system
to be used in operating them. In many cases
the character of the work has changed, and
a plant well adapted for one class of work
may be so arranged as to make it impossible
to do another class of work efficiently. Then
there are plants in which the machinery has
been arranged without considering the sub­ject
of efficient management. In most plants,
at least one of the above conditions exists to
such an extent that much of the machinery
must be rearranged to make any great im­provement.
Then there are some people who have no
idea of doing anything in a systematic man­ner.
They cannot do anything twice the same
way. They may be very good people, with
an artistic temperament, perhaps, or they
may be chronic inventors. They like to
86 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
change things. If you have a man like that
at the head, and succeed once in getting the
plant organized for efficient work, he will
want to change things again to-morrow. Such
a man is not a manufacturer, and will make
a much greater success at something else.
To attempt to make permanent under such
a man an efficient arrangement of machinery,
or system of management, is futile.
On the other hand, if the man at the head
is systematic, and while capable of recog­nizing
an improvement, is slow at making
changes unless he can see distinct benefit
from them, the conditions for instituting
such reforms as will permanently add to the
efficiency of tlie plant are ideal.
When we have once established our sys­tem
of management by which the work is
done economically, and the workmen get
higher pay, they themselves offer the strong­est
opposition to change, for they will stand
by a good system under which they are ben­efited
quite as staunchly as they did by the
forty-year-old method it replaced, the only
virtue of which, perhaps, was its age.
Before beginning to introduce the methods
described we must study the conditions un­der
which the work is to be done. The ma-
PIECE WORK 87
chinery must be so arranged that the work
can be done economically, and provision must
be made to have the proper materials and
appliances always available for the work­men.
This is a question of management, and
may have quite as much effect on the proper
operation of a plant as anji;hing the work­men
can do.*
Having placed our machinery so that it
can be operated efficiently and arranged for
a proper provision of materials and appli­ances,
the first problem is to determine the
best way of doing a piece of work. Usually
there are in every shop some workmen who
are much more capable than the others. If
the best of these can be interested in our
work, the problem of studying the work in
detail is much simplified. In connection with
such workmen, our observer, or "time study"
man, can make a detailed scientific study of
all the elements of a piece of work and de­termine
the best method for doing it and the
shortest time in which it can be properly
done by an experienced man working at his
best normal speed. Having determined such
*A paper presented before the American Society of
Mechanical Knsinecrs, July, 1903, and entitled "A
Graphical Daily Balance in Manufacture," goes into
this subject somewhat.
88 WORK, WAGES, AND PEOFITS
a time and method, they are adopted as
standards, and the workmen should be
awarded liberal compensation for doing the
work by the method and in the time set.
As a rule it is best to study, if possible,
the work as done by several good workmen.
If it is understood that the most efficient will
be given the work at a fair rate, we are
usually able to secure their co-operation in
fixing that rate.
If it is necessary to train several work­men,
the very best man should be made an
instructor and compensated liberally for
teaching the others his knowledge and skill.
In machine shops, or other places where
many tasks are to be set, the investigator or
task setter should be the most expert work­man
available, and his compensation should
be such as to make him jealous of his job.
If any workman often succeeds in doing the
work in less than the time set, we mark him
—not to have his rate cut—but as a prom­ising
candidate for an instructor's, or task-setter's,
job. As a matter of fact, our trained
workers often yield a good supply of instruc­tors
and occasionally a task-setter.
We thus provide means for the workman
to learn the best practice we can devise, and
PIECE WORK 89
not only compensate him liberally for fol­lowing
it, but give him a chance to advance
himself still further if he has the ability to
do so. •
When it is clearly understood that we mean
to do this, we have no difficulty in securing
the hearty co-operation of the workmen.
After a joroper study we should know the
time needed by a good man to do the work
with the same certainty that we know it is
possible for a good healthy man to walk
four miles per hour for several hours. We
know, however, that if we go out into the
street, and ask a dozen men at random to
walk to a place four miles off in an hour,
they will all probably have great difficulty
in doing it. If we ask them to go eight miles
in two hours, the great majority of them
will fail. If we extend the walk to twelve
miles in tliree hours, almost none of them
will accomplish it. Suppose, however, we
know a man who can walk four miles per
hour readily, and get him to teach others to
do it. If we make it to the interest of the
others to do as they are taught, our expert
can soon teach them by walking them, per­haps,
the first day, only one mile in a quar­ter
of an hour; the second day, two miles
90 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
in half an hour; in a day or two four miles
in an hour, then six miles in an hour and a
half. He soon gets them so they can walk
day after day at that rate without any diffi­culty.
We have the same problem in doing
any kind of work. If a man is trained to do
a certain kind of work at a certain speed, he
will do it at that speed, even though it may
have been absolutely impossible for him to
do it at that rate before he was trained.
Training takes time, and training a man
to work rapidly and well is a much more
difficult job than training a man to walk fast.
Therefore, after our expert has found the
best way and the best speed for doing certain
work, his job is still often only half done. He
must find somebody who can be trained to do
it in that way at that speed. Frequently
we know it should be done at that speed, but
cannot find anybody to do it. Our investiga­tion
may show that a job can be done in an
hour, and yet the best result we can get may
be an hour and a quarter, or an hour and a
half. Every worker in the place may say
he cannot do it, and nobody may be willing
to try. But if our studies are correct, and if
we patiently train people, experience proves
that we can eventually get some one to do it.
PIECE WOEK 91
If the man who is doing the work is suc­cessful
in performing his task in the time
and manner specified, he, of course, gets ex­tra
compensation; but this is not enough.
The men who supply him with the means of
doing the work must also get extra compen­sation,
for unless you can make it to their
financial interest to co-operate, the worker
may fail for want of their co-operation. On •
the other hand, if they do get extra compen­sation
when the individual is successful,
there will be a complaint from some one if
he is not successful. If his failure is due to
the man supplying the materials this man
will be criticised, not so much by the super­intendent
as by the workman himself. If the
workman often fails from his own ineffi­ciency,
the helper, who also loses, will com­plain.
Not long ago an illustration of this
occurred in a cotton mill. A slow-moving
fellow you would hardly think could do a full
day's work, finally woke up, and became a
good weaver, earning his extra compensation
nearly every day. One day the proper "fill­i
n g " was not ready for him in time. The
foreman heard a great row in the weave
room, and, looking around, found this fellow
about ready to take off the head of the man
92 "WORK, "WAGES, AND PROFITS
whose duty it was to supply the filling. That
man had energy enough, but he had only re­cently
learned to use it, and the object les­son
he gave helped the whole room.
1 After we have studied a job and set the
task, it should be our invariable rule never
to change it unless we change the method of
doing it. If, in spite of careful study, we
find we have made a mistake, we must sim­ply
accept the consequences of that mistake.
We may some day find a better way of doing
the job. In this case we may change the task
by adopting that as our method, and teach­ing
it to the workmen. As long as the work
is done by the same method, however, we
should seriously impair the efficiency of the
whole place if we attempted to increase the
difficulty of the task. Suppose we have de­cided,
after careful study, that 10 pieces
is a day's work. If our people become ex­ceptionally
skillful and do 12 or 14, it is well
worth our while to have them do so.
On the other hand, if an attempt is made to
increase the task as the workers become more
skillful, the workmen will logically decline
to do the increased task, if the original task
is a fair one. Suppose the employer insists
on his point, and lets his trained workers go.
PIECE AVOHK 93
If bis task is a proper one, bis new gang will
be unable, as a rule, to do more tban balf
as mucb as bis trained gang, aud benee be
will need twice as many people and twice as
mucb space to get out tbe same product.
Twice as many people require at least twice
as mucb supervision, and if tbey are un­trained
and new in tbe sbop, more tban twice
as mucb. In addition, tbe product of tbe un­trained
workers is sure to be decidedly in­ferior
to that of tbe good workers, and alto­gether
tbe loss to the employer is likely to
be many times tbe possible gain by the sav­ing
in wages.
When, therefore, we have a lot of efficient
men, working harmoniously, we can afford
to pay them big wages rather tban try to
change things at all. A certain mill for­merly
had the reputation of paying poor
wages, and, of course, bad difficulty in get­ting
good help. Now, under this system, it
pays the best wages and draws tbe cream of
tbe help from all around. Every man in that
mill knows be has the best job he can get,
and be comes every day to take care of it.
If the men know that the employer will
stand by his word, and not change the time
for performing a task when it has been once
94 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
set, they soon get confidence in him, and the
problem of increasing the efficiency of the
plant becomes easy.
In attempting to increase the efficiency of
a plant, then, the first problem is to convince
the workmen of our good faith and that they
will be treated fairly. When this has been
done, we always have their co-operation to a
degree entirely unsuspected by those who
have never tried that method.
We must remember, however, that proper
piece rates and loyal workmen are only ele­ments
in producing efficiency. They have
but little effect unless there is system of
management that tends to harmonize all the
various elements upon which efficiency de­pends.
In fact, a broad-minded manager who un­derstands
the relative importance of the va­rious
operations carried on in the plant, and
who adopts a policy which has a tendency to
harmonize these various operations, can ac­complish
more with individual records and
day work than can be accomplished by the
best possible piece rates without a harmoniz­ing
system of management.
In any attempt to increase efficiency, there­fore,
the first problem is to harmonize the
PIECE WORK 95
various operations. In most plants, espe­cially
those that have grown gradually from
small beginnings, it is usually possible for a
capable man to do this in a manner that will
increase efficiency, diminish the amount of
supervision needed, and secure the co-opera­tion
of the best men, if he makes a careful
study of the work with that object in view.
To do this it is often necessary to rear­range
machinery in order to minimize trans­portation
and bring together similar and al­lied
operations. This should be done before
a study is made of the detail operations,
which, if possible, should be studied under
the conditions that are to be permanent.
In other words, the general problem of
manufacture must first be divided into its
grand divisions; these grand divisions must
then be divided and subdivided until the in­dividual
operations may be further subdi­vided
into details which can be studied sepa­rately.
Analyzing a piece of work into its proper
elements and determining the minimum time
for each element is not work that can be done
by an inexperienced clerk with a stop watch,
but requires a man with a trained analytical
mind who can concentrate his attention on a
96 •WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
problem and learn all there is to be known
about it. Having determined the minimum
time in which the work can be done, the
problem of setting a reasonable task is still
to be solved. If the work is simple and is to
be repeated many times per day, and day
after day, the task should be a difficult one
for even the good workers at first, for with
repetition they will acquire skill, and in a
short time it will become easy. In such work
it will often pay to spend quite a long time
trair.ing workers to do it efficiently.
If, on the other hand, the operation is but
seldom done, it may not pay to spend much
time training workmen to do it with great
efficiency. In this case we should not make
the task too severe, but such as a good work­man
can do without the preparation of spe­cial
training.
This studying of the elements of a piece of
work and setting proper tasks or piece rates,
though an important part of any proper sys­tem
of management, is only a part. The
broad problem which includes all others is
to develop a system that encourages the study
of all operations and adequately rewards all
who co-operate for their continued efficient
Derformance.
PIECE WORK 97
As was said before, it is not the workman
to whom we must look for increase in effi- I
ciency, but the manager. The policy of com- I
pensating the individual for efficiency is
bound to cause increase of efficiency, and that
of fixing compensation regardless of effi­ciency
is just as sure to reduce it. The man- \
ager, and not the workman, is responsible
for the policy.
It is a well-recognized fact that the efficient
man at high wages is much more profitable
to his employer than the inefficient man at
low wages, yet how many managers give any
consideration to the subject of increasing
efficiency? Under the system of management
in most general use the manager puts the
solution of all problems concerning work­men
on his superintendents, who in turn pass
them on to their foremen.
Is such a policy a system of management,
or is it a system of shirking the responsibili­ties
of management? Of course the man­ager
cannot personally study all the opera­tions,
and solve all the labor problems that
may come up; but if he has the knowledge
and ability he can gradually build up an or­ganization
that will successfully study and
solve them.
98 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
The demand for trained workmen is very
extensive, but it too often spends itself in
schemes for schools to carry out at their own
expense, and the question immediately arises
as to whether the schools, or, in other words,
the State, should bear the expense of train­ing
workmen. Under the old apprentice sys­tem
each trade trained its own workmen.
Under our factory system this method has
been largely abandoned, and nothing has
been developed to take its place. Is it not
the duty of the factory to develop a substi­tute
for a system its m-cthods have made ob­solete?
Is not the system of having a first-class
workman study mechanical operations
in detail and teach the younger man to per­form
them in the best manner he can devise,
and at the best speed he can show, far su­perior
to the old method where the appren­tice
might have an efficient teacher, but more
often did not?
Surely nobody will deny that such a sys­tem
is to be preferred to the old apprentice
system, and, if so, the only question that
arises is, will it pay the manufacturer?
Inasmuch as the efficient workman often
does two or three times as much as the poor
workman, and always does it better, and in-
PIECE WORK 99
asmuch as the workman who does twice as
much work cuts the general expenses per
unit of output in half, there would seem to
be no question that such a system of training
would pay handsomely. This will be dis­cussed
in detail in the subsequent chapters.
TASK WOEK WITH A BONUS
CHAPTER VI
TASK WORK WITH A BONUS
TN the preceding chapters an attempt has
•'• been made to show that present labor
conditions—that is, labor unions and em­ployers'
associations—are a natural and al­most
a necessary result of the present meth­ods
of handling workmen. The horizontal
wage, under which men in a certain class get
a certain wage and under which it is prac­tically
impossible for any individual to get
much more than the average day, or piece­work,
wage of the class, has its effect in
causing the workmen of that class to com­bine
to get the average wage of the class in­creased.
It was also explained that as long as we
classified workmen and paid those of one
class substantially one wage, without greatly
varying' that wage according to efficiency,
the efficient men, realizing that they could
not get any more money than was paid to the
average of their class, would continue to
combine with the others in that class to have
103
104 WORK, WAGES, AND PROMTS
the class wage raised. This is what they
have done in the past; and, if we read hu­man
nature aright, this is what they will do
in the future, until some means has been de­vised
by which the efficient man can get
proper compensation for his work. When
his compensation is independent of what the
inefficient man gets, he will not worry him­self
greatly about combining with the ineffi­cient
man. The employer recognizes that the
efficient man is worth more to him than the
inefficient man, but most employers do not
know any scheme by which they can com­pensate
the efficient man according to his
deserts, and avoid trouble with the ineffi­cient
man.
The object of this chapter is to show what
we have accomplished both in the way of
rewarding the efficient man, and of making
the inefficient man efficient.
In March, 1899, I became associated with
the Bethlehem Steel Company to assist in
putting into operation methods for increas­ing
the efficiency of their labor. This work
was being done by Mr. F. W. Taylor, with
whom I had been associated twelve years
previously in the Midvale Steel Company,
where the methods underlying Mr. Taylor's
TASE WOKK AVITII A BONUS 105
work originated, and where they are still in
operation.
One object that Mr. Taylor had in mind
was to establish throughout the plant a sys­tem
of piece work based on a scientific study
of what could be done, and to make piece
rates that should be permanent. The por­tion
of the works that seemed to offer the
greatest field was the main machine shop;
but before setting these piece rates it was
necessary to make a great many changes.
Machines in this shop had been located, not
with reference to any particular system of
management (because nobody had given the
system of management any particular
thought) but promiscuously, throughout the
shop.
In order to do work economically it was
desirable to rearrange the machine tools in
such a manner that a foreman, expert on one
class of work, should be able to supervise
that work. Accordingly the location of the
machines was so changed as to place the
large lathes in one group, the small lathes
in another, the planers in another, etc. While
the machines were being moved they were
respeeded to enable them to utilize to ad­vantage
the improvements that had been
106 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
made in tool steel, Mr. Taylor at the same
time making a large number of experiments*
to determine the best shapes of tools and the
best tool steel with which to do the work,
which in this shop was very miscellaneous in
character. Even when we got the shop re­arranged,
much study still had to be done
before we could know enough about the con­ditions
to make permanent piece rates.
The high degree of perfection demanded
by Mr. Taylor took much time; and the con­sequence
was, that although slide rules for
determining how to do machine work and in­struction
cards for directing the workmen
had been in use since 1899, the monthly out­put
of the shop during the year from March
1, 1900, to March 1, 1901, had been but little
more than the monthly average for the five
years preceding.
Up to this time we had devoted ourselves
to the study of what could be done, and had
done but little to cause the workmen to co­operate
with us. This record shows that we
had not in any measurable degree secured
their co-operation. In other words, we had
much knowledge, but were unable to get any
substantial benefit from it because the men
*The result of tliese experiments was the development
of the Taylor-White method of treating tool steel.
TASK WORK WITH A BONUS 107
would not help. Not being ready to intro­duce
the differential piece-rate system, which
was regarded as the ideal one for obtaining
a maximum output, I felt that we should not
wait for perfection, but should offer the
workmen additional pay in some manner
that would not interfere with the ultimate
adoption of the differential* piece-rate sys­tem.
Accordingly on March 11, 1901, I sug­gested
that we pay a bonus of 50 cents to
each workman who did in any day all the
work called for on his instruction card.
This was adopted at once, and Mr. E. P.
Earle, the superintendent of the machine
shop, suggested that we should also pay the
gang boss (the man who supplied the work)
or speed boss (foreman) a bonus each day
for each of his men that earned his bonus.
This was also approved, and both plans
were ordered to be put into execution as
promptly as possible.
This bonus payment was begun at once,
and on May 13 the assistant superintendent
*Tlie differential piece rate was devised l).v Mr. P. W.
Taylor while with the Midvale Steel Co., to stimulate
maximum production. It consisted of a high rate per
piece if a definite large product per day was attained,
and a lower piece price if the output was less than the
amount set. The effect of the system was to cause a
bi? increase in wages for attaining a definite degree of
efficiency.
108 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
of the machine shop, Mr. E. J. Snyder, made
the following report:
Mr. B. P. EARLE.
Supt. of Machine Shop ISTo. 2.
Dear Sir:
I hand you herewith some notes on the results
obtained by the introduction of the "bonus" plan for
remunerating labor in Xo. 2 machine shop. (Here
follow machine numbers and dates when they were
started on this plan.)
One of the best results after a short trial has been
the moral effect upon the men. They have had it
placed in their power to earn a very substantial in­crease
in wages by a corresponding increase in their
productive capacity, and this has given them the feel­ing
that the company is quite willing to reward the
increased effort. They display a willingness to work
right up to their capacity, with the knowledge that
they are not given impossibilities to perform. This
effect has been brought about by the good use of our
excellent slide rules in the hands of a number of the
most thoroughly practical men, who, when the results
which they demand have been declared impossible to
obtain, have repeatedly gone out into the shop and
themselves demonstrated that the time was ample, by
doing the work well within the limits set. All this
has inspired the confidence of the shop hands, and
the excellent instruction cards sent out are gradually
evolving from laborers a most efTicient lot of machine
hands. . . . The percentage of errors in machin­ing
has been very materially reduced, which is un­questionably
due to the fact that in order to earn his
bonus a man must utilize his brains and faculties to
the fullest extent, and so has his attention closely
fixed on the work before him, as every move must be
TASK WORK WITH A BONUS 109
made to count. He thus has no time for dreaming,
which was, no doubt, the cause of many errors.
The condition of the machines is vastly improved.
Most care has been taken to point out to the men
that the best results can be obtained only by keeping
their machines in good running condition, well-lubri­cated
and cleaned. They have not been slow to
realize this, and cases of journals cutting fast are
very rare, while before the introduction of the
"^bonus" plan this was a very common occurrence.
Breakdowns are also of a less frequent occurrence.
The crane service lately has given us little trouble,
and lack of crane service was formerly a constant
excuse of the bosses and men for not being able to
keep machines filled with work. The improvement
in this case arose from the rule laid down that no
exceptions or allowances would be made for delays
due to this cause.
It is only by the introduction of this "bonus" plan
that we have had furnished the automatic incentive
for men to work up to their capacity and to obtain
from the machines the product which they are cap­able
of turning out. It has lifted the hands of the
speed bosses (foremen) and enabled them to act
in the capacity for which those positions were created
•—^that of instructors.
These are some of the direct results obtained. In­directly
it has eliminated the constant necessity for
driving the men, and has enabled the shop manage­ment
to divert some of its energy into perfecting the
organization, which only will enable us to give a
good account of the shop equipment. Much good has
also resulted from putting the work through in lots,
and keeping each machine as nearly as possible on the
same kind of work.
110 WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
It is also a pleasure to note in this connection the
deep interest taken in the work by the men connected
with it, and the fine co-operative spirit whicli pre­vails
among all hands.
This report was made only two months
after the bonus system was started, now
nearly nine years ago, and is particularly
valuable as it emphasizes some of the fun­damental
principles on which successful work
of this character must be founded. We must
secure the confidence and co-operation of the
workman by assuring him equitable compen­sation.
If we fail to do this, any results we
may get will be of short duration and our
work will finally come to naught. Many of
the failures to get continuously the high efiB-ciency
which seemed easily possible, have
been due to a disregard of the fact that the
workman is entitled to a share in the bene­fits
of increased efficiency, and in the long
run will not co-operate unless he gets it.
The attempt to drive the workman to in­creased
efforts which benefit the employer
alone, necessarily creates a force of opposi­tion
which grows greater as it is carried far­ther.
Finally, the force of opposition be­comes
so great that further progress is im­possible
and the system of management
TASK WORK WITH A BONUS 111
based on force breaks down. This is as it
should be, if we are to progress from an era
of force to oce of equity, and to make ob­solete
the doctrine that "they should take
who have the power and they should keep
who can."
Continual failure to obtain our ends per­manently
by the use of force, and success
in obtaining them by co-operation, will ulti­mately
show that the selfishness that prompts
the use of force is unintelligent, and that the
most intelligent selfishness is that which
shares the benefits equitably among those
helping to obtain them.
In closing the discussion on a paper on
training workmen, read before the Ameri­can
Society of Mechanical Engineers, De­cember,
1908, I made the following state­ment:
A system of management may be defined as a •
means of causing men to co-operate with each other
for a common end. If this co-operation is main- .
tained by force, the system is in a state of unstable !
equilibrium, and •will go to pieces if the strong
hand is removed. Co-operation in which the bond
is mutual interest in the success of work done by
intelligent and honest methods produces a state of
equilibrium which is stable and ne^ds no outside
support.
1 1 2 •WORK, WAGES, AND PROFITS
In the paper itself the following statements
are found:
I The general policy of the past has been to drive,
• but the era of force must give way to that of knowl­edge,
and the policy of the future will be to teach
and to lead, to the advantage of all concerned.
It is too much to hope, however, that the methods
about to be described vi'ill be adopted extensively in
the near future; for the great majority of managers,
whose success is based mainly on their personal abil­ity,
will hesitate before adopting what seems to
them the slower and less forceful policy of studying
problems and training workmen; but should they
do so, they will have absolutely no desire to rcjturn
to their former methods.
In some quarters I have been regarded as
not making the most of opportunities because
of adherence to this policy, but results in
the long run have been so much greater and
more stable than those obtained by the driv­ing
method, that even the strongest advo­cates
of force are beginning to recognize that
in their desire to get great results quicTdy
. they may fail to get them permanently.
To go back, however, to the Bethlehem
Steel Works, we note that the average
monthly output of the shop from March 1,
1900, to March 1, 1901, was 1,173,000 pounds;
and from March 1,1901, to August 1, 1901, it
was 2,069,000 pounds. The shop had 700
TASK WORK WITH A BONUS 113
men in it and we were paying on the bonus
plan only about 80 workmen out of that en­tire
700.
In September, 1901, the ownership of the
works passed into the hands of Mr. Charles
M. Schwab, and with this change came a
change in management. Mr. Schwab had
been brought up in a school where the drive
method only was used, and he did not believe
in any other. Mr. Taylor had already left
the works, and the services of the writer
and all others that had been prominent in
installing the new methods were shortly dis­pensed
with.
An unintelligent selfishness on the part of
the management soon caused them to cease
paying any bonus to the foreman. Other
changes gradually followed, and, although at­tempts
were made to retain some of the me­chanical
features of our methods, in a few
years the essential principles of this work
were practically eliminated and the efficiency
of the shop ran down to such an extent as
to become notorious. A complete return to
the drive method after repudiating these
principles, has produced a series of labor
troubles, which, at this writing, have culmi­nated
in closing down the whole plant.
l l - i WORK, "WAGESj AND PROFITS
Contrast this with over thirty years' free­dom
from labor troubles enjoyed by the Mid-vale
Steel Company, where long ago these
methods had their beginning.
The plan as started at Bethlehem of pay­ing
a fixed bonus for performing the task
had one element of weakness, namely, that
after the men had earned their bonus there
was no further incentive to them. It was
some time before I devised a satisfactory
method for adding such an incentive, which
was finally accomplished by paying the work­man
for the time allowed plus a percentage
of that time.
For instance, if the time allowed for a task
is three hours, the workman who performs
it in three hours or less is given four hours'
pay. He thus has an incentive to do as much
work as possible. If the workman fails to
perform the task within the time limit he gets
his day rate. The time allowed plus the
bonus is the equivalent of a piece-rate; hence
we have piece work for the skilled and day
work for the unskilled.
One other feature of this work at Bethle­hem
had a most important effect on the re­sult—^
namely, that in addition to the bonus
paid the foreman for each man under him
TASK WORK 'WITH A BONUS 115
who made bonus, a further bonus was paid
if all made bonus. For instance, a foreman
having ten men under him would get 10 cents
each, or 90 cents total, if nine of his men
made bonus; but 15 cents each, or $1.50 total,
if all ten made bonus. The additional 60
cents for bringing the inferior workmen up
to the standard made him devote his ener­gies
to those men who most needed them.
This is the first recorded attempt to make
it to the financial interest of the foreman to
teach the individual worker, and the import­ance
of it cannot he over-estimated, for it
changes the foreman from a driver of his
men to their friend and helper.
Under former conditions, the foreman hes­itated
to teach the workman for fear the lat­ter
might learn as much as he knew and pos­sibly
get his job. Under the new conditions,
the man who knows is paid for teaching
others as much as he knows, and the others
are paid a bonus for learning and doing what
they are taught. It is this feature of the task
and bonus system that has enabled us not
only to obtain, but to maintain permanently,
such satisfactory results. The expert work­man
who becomes a good teacher soon makes
his services valuable, for, by his assistance,
116 WORK, WAGES, AKD PROFITS
we can often make the average efficiency of
the shop even greater than his best efficiency
was before we began to study the question of
efficiency. He learns to remove obstacles
which stood hi his way when he was a simple
workman, and often becomes an expert also
not only at removing these obstacles, but at
developing better inethods to avoid them.
Such, in brief, is the history of the devel­opment
of the task and bonus system, which,
starting as a substitute for differential piece
work, gradually supplanted it, differing only
by the fact that the worker who failed to
earn the high rate got his day's pay instead
of a lower piece rate, thus allowing the in­efficient
workman a chance to earn a living
while learning to become efficient. This ef­fort
to help the poor workman by giving him
a living wage and an instructor, enables us
to utilize many bright young men who either
did not have a chance to learn a trade, or did
not appreciate it when they had it. This is
an exceedingly large class, and one that we
find everywhere.
To review again the elements on which this
system is founded, we note:
1.—A scientific investigation in detail of
each piece of work, and the determination of
TASK WORK WITH A BONUS 117
the best method and the shortest time in
which the work can be done.
2.—^A teacher capable of teaching the best
method and shortest time.
3.—Reward for both teacher and pupil
when the latter is successful.
Are not these elements sure to make for
success? The fact that we have been able to
develop promptly workmen who could satis­factorily
perform any ordinary task is the
best answer. This method of providing
workers for the semi-skilled jobs of a factory
has been so successful that we are led to ask
whether our method is not the basis on which
to found a system of instruction and training
for apprentices and workmen in general.
In a following chapter we shall show in de­tail
what has been accomplished, and give
data which prove that money invested in es­tablishing
a scheme of management and
training on these lines yields a very large re­turn.
One of the best results of this work is
that the trained workmen almost always hold
on to their jobs, and the few that leave soon
come back. Under our methods workmen
take pride in being efficient.
\
L_
^1
THE TASK IDEA
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CHAPTER VII
THE TASK IDEA
T TNDERLYING the theory and practice of
^ "Task Work with a Bonus" is an im­portant
principle—a concept altogether dif­ferent
in kind from that which actuates the
*' drive'' method, or the policy of urging men
to mere strenuous toil, without any well-measured
standard of how much work a man
should reasonably do under the conditions of
the case. This principle is the Task Idea.
What are its elements and influences?
In studying a problem it is best to consider
first the simplest form in which that problem
presents itself, and one if possible in which
the issues are perfectly clear to all. A
good example for our purpose is to study
the methods by which a child is taught
to perform a simple operation. The in­variable
method is to explain to the child
as clearly as possible what is wanted, and
then to set a task for it to accomplish. It
may be noted that the accomplishment of the
task is rendered much easier for both the
131
132 WOEE^ WAGES, AND PROMTS
child and the parent, if a suitable reward is
offered for the proper performance. As a
matter of fact, setting tasks and rewarding
performance is the standard method of
teaching and training children. The school­master
invariably sets tasks, and, while they
are not always performed as well as he
wishes, he gets far more done than if he had
not set them. The college professor finds
the task his most effective instrument in get­ting
work out of his students, and when we
in our personal work have something strenu­ous
or disagreeable to accomplish, it is not
infrequently that we utilize the same idea to
help ourselves, and it does help us.
The inducement to perform the task is al­ways
some benefit or reward. It may not al­ways
be so immediate as the lump of sugar
the child gets, but the work is still done for
some reward, immediate or prospective.
Further, it is a well-acknowledged fact that
to work at a task which we recognize as
being within our power to accomplish with­out
overexerting ourselves, is less tiring and
far more pleasant than to work along at the
same rate with no special goal ahead.
It is simply the difference between work­ing
with an object, and without one. The
THE TASK IDEA 123
hunter who enjoys following the trail of the
moose, day after day, through snow and bit­ter
cold weather, would find the same travel­ing
very disagreeable except for the task he
has set himself. To the uninitiated, golf
seems a very inane sort of game, but its de­votees
work at it with tremendous energy
just for the satisfaction of reducing their
score a few strokes. As they become more
proficient, they become more enthusiastic;
for, having performed one task, there is al­ways
one just a little harder to work at. A
consideration of this subject will convince us
that in the vast majority of people there
readily springs up the desire to do some­thing
specific if the opportunity offers, and
if an adequate reward can be obtained for
doing it.
A NATUEAL METHOD
The idea of setting for each worker a task
with a bonus for its accomplishment seems
thus to be in accord with human nature, and
hence the proper foundation of a system of
management. Our problem, then, is to find
out how to set a proper task and what the
reward should be for its accomplishment.
The ideal industrial community would be
134 WOKK^ WAGES^ ANB PROFITS
one in which every member has his proper
daily task and receives a corresponding re­ward.
Such a community would represent
the condition of which Kipling says:
"They shall work for an age at a sitting and never
be tired at all."
This is what Scientific Management in its
best development aims to accomplish, for it
aims to assign to each, from the highest to
the lowest, a definite task each day, and to
secure to every individual such a reward as
will make his task not only acceptable, but
agreeable and pleasant. Whatever we do
must be in accord with human nature. We
cannot drive people; we must direct their
development.
The greatest obstacles to the introduction
of this method in the past have not been the
workmen, but the foremen and others in au­thority.
Those offering most objection have,
as a rule, either not understood what was
being done, or have felt their inability to
hold their jobs if they were asked to perform
them in accordance with the high standards
set. Frequently, the higher they are in au­thority
the less they can see that they should
have a task set for them. Such a system
THE TASK IDEA 125
bears hardest on those who hold their jobs
by pull or bluff, and it is from them that we
should expect the greatest opposition. In
this we are not disappointed. In fact, there
is only one class that opposes us more
strongly, and that is the class which is using
official position for private gain. Such peo­ple
will often commit serious crimes in an
attempt to prevent the exposure of their ir­regularities,
and no concern, therefore,
should undertake the installation of these
methods, unless with the avowed purpose of
eliminating all kinds of graft and special
privileges.
SCHEDULES AS TASKS
The task idea is really so common that we
do not recognize it. Every railroad schedule
consists of a series of tasks, and in the manu­facture
of such articles as sewing machines,
typewriters, and locomotives, the task idea
is illustrated by the schedules according to
which the various parts are started on their
way through the different departments, and
day by day make such progress as will bring
them to the erecting shop at the proper time
to be incorporated into the finished machine
without delay.
126 WOEK^ WAGES, AND PEOPITS
In the case of locomotives, in particular,
the task idea is specifically illustrated by the
dates of shipment set, often months ahead,
which are lived up to in a very remarkable
manner. When the shipping date of a loco­motive
has been set, there has also been set
the time when every piece must start on its
course through the shops to arrive at the
appointed time in the erecting shop. Inas­much
as this work has been done over and
over again, all the principal men in the
works know by heart the schedules of all the
parts they are concerned with, and what
their tasks are.
Wherever the work is of one general char­acter,
this condition exists, for each foreman,
and in many cases the various workmen, soon
learn the proper routes and time-schedules of
the parts they are concerned with.
The grand task of shipping at a predeter­mined
date, then, consists of the sum of those
detail tasks, each of which must be per­formed
properly and in the proper sequence
if the shipping date is to be lived up to.
SCHEDULING MISCELLANEOUS WOEK
Where the work is miscellaneous in char­acter,
however, the task of having each part
THE TASK IDEA 137
go through the proper sequence of operations
and arrive at the erecting shop in the order
wanted is not so easy. As a matter of fact,
it is my feeling that the inability to get mis­cellaneous
work through a shop on time be­cause
of lack of proper schedules, and the
delays caused thereby, are often the source
of as much expense as inefficient work on the
part of the operative.
In a small shop one capable man can often
so pla