Art. 6.-EFFICIENCY. 1. Shop Management. By F. Winslow Taylor. Harpers, 1911. 2. The Principles of Scientific Management. Winslow Taylor. Harpers, 1911. By F. 3. Work, Wages and Profits. By H. L. Gantt. New York: Engineering Magazine Co., 1913. 4. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Münsterberg. Constable, 1913. 5. Scientific Management. Milford, 1914. By Hugo By Clarence B. Thompson. IN taking their way westward, European habits and fashions follow what has been said to be the course of Empire. All the flotsam and jetsam of European life-Russian dancing, German scholarship, Hungarian musical comedy, Parisian fashions and English literature -are borne on the tide and spread over the American continent. The American manufacturer is ever alert for the latest European inventions; the American scientist, whether he work in the laboratory or in the operatingroom, is in touch with the literature of his speciality coming every month from abroad; and American scholars, reformers and preachers are alive to the latest discoveries in scholarship, the newest movements in social reform, and the most modern trend in religious ideas. All this is as it should be; but what puzzles one is that the tide rarely sets the other way. It is only with the greatest difficulty and after many years that American books, customs, movements, reputations, arts, take root either in England or on the Continent. A few notable exceptions blind us to the truth of this fact. These exceptions are so pronounced, so American, that they create an impression of Europe's becoming Americanised quite rapidly enough; for, though perhaps excellent in themselves, they often are incidentally suggestive of those things in American life and ways that are distinctly alien to the European mind. The cinema has become an almost exclusively American enterprise; ninety-one per cent. of the films shown in the British Isles come from overseas. But this is an exception. Again, Americans, after forty years of insistence, have brought certain comforts, such as central heating, into European hotels, but how long and painful the process has been! And such reforms end at the hotels; the average English or French country-house, to say nothing of more modest dwellings, is still cold and uncomfortable in winter, at least for certain portions of the day and certain portions of the house. This sluggishness of adoption is due to several reasons. It is due partly, as we have indicated, to a distinct liking for one's own way and a distrust of the ways of others; it is due partly to climatic conditions, which are so influential in forming the character of a race, and which in Northern Europe leave men deliberate and incurious, in Southern Europe emotional and easy-going; but it is also due very largely to the fact, merely psychological one might think, yet very real, that any idea coming to Europe from America must fight its way against a strong current that always sets the other way. Naturally, the European, from his superior historical position and his sense of what Europe has recently achieved in thought, art and invention, finds this removal from American influences quite a natural if not beneficial detachment. Better fifty years of Europe than, if not a cycle, at least several hundred years of America. And yet, while admitting the reasons for this imperviousness, while granting that it carries with it a certain protection against whatever is excessive in Western civilisation, one may doubt whether the balance does not represent a loss rather than a gain; the unprejudiced mind, conversant with both civilisations, may feel strongly that Europe would be a better Europe if she permitted herself more easily and quickly to be permeated by Western ideals and achievement. An entirely different social order exists there, an amazing activity in all departments of life; and it could not but give a wider and therefore a truer horizon to our own outlook upon life if Europeans were at least aware of this order and activity, even if these were found not quite fit to appropriate in their entirety. Again and again, on this side of the Atlantic, we are told that certain changes in the body politic and social are quite impossible, when the other side of the Atlantic has proved them quite possible years ago. Conditions differ, but, in general, society advances much more slowly than it might, simply because we are so ignorant of the advances made elsewhere. Content to say that human nature cannot be changed or that the British public would not put up with such and such a reform, it hangs back, rather proud of its conservatism. As a matter of fact, human nature is far more adaptable than we allow, and soon accommodates itself to new conditions, forgetting the old. And, essentially, in our reforms, it is not human nature that we wish to change; rather we are striving to effect certain benefits to society as a whole, let human nature remain or change as it will. The two forces in America that in recent years have done most to put the American house in order and of which next to nothing is known in Europe are Efficiency and Prohibition, both of which undoubtedly interfere with individual freedom, but have come into play in the States without any of that wholesale injustice with which we are always ready to brand any reform. Prohibition has disappointed its opponents, both in the facility with which it has been introduced and established, and in the number and magnitude of the blessings it has conferred. Totally unsuspected benefits have developed, including commercial benefits which have won over the most unbelieving adversaries. But the question of prohibition is too controversial a matter to be discussed here and now. The subject to which I wish to call attention is the other movement, also widespread in the States-that of 'Efficiency,' or Scientific Management,' as it was termed by its founder. I prefer the simpler term 'Efficiency,' since I wish to treat of this force in its general, philosophic aspect, rather than in its application to industrial management. I speak of Efficiency as a force, since its discovery was precisely like the discovery of some hitherto unsuspected force in nature, in that it completely revolutionised old ways of doing things and opened up new fields of achievement. Efficiency was not unknown—it is, indeed, as old as the hills; but only toward the end of the last century, and in America, was it discovered that it could be applied scientifically to all walks of life, and particularly to the output of labour and the management of business. Some scoffed, and continue to scoff, at its (to them) exaggerated claims, pointing out that every big business must have studied Efficiency in its own particular line-it was, in fact, the very air that big businesses breathed. But the unprejudiced observer will, I think, confess that Efficiency or Scientific Management, as it has been preached and practised the last score of years in America, is a great and new idea in the world. It developed in this way. In 1878 a young American, Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose training had been that of a pattern-maker and machinist, entered the machineshop of a steel company at Midvale, Pennsylvania. He quickly rose from the position of a day-labourer to a clerkship; next he became a machinist running one of the lathes; then, after several months, as he turned out more work than other machinists on similar lathes, he was made 'gang-boss' over all the lathes. After about three years, during which time he had been promoted to be foreman of the machine-shop, it was found that the output of the machines had been materially increased, in many cases doubled. What was the secret of this increased output Taylor had scarcely told himself, much less the world, although he had his wild surmises, as do all those who make a real discovery. To obtain this result he had changed the movements of men and machines, and had adopted many new devices for speeding-up, probably to a greater degree than is usual where any increase of production takes place without increase of labour or plant; but as yet he had hit upon no new laws of maximum results, he had not converted his ideas into a science. He was confident, however, that scientific laws existed and could be translated into formulæ that would, with determinable modifications, be applicable for all work. Taylor was now joined by others, as enthusiastic and convinced as himself; and in the years that followed, chiefly in the steel-works of Western Pennsylvania, countless experiments were carried out, countless data tabulated, as to the maximum amount of heavy labour that could reasonably be expected of a first-class man in a day-that is, how many foot-pounds of work a man best suited to a particular job could do. The number of Vol. 229.-No. 454. I foot-pounds varied considerably with the different kinds of heavy labour that were under inspection; in fact, it was soon discovered that there is no direct relation between the horse-power which a man exerts and the tiring effect of the work upon the man. On some kinds of work the man would be tired out when doing only one-eighth of a horse-power, while in others he would feel no greater fatigue after having done half a horsepower. After three long series of experiments, Taylor and his colleagues, by plotting the curves of their data, discovered the central law of heavy-labour maximum, namely, that to obtain the maximum output of a heavy labourer before he is tired out, he must be under load only for a percentage of the day. This percentage varies inversely with the strain caused by each given pull and push on the man's arms; the greater the strain, the smaller the percentage of the day that he should work, if the maximum result is to be obtained from his labour. Thus, when pig-iron is being handled, a first-class workman can be under load only 43 per cent. of the day when each pig weighs 92 pounds, but 58 per cent. of the day when each pig weighs 46 pounds. Taylor got his data by timing men at work with a stop-watch. He experimented with them, noting which men did the most work, and why; seeing whether these men could do more work if they omitted certain movements or rested periodically; and timing the movements and output of these first-class men, so as to know just when these periods of rest should come and how long they should last. In the case of loading pig-iron on to a freight-car, Taylor's data pointed to the conclusion that a man suited to the job ought to be able to load between 47 and 48 tons per day, when the pigs weighed 92 pounds each. As one of the managers at the Bethlehem Steel Company, he then undertook to see whether his experimental data would hold good in practice and on a large scale. The pig-iron gang at these works at this time consisted of seventy-five men, who were lifting pigiron from a ground-pile, walking up an inclined plank and dropping it into a car at the rate of 12 long tons a day. Taylor's first step was to single out one of these men, a Dutchman called Schmidt, of the ox-type of man, and on this first day and all day long Schmidt was told |