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by the man who stood over him with a watch: 'Now pick up a pig and walk'; Now sit down and rest,' and at half-past five in the afternoon Schmidt had loaded 47 tons of pig-iron on to the car. It was then merely a question of picking out other men of the Schmidt type. Only eight were found in this particular gang, but enough of the ox-type were found either in the yard or outside; and more suitable work was found for the sixtyseven men who were not the right men in the right place when loading pig-iron. By the end of the third year in which Taylor's methods had been applied at the Bethlehem Steel Company, the number of yard-labourers was reduced from between 600 and 400 to about 140 (of whom only two were drinking men), while the average number of tons handled was increased from 16 to 59 per man per day, the average daily wage raised from $1.15 to $1.88, and the average cost of handling a long ton lowered from 73 cents to 3 cents. In this reduced cost are included the office and tool-room expenses as required by the new system of management, and all the wages of labour-superintendents, foremen, clerks, time-study men, and others.

There is the whole story. It all points one way; there is no other side to it. The men were better paid, happier and soberer, and they worked fewer hours; the Company increased the quantity and quality of its output at a reduced cost per unit, and experienced no labour troubles. In fact, wherever the Taylor system has been applied, there have been no strikes or labour troubles; and the system has been applied to every form of industry and office management during a period of thirtyfive years.

The illustration given above tells the whole story as regards increasing the production of man, but the science of efficiency has been applied with equally remarkable results to the production of machines. In one case, the gain in time made through running metal-cutting machines according to scientific principles ranged from two and a half times the speed in the lowest instance to nine times the speed in the highest. The new theory, however, meets perhaps with its greatest triumphs in those trades and occupations where the saving comes not alone from the observance of the laws of fatigue,

nor alone from the speeding-up of the machines or contrivances involved, but thirdly and perhaps chiefly, from the imposition of system and order, and the proper relation of the workman to his tools. One of Taylor's followers, Mr Frank B. Gilbreth, experimented with bricklaying, a trade thousands of years old, but one in which there has been little or no improvement in the implements or materials used or in the method of their employment. Mr Gilbreth, having made an intense study and analysis of each movement of the bricklayer, eliminated, one after another, all unnecessary movements, and substituted fast for slow movements. He studied the best height for the mortar-box and the brick-pile, and then designed an adjustable scaffold, with a table on it, upon which all of the materials were placed, so as to keep the bricks, the mortar, the man, and the wall in their proper relative positions. By this means the bricklayer is saved the exertion of stooping down to the level of his feet for each brick and each trowelful of mortar and then straightening up again. Under Mr Gilbreth's system there is no need for the bricklayer to turn the brick over, or end to end, to examine it before laying, since the sorting is done by cheap labour on the ground, and the bricks, all good ones, have their best edge uppermost in the hod, which has its proper position on the adjustable scaffold. The mortar is mixed to such a consistency that there is no need for tapping the brick after it is in place. By these simple means the art of laying a brick was reduced from eighteen movements to five, and the capacity of skilful workmen raised from 120 bricks per man per hour to 350, attended, of course, by a very considerable increase in pay.

Another classic instance of this general type of increased efficiency was in the inspection of bicycle ballbearings, in which, by eliminating the girls unsuited to the work, by resting the girls for ten minutes every hour and a half, and by other changes, thirty-five girls came to do the work formerly done by one hundred and twenty. The accuracy at the higher speed was twothirds greater than at the lower speed; the girls' wages were increased by from 80 to 100 per cent.; and, in addition to the four periods of recreation during the day,

their hours of labour were shortened from ten and a half to eight and a half hours.

It is instinctive to every man, and perhaps particularly to Englishmen, to look askance at innovations. They have a constitutional dislike of being jerked out of their ancient ways, and they protect themselves by advancing a host of objections. Thus Taylor's ideas met with a cold reception in this country. One argument advanced was that, after all, they did not make a new man of the labourer and did not solve our social and industrial problems. No one can read the history of the movement without seeing that, among other benefits, this is precisely what it does tend to achieve. Taylor's great hope from his new type of management was that it would largely eliminate the wage question as a source of dispute. 'What constitutes a fair day's work will be a question for scientific investigation, instead of a subject to be bargained and haggled over. Soldiering will cease to exist because the object for soldiering will no longer exist.' 'The close intimate cooperation, the constant personal contact between the two sides, will tend to diminish friction and discontent. It is difficult for two people whose interests are the same, and who work side by side in accomplishing the same object, all day long, to keep up a quarrel.'

Moreover, scientific management tends to solve our social problems, because it takes care of the individual. It is far from being merely a trick for dealing with men en masse for the sake of increased output. It does not lend itself to 'driving,' to pushing-through a piece of work at high speed regardless of the workman. As we have indicated, it not only finds out what work the individual can best perform, but it keeps the individual fit and happy in that work. With women-workers each is made to feel that she is the object of especial care and interest on the part of the management, and that, if anything goes wrong with her, she can always have a helper and teacher in the management to lean upon. One of the regulations is that all young women are to be given two consecutive days of rest (with pay) each month, to be taken whenever they choose. Still further, outside of the factory, all large undertakings in America now have Welfare Centres for their employees, with

cost-price restaurants, club-rooms and recreation-grounds. Hartford, in Connecticut, practically guarantees all its skilled labourers continuous employment; the manufacturers, through their own labour bureau, notify one another a week in advance whom they are to lay off and whom they wish to take on.

There are no statistics to show the extent of the Taylor movement and what its total result has been. That result cannot be measured by figures, since efficiency is a spiritual force. Moreover, not all the manifestations of the new spirit owe their birth directly or indirectly to Taylor. It is a wide-spread, national movement. Although there is still much misgovernment and political corruption in the cities, efficiency is the great cry, in all parts of the land and in all departments of life. It may become nauseating where it is used merely to vaunt material wealth and the growth of 'big business,' but it is a welcome slogan if it means, as it should mean, that through efficiency the material things of life are to be made less material, are to consume less of our time and patience, are to sink to their proper place. The average wage of the members of the Typographical Union of New York City, including the periods when they are out of work, is over a pound a day of eight hours, whereas the average wage of compositors in London has been less than eight shillings a day of nine hours or over. According to the last report on comparative prices of H.M. Board of Trade, the cost of living in America is only 50 per cent. more than here.

The time has gone by when a nation can afford to neglect any proved reform, whatever its origin. England is forced to change and improve, whether she will or no, if she is to compete with other nations and bear the burden imposed by the war. The day of rule-of-thumb methods and dry-rot conditions must come to an end. Trade overleaps all prejudices and former hatreds, and follows where most money is made; and most money is made where there is the greatest efficiency.

Already the efficiency, i.e. the output, of the Canadian workman is appreciably higher than that of the English or Scottish workman; and the difference is bound to increase, ruinously for these Islands, unless there is a general awakening. Strips of moulding that cost 9d.

each delivered from Germany before the war, still cost four shillings and sixpence made in England after three years of war. Those strips, and a host of other things, will climb any tariff wall that can be set up after the war, unless England is better organised. The sole protection, the sole preparedness, consists in a highly trained and intelligently educated democracy. Every English man, woman and child must come to realise what efficiency means, and must insist with himself and all those with whom he comes in contact that it shall be attained. There is no walk in life, even as there is no action of our daily existence, where efficiency, both a general sense of it and its constant application, would not help to make both our own and the nation's task lighter and nobler. The man reading a story aloud to the cigar-rollers in a Cuban factory, the feat of washing the clothes of fifty thousand workers on the Panama canal over a period of seven years with scarcely the loss of a handkerchief, the stopping of trains' at the crack' as is done in New York subways, the taking of ordertickets for Paris omnibuses in order to avoid disgraceful scrambling, the feeding of 25,000 people from one breaddepôt without crowding, as has been done for nearly three years in Belgium-these are instances of what can be done when some one man has a sense of causes and consequences.

One might think that a reform of this nature could be left to fight its own way, as a commercial reform, if the savings are as great as represented. It has made its way, and that rapidly, in the States; but the estranging sea lies between us, and here the cause of efficiency or scientific management needs preaching from the housetops if it is to win attention. Taylor's books are more and more in demand, but as yet no school has been founded, as in America, to train efficiency superintendents, and neither the Government nor the Borough Councils have shown any anxiety to put the new idea into practice. The recently issued report (March 1917) of the special committee on munitions-output emphasises the need of Government action, showing how much might be saved if only the commonest laws of fatigue were observed. One factory, continually experimenting on its own initiative, has found its output distinctly larger

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