are doing as well or better than their competitors are likely to do, and this in nine cases out of ten means high wages and low labor cost, and both parties should be equally anxious for these conditions to prevail. With them the employer can hold his own with the competitors at all times and secure sufficient work to keep his men busy even in dull times. Without them both parties may do well enough in busy times, but both parties are likely to suffer when work becomes scarce. The possibility of coupling high wages with a low labor cost rests mainly upon the enormous difference between the amount of work which a first-class man can do under favorable circumstances and the work which is actually done by the average man. That there is a difference between the average and first-class man is known to all employers, but that the first-class man can do in most cases two to four times as much as is done on an average is known to but few, and is fully realized only by those who have made a thorough and scientific study of the possibilities of men. The writer has found this enormous difference between the first-class and average man to exist in all of the trades and branches of labor which he has investigated, and this covers a large field, as he, together with several of his friends, has been engaged with more than usual opportunities for twenty years past in carefully and systematically studying this subject. It must be distinctly understood that in referring to the possibilities of a first-class man the writer does not mean what he can do when on a spurt or when he is overexerting himself, but what a good man can keep up for a long term of years without injury to his health, and become happier and thrive under. The second and equally interesting fact upon which the possibility of coupling high wages with low labor cost rests, is that firstclass men are not only willing but glad to work at their maximum speed, providing they are paid from 30 to 100 per cent more than the average of their trade. The exact percentage by which the wages must be increased in order to make them work to their maximum is not a subject to be theorized over, settled by boards of directors sitting in solemn conclave, nor voted upon by trade unions. It is a fact inherent in human nature and has only been determined through the slow and difficult process of trial and error. The writer has found, for example, after making many mistakes above and below the proper mark, that to get the maximum output for ordinary shop work requiring neither especial brains, very close application, skill, nor extra hard work, such, for instance, as the more ordinary kinds of routine machine-shop work, it is necessary to pay about 30 per cent more than the average. For ordinary day labor requiring little brains or special skill, but calling for strength, severe bodily exertion and fatigue, it is necessary to pay from 50 to 60 per cent above the average. For work requiring special skill or brains, coupled with close application but without severe bodily exertion, such as the more difficult and delicate machinist's work, from 70 per cent to 80 per cent beyond the average. And for work requiring skill, brains, close application, strength, and severe bodily exertion, such, for instance, as that involved in running a well-run steam hammer doing miscellaneous work, from 80 per cent to 100 per cent beyond the average. Men will not work at their best unless assured a good liberal increase, which must be permanent. It is the writer's judgment, on the other hand, that for their own good it is as important that workmen should not be very much overpaid, as that they should not be underpaid. If overpaid, many will work irregularly and tend to become more or less shiftless, extravagant, and dissipated. It does not do for most men to get rich too fast. The writer's observation, however, would lead him to the conclusion that most men tend to become more instead of less thrifty when they receive the proper increase for an extra hard day's work, as, for example, the percentages of increase referred to above. They live rather better, begin to save money, become more sober, and work more steadily. And this certainly forms one of the strongest reasons for advocating this type of management. 306. The Nature of Scientific Management24 BY MAURICE L. COOKE What we want in any industrial establishment, if we are to reach the highest point in productivity, is to have every individual use his highest powers to the best advantage. This is the final goal of scientific management. It is the goal both for the individual and for society. If you can picture a society in which every unit is using his highest faculties to the best advantage, you will see that it approximates the millennium. The moment you adopt this as a standard, however, you must frame your organization so that every employee, from the humblest to the highest, is given a chance to exercise his highest powers to the best advantage. He must not only not be hindered, but he must "Adapted from "The Spirit and Social Significance of Scientific Management," in the Journal of Political Economy, XXI, 485-487 (1913). be helped, and helped to the extent of pointing out and developing faculties and powers of which he may have been unaware. Under scientific management we think that we are learning how to do this. Alfred Marshall has called attention to the fact that perhaps half the brains of the world are in the so-called working classes and that "of this a great part is fruitless for want of opportunity." Under the new methods this great storehouse of wealth will be tapped, not we hope for the benefit of the few, but for the benefit of all. To define scientific management is no easy task. Hugo Diemer says that Mr. Taylor considers a manufacturing establishment just as one would an intricate machine. He analyzes each process into its ultimate simple elements and compares each of these simplest steps or processes with an ideal or perfect condition. He then makes all due allowance for rational and practical conditions and establishes an attainable commercial standard for every step. The next process is that of attaining, continuously, the standard, involving both quality and interlocking, or assembling, of all these primal elements into a well-arranged, well-built, smooth-running machine. Mr. Taylor says that the philosophy of scientific management is embraced under these four principles: 1. The development of a science in place of "rule of thumb" for each element of the work. 2. The scientific selection and training of the workman. 3. The bringing of the science and the scientifically trained workman together through the co-operation of the management with the man. 4. An almost equal division of the work and the responsibility between the management and the workmen, the management taking over all work for which they are better fitted than the workmen, while in the past almost all of the work, and the greater part of the responsibility, were thrown upon the workman. Quite informally, scientific management may be thus defined: 1. It is a definite working policy applicable wherever human effort is put forth. 2. It is the introduction of the laboratory method in everyday affairs. 3. It is the acceptance of the dictates of science instead of those of personal opinion and tradition. 4. It is the establishment of the fact that not to know is no crime that the crime is not being willing to find out. 5. It is a type of co-operation more intensive than the world has yet seen. 6. It is filling in-not bridging-the chasm between capital and labor. 7. It is making our industrial life square up with the best we know in our personal and social relations. 8. It involves a very radical change in the attitude both of the men and of the management to the work on which they are mutually engaged. Practically everything that is done in developing scientific management in an establishment has for its object the setting of tasks. A task is simply a fair day's work and let us not forget-one that can be repeated day in and day out, year in and year out, if necessary, without detriment to the physical, mental and moral wellbeing of the person performing it. Unless you are able to set tasks you cannot have scientific management. 307. The Attitude of Organized Labor Toward Scientific Management25 We are opposed to any system of shop management which requires one man to stand over another, timing him with a stop watch in order to speed him up beyond his normal capacity. In addition to the brutality of such a proceeding, no stop watch time study can possibly be accurate. Every physical act performed by man is preceded by a mental process. The greater the amount of skill required in the work, the greater the mental process preceding the physical expression of it, and there is no method known to efficiency engineers or others by which a time study can be made by a stop watch or any other time-measuring device of the mental process which precedes the physical act. The mental process being a necessary part of the work itself, the failure to make a time study of that operation of the work makes the study inaccurate, and secondly, worthless as a basis for computing compensation. To establish a bonus or premium system upon such a time study is wrong, induces the workman to toil beyond his normal capacity, and the whole system has a tendency to wear the worker to a nervous wreck, destroy his physical and mental health, and ultimately land him as a charge upon the community in some of our eleemosynary institutions. 308. Modern Industry and Craft Skill20 The one great asset of the wage worker has been his craftsmanship. We think of craftsmanship ordinarily as the ability to manipulate skilfully the tools and materials of a craft or trade. But true 25 Adapted from resolutions passed by the National Convention of the American Federation of Labor, November 22, 1912: from Report of Proceedings, 346. 26 An editorial with the above caption in the International Moulders' Journal, LI, 197–198 (1915). craftsmanship is much more than this. The really essential element in it is not manual skill and dexterity, but something stored up in the mind of the worker. This something is partly the intimate knowledge of the character and uses of the tools, materials, and processes of the craft which tradition and experience have given the worker. But beyond this and above this, it is the knowledge which enables him to understand and overcome the constantly arising difficulties that grow out of variations, not only in tools and materials, but in the conditions under which the work must be done. In the past for the most part the skilful manipulation of the tools and materials of a craft and this craftsmanship of the brain have been bound up together in the person of the worker and have been his possession. And it is this unique possession of craft knowledge and craft skill on the part of a body of wage workers-that is, their possession of these things and the employer's ignorance of them that has enabled the workers to organize and force better terms from the employers. On this unique possession has depended more than on any other one factor the strength of trade unionism and the ability of unions to improve the conditions of their members. This being true, it is evident that the greatest blow that could be delivered against unionism and the organized workers would be the separation of craft knowledge from craft skill. For if the skilled use of tools could be secured from workmen apart from the craft knowledge which only years of experience can build up, the production of "skilled workmen" from unskilled hands would be a matter in almost any craft of but a few days or weeks; any craft would be thrown open to the competition of an almost unlimited labor supply; the craftsmen in it would be practically at the mercy of the employer. Of late this separation of craft knowledge and craft skill has actually taken place in an ever-widening area and with an everincreasing acceleration. Its process is shown in the two main forms which it has been taking. The first of these is the introduction of machinery and the standardization of tools, machinery, products, and process, which make production possible on a large scale and the specialization of the workmen. Each workman under such circumstances needs and can exercise only a little craft knowledge and a little craft skill. But he is still a craftsman, though only a narrow one and subject to much competition from below. The second form, more insidious and more dangerous than the first, but to the significance of which most of us have not yet become aroused, is the gathering up of all this scattered craft knowledge, systematizing it and concentrating it in the hands of the employer, and then doling |