Shop Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor (top books to read .TXT) 📕

company to stimulate the personal ambition of every man in their employ

by promoting them either in wages or position whenever they deserved it

and the opportunity came.

“A careful record has been kept of each man’s good points as well as his

shortcomings, and one of the principal duties of each foreman was to

make this careful study of his men so that substantial justice could be

done to each. When men throughout an establishment are paid varying

rates of day-work wages according to their individual worth, some being

above and some below the average, it cannot be for the interest of those

receiving high pay to join a union with the cheap men.

“No system of management, however good, should be applied in a wooden

way. The proper personal relations should always be maintained between

the employers and men; and even the prejudices of the workmen should be

considered in dealing with them.

“The employer who goes through his works with kid gloves on, and is

never known to dirty his hands or clothes, and who either talks to his

men in a condescending or patronizing way, or else not at all, has no

chance whatever of ascertaining their real thoughts or feelings.

“Above all is it desirable that men should be talked to on their own

level by those who are over them. Each man should be encouraged to

discuss any trouble which he may have, either in the works or outside,

with those over him. Men would far rather even be blamed by their

bosses, especially if the ‘tearing out’ has a touch of human nature and

feeling in it, than to be passed by day after day without a word, and

with no more notice than if they were part of the machinery.

“The opportunity which each man should have of airing his mind freely,

and having it out with his employers, is a safety-valve; and if the

superintendents are reasonable men, and listen to and treat with respect

what their men have to say, there is absolutely no reason for labor

unions and strikes.

“It is not the large charities (however generous they may be) that are

needed or appreciated by workmen so much as small acts of personal

kindness and sympathy, which establish a bond of friendly feeling

between them and their employers.

“The moral effect of this system on the men is marked. The feeling that

substantial justice is being done them renders them on the whole much

more manly, straightforward, and truthful. They work more cheerfully,

and are more obliging to one another and their employers. They are not

soured, as under the old system, by brooding over the injustice done

them; and their spare minutes are not spent to the same extent in

criticizing their employers.”

The writer has a profound respect for the working men of this country.

He is proud to say that he has as many firm friends among them as among

his other friends who were born in a different class, and he believes

that quite as many men of fine character and ability are to be found

among the former as in the latter. Being himself a college educated man,

and having filled the various positions of foreman, master mechanic,

chief draftsman, chief engineer, general superintendent, general

manager, auditor, and head of the sales department, on the one hand, and

on the other hand having been for several years a workman, as

apprentice, laborer, machinist, and gang boss, his sympathies are

equally divided between the two classes.

He is firmly convinced that the best interests of workmen and their

employers are the same; so that in his criticism of labor unions he

feels that he is advocating the interests of both sides. The following

paragraphs on this subject are quoted from the paper written in 1895 and

above referred to:

“The author is far from taking the view held by many manufacturers that

labor unions are an almost unmitigated detriment to those who join them,

as well as to employers and the general public.

“The labor unions—particularly the trades unions of England—have

rendered a great service, not only to their members, but to the world,

in shortening the hours of labor and in modifying the hardships and

improving the conditions of wage workers.

“In the writer’s judgment the system of treating with labor unions would

seem to occupy a middle position among the various methods of adjusting

the relations between employers and men.

“When employers herd their men together in classes, pay all of each

class the same wages, and offer none of them any inducements to work

harder or do better than the average, the only remedy for the men lies

in combination; and frequently the only possible answer to encroachments

on the part of their employers is a strike.

“This state of affairs is far from satisfactory to either employers or

men, and the writer believes the system of regulating the wages and

conditions of employment of whole classes of men by conference and

agreement between the leaders of unions and manufacturers to be vastly

inferior, both in its moral effect on the men and on the material

interests of both parties, to the plan of stimulating each workman’s

ambition by paying him according to his individual worth, and without

limiting him to the rate of work or pay of the average of his class.”

The amount of work which a man should do in a day, what constitutes

proper pay for this work, and the maximum number of hours per day which

a man should work, together form the most important elements which are

discussed between workmen and their employers. The writer has attempted

to show that these matters can be much better determined by the expert

time student than by either the union or a board of directors, and he

firmly believes that in the future scientific time study will establish

standards which will be accepted as fair by both sides.

There is no reason why labor unions should not be so constituted as to

be a great help both to employers and men. Unfortunately, as they now

exist they are in many, if not most, cases a hindrance to the prosperity

of both.

The chief reasons for this would seem to be a failure on the part of the

workmen to understand the broad principles which affect their best

interests as well as those of their employers. It is undoubtedly true,

however, that employers as a whole are not much better informed nor more

interested in this matter than their workmen.

One of the unfortunate features of labor unions as they now exist is

that the members look upon the dues which they pay to the union, and the

time that they devote to it, as an investment which should bring them an

annual return, and they feel that unless they succeed in getting either

an increase in wages or shorter hours every year or so, the money which

they pay into the union is wasted. The leaders of the unions realize

this and, particularly if they are paid for their services, are apt to

spend considerable of their time scaring up grievances whether they

exist or not This naturally fosters antagonism instead of friendship

between the two sides. There are, of course, marked exceptions to this

rule; that of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers being perhaps the

most prominent.

The most serious of the delusions and fallacies under which workmen, and

particularly those in many of the unions, are suffering is that it is

for their interest to limit the amount of work which a man should do in

a day.

There is no question that the greater the daily output of the average

individual in a trade the greater will be the average wages earned in

the trade, and that in the long run turning out a large amount of work

each day will give them higher wages, steadier and more work, instead of

throwing them out of work. The worst thing that a labor union can do for

its members in the long run is to limit the amount of work which they

allow each workman to do in a day. If their employers are in a

competitive business, sooner or later those competitors whose workmen do

not limit the output will take the trade away from them, and they will

be thrown out of work. And in the meantime the small day’s work which

they have accustomed themselves to do demoralizes them, and instead of

developing as men do when they use their strength and faculties to the

utmost, and as men should do from year to year, they grow lazy, spend

much of their time pitying themselves, and are less able to compete with

other men. Forbidding their members to do more than a given amount of

work in a day has been the greatest mistake made by the English trades

unions. The whole of that country is suffering more or less from this

error now. Their workmen are for this reason receiving lower wages than

they might get, and in many cases the men, under the influence of this

idea, have grown so slow that they would find it difficult to do a good

day’s work even if public opinion encouraged them in it.

In forcing their members to work slowly they use certain cant phrases

which sound most plausible until their real meaning is analyzed. They

continually use the expression, “Workmen should not be asked to do more

than a fair day’s work,” which sounds right and just until we come to

see how it is applied. The absurdity of its usual application would be

apparent if we were to apply it to animals. Suppose a contractor had in

his stable a miscellaneous collection of draft animals, including small

donkeys, ponies, light horses, carriage horses and fine dray horses, and

a law were to be made that no animal in the stable should be allowed to

do more than “a fair day’s work” for a donkey. The injustice of such a

law would be apparent to every one. The trades unions, almost without an

exception, admit all of those in the trade to membership—providing they

pay their dues. And the difference between the first-class men and the

poor ones is quite as great as that between fine dray horses and

donkeys. In the case of horses this difference is well known to every

one; with men, however, it is not at all generally recognized. When a

labor union, under the cloak of the expression “a fair day’s work,”

refuses to allow a first-class man to do any more work than a slow or

inferior workman can do, its action is quite as absurd as limiting the

work of a fine dray horse to that of a donkey would be.

Promotion, high wages, and, in some cases, shorter hours of work are the

legitimate ambitions of a workman, but any scheme which curtails the

output should be recognized as a device for lowering wages in the long

run.

Any limit to the maximum wages which men are allowed to earn in a trade

is equally injurious to their best interests. The “minimum wage” is the

least harmful of the rules which are generally adopted by trades unions,

though it frequently works an injustice to the better workmen. For

example, the writer has been used to having his machinists earn all the

way from $1.50 to seven and eight dollars per day, according to the

individual worth of the men. Supposing a rule were made that no

machinist should be paid less than $2.50 per day. It is evident that if

an employer were forced to pay $2.50 per day to men who were only worth

$1.50 or $1.75, in