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

the men the greatest obstacle to the attainment of this standard is the

slow pace which they adopt, or the loafing or “soldiering,’” marking

time, as it is called.

This loafing or soldiering proceeds from two causes. First, from the

natural instinct and tendency of men to take it easy, which may be

called natural soldiering. Second, from more intricate second thought

and reasoning caused by their relations with other men, which may be

called systematic soldiering. There is no question that the tendency of

the average man (in all walks of life) is toward working at a slow, easy

gait, and that it is only after a good deal of thought and observation

on his part or as a result of example, conscience, or external pressure

that he takes a more rapid pace.

There are, of course, men of unusual energy, vitality, and ambition who

naturally choose the fastest gait, set up their own standards, and who

will work hard, even though it may be against their best interests. But

these few uncommon men only serve by affording a contrast to emphasize

the tendency of the average.

This common tendency to “take it easy” is greatly increased by bringing

a number of men together on similar work and at a uniform standard rate

of pay by the day.

Under this plan the better men gradually but surely slow down their gait

to that of the poorest and least efficient. When a naturally energetic

man works for a few days beside a lazy one, the logic of the situation

is unanswerable: “Why should I work hard when that lazy fellow gets the

same pay that I do and does only half as much work?”

A careful time study of men working under these conditions will disclose

facts which are ludicrous as well as pitiable.

To illustrate: The writer has timed a naturally energetic workman who,

while going and coming from work, would walk at a speed of from three to

four miles per hour, and not infrequently trot home after a day’s work.

On arriving at his work he would immediately slow down to a speed of

about one mile an hour. When, for example, wheeling a loaded wheelbarrow

he would go at a good fast pace even up hill in order to be as short a

time as possible under load, and immediately on the return walk slow

down to a mile an hour, improving every opportunity for delay short of

actually sitting down. In order to be sure not to do more than his lazy

neighbor he would actually tire himself in his effort to go slow.

These men were working under a foreman of good reputation and one highly

thought of by his employer who, when his attention was called to this

state of things, answered: “Well, I can keep them from sitting down, but

the devil can’t make them get a move on while they are at work.”

The natural laziness of men is serious, but by far the greatest evil

from which both workmen and employers are suffering is the systematic

soldiering which is almost universal under all of the ordinary schemes

of management and which results from a careful study on the part of the

workmen of what they think will promote their best interests.

The writer was much interested recently to hear one small but

experienced golf caddy boy of twelve explaining to a green caddy who had

shown special energy and interest the necessity of going slow and

lagging behind his man when he came up to the ball, showing him that

since they were paid by the hour, the faster they went the less money

they got, and finally telling him that if he went too fast the other

boys would give him a licking.

This represents a type of systematic soldiering which is not, however,

very serious, since it is done with the knowledge of the employer, who

can quite easily break it up if he wishes.

The greater part of the systematic soldiering, however, is done by the

men with the deliberate object of keeping their employers ignorant of

how fast work can be done.

So universal is soldiering for this purpose, that hardly a competent

workman can be found in a large establishment, whether he works by the

day or on piece work, contract work or under any of the ordinary systems

of compensating labor, who does not devote a considerable part of his

time to studying just how slowly he can work and still convince his

employer that he is going at a good pace.

The causes for this are, briefly, that practically all employers

determine upon a maximum sum which they feel it is right for each of

their classes of employees to earn per day, whether their men work by

the day or piece.

Each workman soon finds out about what this figure is for his particular

case, and he also realizes that when his employer is convinced that a

man is capable of doing more work than he has done, he will find sooner

or later some way of compelling him to do it with little or no increase

of pay.

Employers derive their knowledge of how much of a given class of work

can be done in a day from either their own experience, which has

frequently grown hazy with age, from casual and unsystematic observation

of their men, or at best from records which are kept, showing, the

quickest time in which each job has been done. In many cases the

employer will feel almost certain that a given job can be done faster

than it has been, but he rarely cares to take the drastic measures

necessary to force men to do it in the quickest time, unless he has an

actual record, proving conclusively how fast the work can be done.

It evidently becomes for each man’s interest, then, to see that no job

is done faster than it has been in the past. The younger and less

experienced men are taught this by their elders, and all possible

persuasion and social pressure is brought to bear upon the greedy and

selfish men to keep them from making new records which result in

temporarily increasing their wages, while all those who come after them

are made to work harder for the same old pay.

Under the best day work of the ordinary type, when accurate records are

kept of the amount of work done by each man and of his efficiency, and

when each man’s wages are raised as he improves, and those who fail to

rise to a certain standard are discharged and a fresh supply of

carefully selected men are given work in their places, both the natural

loafing and systematic soldiering can be largely broken up. This can be

done, however, only when the men are thoroughly convinced that there is

no intention of establishing piece work even in the remote future, and

it is next to impossible to make men believe this when the work is of

such a nature that they believe piece work to be practicable. In most

cases their fear of making a record which will be used as a basis for

piece work will cause them to soldier as much as they dare.

It is, however, under piece work that the art of systematic soldiering

is thoroughly developed. After a workman has had the price per piece of

the work he is doing lowered two or three times as a result of his

having worked harder and increased his output, he is likely to entirely

lose sight of his employer’s side of the case and to become imbued with

a grim determination to have no more cuts if soldiering can prevent it.

Unfortunately for the character of the workman, soldiering involves a

deliberate attempt to mislead and deceive his employer, and thus upright

and straightforward workmen are compelled to become more or less

hypocritical. The employer is soon looked upon as an antagonist, if not

as an enemy, and the mutual confidence which should exist between a

leader and his men, the enthusiasm, the feeling that they are all

working for the same end and will share in the results, is entirely

lacking.

The feeling of antagonism under the ordinary piecework system becomes in

many cases so marked on the part of the men that any proposition made by

their employers, however reasonable, is looked upon with suspicion.

Soldiering becomes such a fixed habit that men will frequently take

pains to restrict the product of machines which they are running when

even a large increase in output would involve no more work on their

part.

On work which is repeated over and over again and the volume of which is

sufficient to permit it, the plan of making a contract with a competent

workman to do a certain class of work and allowing him to employ his own

men subject to strict limitations, is successful.

As a rule, the fewer the men employed by the contactor and the smaller

the variety of the work, the greater will be the success under the

contract system, the reason for this being that the contractor, under

the spur of financial necessity, makes personally so close a study of

the quickest time in which the work can be done that soldiering on the

part of his men becomes difficult and the best of them teach laborers or

lower-priced helpers to do the work formerly done by mechanics.

The objections to the contract system are that the machine tools used by

the contractor are apt to deteriorate rapidly, his chief interest being

to get a large output, whether the tools are properly cared for or not,

and that through the ignorance and inexperience of the contractor in

handling men, his employees are frequently unjustly treated.

These disadvantages are, however, more than counterbalanced by the

comparative absence of soldiering on the part of the men.

The greatest objection to this system is the soldiering which the

contractor himself does in many cases, so as to secure a good price for

his next contract.

It is not at all unusual for a contractor to restrict the output of his

own men and to refuse to adopt improvements in machines, appliances, or

methods while in the midst of a contract, knowing that his next contract

price will be lowered in direct proportion to the profits which he has

made and the improvements introduced.

Under the contract system, however, the relations between employers and

men are much more agreeable and normal than under piece work, and it is

to be regretted that owing to the nature of the work done in most shops

this system is not more generally applicable.

The writer quotes as follows from his paper on “A Piece Rate System,”

read in 1895, before The American Society of Mechanical Engineers:

“Cooperation, or profit sharing, has entered the mind of every student

of the subject as one of the possible and most attractive solutions of

the problem; and there have been certain instances, both in England and

France, of at least a partial success of cooperative experiments.

“So far as I know, however, these trials have been made either in small

towns, remote from the manufacturing centers, or in industries which in

many respects are not subject to ordinary manufacturing conditions.

“Cooperative experiments have failed, and, I think, are generally

destined to fail, for several reasons, the first and most important of

which is, that no form of cooperation has yet been devised in which each

individual is allowed free scope for his personal ambition. Personal

ambition always has been and will remain a more powerful incentive to