The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1911-03-26
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT.


: Gently been brought to public atten.
ton by Mr.. Frederick w Taylor, its
discoverer or inventor as the case
may be. He calls it Scientific Man.
u agement, and in some quarters there
lis a disposition to magnify it to the
proportions and dignity of new phil.
osophy. Mr.. Taylor was educated in
i this country at the Stevens Institute
from which he received his degree,
and spent two years in France and
Germany and year and half in
travel. He started work as a young
in mental capcity and served sue
cessfully as laborer machinist, boss
foreman, and finally as chief engineer
Iof the great steel works of the Mid
vale company. A sketch of him and
the first of a series of three papers by
him dealing with Scientific Manage
ment appeared in the March number
of the American magazine, and the
second paper appears in the April
number
Mr. Taylor was impressed with the
deplorable conditions of industry the
bitter warfare between capital and la
Dor, the neglect of the employer, the
soldering of the employees; the ut
ter wastefulness, inefficiency and
| heartlessness which characterized
nearly all industrial operations. The
desire to change this, to give the EN-
( workman some other ambition than to
pay as low wages as he can and the
workman some other ambition than to
retaliate by doing Just as little work
as he can, presented a problem to the
solution of which Taylor addressed
4 himself. He prosecuted his inquiry
along scientific lines and every con-
clusion reached by him has the sup
/ port of scientific fact, proved beyond
doubt by tens of thousands of ex-
periments, He wanted to make the in
terests of the workman and the man
agement cooperative instead of an
! tagonistic.
With these things in mind MIR Tay
lor began with study of men their
capacity for different tacks, their
Limitations, their movements at work
and their characteristics generally.
He found that in nineteen out of TWEEN
ty industrial establishments the work
men believe it to be directly against
their interests to give the manage
ment their best initiative, and they
work deliberately as slowly as thef
dare while they at the same time try
to make those over them believe that
they are working fast. He recognized
that an incentive was required to
make them do their best-the hope oil
rapid promotion or advancement, high
err wages, shorter hours of work, bet.
ter working conditions, etc. At the
same time he recognized that it was
necessary TO have the workmen con-
tent to do more and highly pleased
| with the new conditions. In other
words, they had TO be shown wherein
scientific management was better for
| them than the old method. that they
got more under it and while they ac
Icomplished more work they did SO
without the expenditure of additional
ENERGY.
| one instance of the new manage
ment is recited in relation to the hand
ling of pig iron. The Bethlehem
/ Steel Company had a pile OF $4,000
tons of pig iron which seventy-fvt
men were delegated to load into cars
They were good, average pig-iroi
/ handlers, We're under good foreman
and the work was done. on the whole
about as fast and as cheaply as /
was anywhere else at that time Thu
pigs weighed 80 pounds each, and th'
gang averaged about 1872 tons pc
man a day. The application of scien
tific management to the loading o
the pig iron increased the average o
each mans work to Ar tons Pc
day. How was it done? Four of thu
seventy-five men, of good character
habits and ambitious, were selectet
for observation. One of the lou
was selected for the test He agree
in consideration of an advance in hi
daily wages from si15 to s1.S5 da.
to do as he was instructed. The re
suit is stated by Mr.. Taylor:
. Schmidt started in to work. ant
all day long, and at regular intervals
was told by the man who stood owe
!, him with watch, Now, pick up pi
and walk. Now sit down and rest
Now, walk-now. rest etc. He work
ed when he was told to work, an
!. rested when he was told to rest, an
! at half past FIVE in the afternoon ha
his 471s tons loaded on the car. An
| he practically never failed to work a
> this pace and do the task that wa
set him during the three wears tina
the writer was at Bethlehem. An
throughout this time he averaged
little more than $1S5 per day, where
as before he had never received owe
s1.l5 per day, which was the rulin
i rate Of wages at that time at Bethle
, hem. One man after another wa
, picked out and trained to handle pi
iron at the rate of 4T12 tons per da!
until all of the pig iron was handle
! at this rate, and all of this gang wer
! receiving so per cent more wages tina
other workmen around them.
: IF Schmidt had been allowed to al