The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-03-25
CONSERVATION OF
 HUMAN EFFORT
How Industrial Output Is
 Increased-Worknen Re ceiye 30 Per Cent. Higher Wages - Scientific Man
 agement in Many Trades.

agement in Many Trades.
 James Mapes Dodge. Chairman, Ling
 Belt Company, Philadelphia.
 1 (Exclusive Service The Survey Press i Bureau)
 (Mr. Dodge has been very successful l; in introducing methods Of scientific nagement in the business of the i Link Belt Company Of Philadelphia. ! and was one of the most effective witnesses called by Mir. Louis D. Bran l deis, counsel for the seaboard shippers 1 in the recent rate hearings before the 1 Interstate Commerce CoDlmiSsiOn)
 1 Five or six years ago, I was proud ] of the fact that I was the head of a l concern which was so well managed 1 that it would have been an insult for anyone to suggest that we could in- 1 prove our methods even in the minut- l est particular.
 l But one rainy day I went down to the extreme corner of our grounds and 1 found two men in q shed breaking up l. coal with a piece of joist. A year be- 1 fore, when the blacksrniths had been
 much driven and their helpers did not have time to bring in the coal | and break it up for them, they had
 asked the boss laborer for two men ! to break coal. At the end of twelve
 months they were still at work and might still be if 1 hadn't found it.
 This case extreme as it was, showed
 how our magnificent management fail ed for we manufacture and sell ma 1 chimes for crushing coal.
 | After while MT. Frederick w. l Taylor told me that he was turning steel, cutting steel, at Bethlehem at a
 rate which to me was beyond credence. | I went and saw him do what he said I he was doing but I couldn't even be- I !, nf my was so remarkable. MT. Taylor's tools which were made to work the hardest 1 steel at first failed on cast iron but ] after repeated Improvements he pro- ! duced some that did wonderful work on the softer material Then We found l that we could sometimes do work. so | far as the actual cutting was concern 1 cd, ten times as fast as before. We l did not turn out ten times as much 1 product. because a great deal of the 1 time was occupied in getting the steel or cast iron ready, and the time ! of preparation also had to be counted in. With modern guns we can shoot ten or twenty or thirty or forty bull 1 lets about as fast as we could shoot one with the gun In which the old days i took five minutes to load. So Mir. 1 -aylor did with his steel.
 ] It became appar renl to us that if we {, ere going to turn out work twice or hree times as fast We had done, be- pre- we must make a change in our cale of pay. Our rate was fixed and didn't make much difference wheth- a man made one or two tools a ay or one an hour. But if he were oing to make ten in an hour and 9 multiply our output by five, it was pparent that We needed some rudi-
 lentary accounting to- make our pay iarmonize with the increased speed
 which MT. Taylor made us do our ;ork. ~
 At first the question came up as to
 whether the workmen would work at
 this increased rate of speed. We sim
 ply had to get men who would permit
 their tools to do tine work at the new
 rate. A few of the old men left us
 because after seeing their lathes turn
 around at a low speed for twenty or
 thirty or forty years it proved too
 great a nervous strain on them when
 the rate was increased so greatly. It
 kept them too intent upon their lathe
 expecting a disaster. But the younger
 men were fascinated and the large
 majority are still With US. The men in shops under scientific management are well satisfied. A sympathetic strike was called to aid the trolley car mo- tormen and conductors in Philadelphia in 1910 that affected workmen in all sorts of enterprises. A certain factory running under scientific mana cement was surrounded by four other estab- lishments. Three of the four lost about one-half of their men through the sympathetic strike and in the fourth all went out. In the shop run ming under scientific management just one man quit work.
 Now this was no accident but is be- cause the very best friends that the workmen have under scientific manage- ment are their employers. Formerly we would tell man we would give him ten cents for a certain piece of work Then if he reduced his time so that ne could make two. We would reduce the rate to five cents because we thought the man was making too much money. But we are getting twice as much work for the same money while the men had not been get ting any more pay whereas We ought to have congratulated the man on what he made and both be happy.
 We adopted a new rule which was that a rate once set must not be re- duced unless the shape of the piece or the tool or method by which it is made was changed and that a man should he paid when le did his work It was a hard dose to swallow for sometimes men made twice or three times the wage they would have work ed for gladly by the day. Once in a | while when l went among them, a man would call out "Well, I got you
 
 teen dollars today '.Good, you might 1 take me to the theatre tonight" All | right, boss. I will"
 All this time We were getting from l q given floor space, from a fixed in ! yestment in light heat and power. in- ! surance. taxes, all overhead expenses | and so on two or three times the pro- duct that had been obta ined before. 1 Only the mems wages increased. ev- 1 erythng else stood the same. Every | item ii the aggregate was steadily ! going down. i
 We next studied Mr. Taylor's idea 1 of tfle function Of machinery and the | application Of his rule that every man | in the factory should do the kind Of | work for which he is best fitted and | that only. If a man is good at a i lathe, let him do that and nothing else 1 Every man admits it when his atten-f ton is called to it but it is only when 1 you prove 1t to men that they fully l realize it. We found. 'for instance : that 1t costs us $53 Q week for the men to get drinking water in one of l the shops Nearly all of these men wanted to drink: they didn't leave their work because they wanted to ; loaf So we hired aboy at five dol 1 lars a week to carry drinking water around the works It increased a mans facility for doing his work. We hired | laborers at twelve dollars week to i help the machinists to get ready for their work and instructors to go around to help the men to do their right thing in the right way What was the result? We made more money