The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1911-08-09
THE SCIENCE
OF BUSINESS
How Modern Methods at.
us feet Employer and
Employee
HINTS ON SCIENTIFIC MANAGE
MENT OF BUSINESS TO IN
CREASE PROFITS.

(Mr. James Dodge has been very
successful in introducing methods of
scientific management in the business
of the Link Belt Company of Phila-
delphia, and was one of the most eff
fective witnesses called by Mr.. Louis
d. Brandeis, counsel for the sea-
board shippers in the recent rate
hearings before the Interstate Com
merce Commission.)
Five or six years ago, l was proud
of the fact that l was the head of a
concern which was so well managed
that it would have been an insult for
anyone to suggest that we could i'm
prove our methods even in the
minutest particular.
But one rainy day l went down to
the extreme corner of our grounds
and found two men in a shed break
ing up coal with piece of joist. A
year before, when the blacksmiths
had been much driven and their help
ers 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 l hadn't
found it out. This case, extreme as
it was, showed how our magnificent
management failed for we manufac-
ture and sell machines for crushing
COAL
After a while Mr.. Frederick w.
Taylor told me that he was turning
steel, cutting steel, at Bethlehem at
a rate which to me was beyond
credence. l went and saw him do
what he said he was doing but l
couldn't even believe the evidence OF
my own eyes, it was so remarkable.
Mr.. Taylor's tools which were made
to work the hardest steel at first fail
ed on cast iron but after repeated i'm
provements he produced some that
did wonderful work on the softer ma
terial. Then we found that we could
sometimes do work, so far as the act
ual cutting was concerned, ten times
as fast as before. We did not turn
out ten times as much product, be-
cause great deal of the time was oc-
cupied in getting the steel or cast
iron ready, and the time of prepara-
ton also had to be counted in.
With modern guns we can shoot ten
or twenty or thirty or forty bullets
about as fast as we could shoot one
with the gun which in the old days
took five minutes to load. So Mr..
Taylor did with his steel.
1T became apparent to us that if
we were going to turn out work
twice or three times as fast as we
had done before, we must make
change in our scale of pay. Our
rate was fixed and it didn't make
much difference whether a man
made one or two tools a day or one
an hour. But if he were going to
make ten in an hour and so multi
ply our output by five, it was appar-
ent that we needed some rudimentary
accounting to make our pay harmon
ize with the increased speed at
which Mr.. Taylor made us do our
work
"At first the question came up as
to whether the workmen would work
at this increased rate of speed. We
simply had to get men who would
permit their tools to do the 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 nervous
strain on them when the rate was
increased so greatly. 1t kept them
too intent upon their lathe expect
ing a disaster. But the younger
men were fascinated and the large
majority are still with us. The men
in shops under scientific manage
ment are well satisfied. A sympa-
thetic strike was called to aid the
trolley car motormen and conduc-
tors in Philadelphia in 1910 that
effected workmen in all sorts of en-
terprises. A certain factory running
under scientific management was
surrounded by four other establish
ments. 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 running
under scientific management just
one man quit work.
Now this was no accident but is
because the very best friends that
the workmen have under scientific
management are their employers.
Formerly we would tell a man we
would give him ten cents for a GER
tain piece of work. Then if he re-
duced his time so that he could
make two, we would reduce the rate
to five cents because we thought the
man was making too much money.
But we were getting twice as much
work for the same money while the
men had not been getting any more
pay whereas we ought to have con-
graduated the man on what he
made and both be happy.
1--WE adopted a new rule which
was that a rate once set must not
be reduced unless the shape of the
piece or the tool or method by
which it is made was changed and
that a man should be paid when he
did his work 1t was a hard dose
to swallow for sometimes men made
twice or three times the wage they
would have worked for gladly by
the day. Once in a while when l
went among them, a man would call
out, "Well, l got you going to-day"
"How?" 81 made eighteen dollars
to-day" Good, you might take me
to the theatre tonight" "All right,
boss, l will"
All this time we were getting from
a given floor space, from a fixed in
vestment in light, heat and power,
insurance, taxes, all overhead ex-
penses and so on two or three times
the product that had been obtained
before. Only the mems wges had
increased, everything else stood the