Part of the waste he finds due to improper tools and improper modes of working, arising from mere ignorance; part he attributes to systematic or habitual slacking, more or less conscious and intentional on the part of the workers.The natural disposition of the worker to "take it easy"is supplemented by a belief that by working too hard he deprives some other worker of a job.Scientific Management, therefore, sets itself to work out by experiment the exact tool or machine appropriate to each action, the most economical and effective way by which a worker can work the tool or machine, and the best method of selecting workers for each job and of stimulating them to perform each action with the greatest accuracy and celerity.By means of strictly quantitative tests it works out standard tools, standard methods of work and standard tests for the selection, organisation, stimulation, and supervision of the workman.
In his exposition of this economy1 Mr.Taylor takes as his simplest illustration of choice of tools the 'art' of shovelling.Left to himself, or working with a gang, the shoveller will use a shovel whose weight, size, and shape have never been considered in relation to the particular material it has to move or the sort of man who has to use it.'By first selecting two or three first-class shovellers, and paying them extra wages for doing trustworthy work, and then gradually varying the shovel load and having all the conditions accompanying the work carefully observed for several weeks by men who were accustomed to experimenting, it was found that a first-class man would do the biggest day's work with a shovel load of about 21 pounds.'2 As a result of this discovery, instead of allowing each shoveller to choose his own shovel, the company provided eight or ten different kinds of shovels accommodated to the weight of different materials and to other special conditions.Again, thousands of stop-watch observations were made to discover how quickly a labourer, provided with his proper shovel, could push the shovel into the materials and draw it out properly loaded.A similar study was made of 'the time required to swing the shovel backward and then throw the load for a given horizontal distance, accompanied by a given height.' With the knowledge thus obtained it was possible for the man directing shovellers, first to teach them the exact method of using their strength to the best advantage, and then to assign the daily task by which they could earn the bonus paid for the successful performance of this task.
For, though the skilled director can prescribe the right tool and the right method, he cannot get the required result without the willing cooperation of the individual worker.For this purpose a bonus is applied, the size of which is itself a subject of scientific experiment.The relation of this bonus to the ordinary day or piece wage will vary with the various types of work and workers.In the Bethlehem Steel Works it was found that the best effect in stimulating energy was got by a bonus of about 60 per cent, beyond the wages usually paid.'This increase in wages tends to make them not only thrifty but better men in every way; they live rather better, begin to save money, become more sober, and work more steadily.When, on the other hand, they receive much more than a 60 per cent increase of wages, many of them will work irregularly and tend to become more or less shiftless, extravagant, and dissipated.Our experiments showed, in other words, that it does not do for most men to get rich too fast.'3Considering that it was claimed that the result of this new plan of work was to raise the average daily output per man from 16 to 59 tons, and to secure an annual saving in the labour-bill amounting to between $75,000 and $80,000, it would have been interesting to follow the effects of a rapid advance of wealth upon the dividend-receivers who gained so disproportionate a share of the advantages of the new economy.
§3.So far as the selection and adaptation of tools to the special conditions of the work are concerned, there exists no opposition between the business and the human economy.If a shoveller can shovel more material without greater exertion by using a particular shovel, the system which ensures his using this shovel is beneficial to everybody, assuming that he gets some share of the value of the increased output.When we turn from a simple tool to more elaborate machinery, it becomes evident that quantitative testing is capable of achieving enormous technical economies.Mr.Taylor describes the gains in the output of metal-cutting machines made by means of such economies.'Its pulling power at the various speeds, its feeding capacity, and its proper speeds were determined by means of the slide-rules, and changes were then made in the countershaft and driving pulleys so as to run it to its proper speed.Tools, made of highspeed steel and of the proper shapes, were properly dressed, treated and ground.A large special slide-rule was then made, by means of which the exact speeds and feeds were indicated at which each kind of work could be done in the shortest possible time in this particular lathe.After preparing in this way so that the workman should work according to the new method, one after another, pieces of work were finished in the lathe, corresponding to the work which had been done in our preliminary trials, and the gain in time made through running the machine according to scientific principles ranged from two and one-half times the speed in the slowest instance to nine times the speed in the highest.'4This illustration, however, makes it evident that when we pass from technical improvements of tools to improved methods of working, we open possibilities of opposition between the business and the human interest.
