The writer trusts that it is now clear that even in the case of the most elementary form of labor that is known, there is a science, and that when the man bestsuited to this class of work has been carefully selected, when the science of doing the work has been developed, and when the carefully selected man has been trained to work in accordance with this science, the results obtained must of necessity be overwhelmingly greater than those which are possible under the plan of "initiative and incentive."Let us, however, again turn to the case of these pig-iron handlers, and see whether, under the ordinary type of management, it would not have been possible to obtain practically the same results.
The writer has put the problem before many good managers, and asked them whether, under premium work, piece work, or any of the ordinary plans of management, they would be likely even to approximate 47 tons(4*) per man per day, and not a man has suggested that an output of over 18 to 25 tons could be attained by any of the ordinary expedients.It will be remembered that the Bethlehem men were loading only 12 1/2 tons per man.
To go into the matter in more detail, however: As to the scientific selection of the men, it is a fact that in this gang of 75 pig-iron handlers only about one man in eight was physically capable of handling 47 1/2 tons per day.With the very best of intentions, the other seven out of eight men were physically unable to work at this pace.Now the one man in eight who was able to do this work was in no sense superior to the other men who were working on the gang.He merely happened to be a man of the type of the ox, no rare specimen of humanity, difficult to find and therefore very highly prized.On the contrary, he was a man so stupid that he was unfitted to do most kinds of laboring work, even.The selection of the man, then, does not involve finding some extraordinary individual, but merely picking out from among very ordinary men the few who are especially suited to this type of work.Although in this particular gang only one man in eight was suited to doing the work, we had not the slightest difficulty in getting all the men who were needed -- some of them from inside of the works and others from the neighboring country -- who were exactly suited to the job.
Under the management of "initiative and incentive" the attitude of the management is that of "putting the work up to the workmen." What likelihood would there be, then, under the old type of management, of these men properly selecting themselves for pig-iron handling? Would they be likely to get rid of seven men out of eight from their own gang and retain only the eighth man? No! And no expedient could be devised which would make these men properly select themselves.Even if they fully realized the necessity of doing so in order to obtain high wages (and they are not sufficiently intelligent properly to grasp this necessity), the fact that their friends or their brothers who were working right alongside of them would temporarily be thrown out of a job because they were not suited to this kind of work would entirely prevent them from properly selecting themselves, that is, from removing the seven out of eight men on the gang who were unsuited to pig-iron handling.
As to the possibility, under the old type of management, of inducing these pig-iron handlers (after they had been properly selected) to work in accordance with the science of doing heavy laboring, namely, having proper scientifically determined periods of rest in close sequence to periods of work.As has been indicated before, the essential idea of the ordinary types of management is that each workman has become more skilled in his own trade than it is possible for any one in the management to be, and that, therefore, the details of how the work shall best be done must be left to him.The idea, then, of taking one man after another and training him under a competent teacher into new working habits until he continually and habitually works in accordance with scientific laws, which have been developed by some one else, is directly antagonistic to the old idea that each workman can best regulate his own way of doing the work.And besides this, the man suited to handling pig iron is too stupid properly to train himself.Thus it will be seen that with the ordinary types of management the development of scientific knowledge to replace rule of thumb, the scientific selection of the men, and inducing the men to work in accordance with these scientific principles are entirely out of the question.And this because the philosophy of the old management puts the entire responsibility upon the workmen, while the philosophy of the new places a great part of it upon the management.
With most readers great sympathy will be aroused because seven out of eight of these pig-iron handlers were thrown out of a job.This sympathy is entirely wasted, because almost all of them were immediately given other jobs with the Bethlehem Steel Company.And indeed it should be understood that the removal of these men from pig-iron handling, for which they were unfit, was really a kindness to themselves, because it was the first step toward finding them work for which they were peculiarly fitted, and at which, after receiving proper training, they could permanently and legitimately earn higher wages.
Although the reader may be convinced that there is a certain science back of the handling of pig iron, still it is more than likely that he is still skeptical as to the existence of a science for doing other kinds of laboring.One of the important objects of this paper is to convince its readers that every single act of every workman can be reduced to a science.With the hope of fully convincing the reader of this fact, therefore, the writer proposes to give several more simple illustrations from among the thousands which are at hand.
