to absorb nearly all of their time. They have not had deliberately to pick out the hardest industries. A number of applications were first worked out in machine shops, and most illustrations are naturally from that industry. As a matter of fact, without any literature resulting from it, the philosophy of Scientific Management has been applied to a great variety of industries, represented by such a variety as iron and steel, books and binding, textiles, clothing, building construction, and even banking.

It is very interesting to know that the exponents of Scientific Management are now educating the public with respect to something they have known but which the public has not—that Scientific Management is not a rigid thing. It is not the same here and there, but must be different in every kind of plant, because of different local conditions; and in different types of industry different features of the mechanics and principles must be emphasized. They have worked out three principal types of industries:

I Industries with continuous processes; uniform product with uniform specifications; single purpose machines; uniform operations; simple routing. Illustrated by the manufacture of paper and pulp.

2 Industries with non-continuous processes; uniform product with varying specifications; single purpose machines; uniform operations; simple routing. Illustrated by the manufacture of envelopes, books, and handkerchiefs.

3 Industries with non-continuous processes; varying products with varying specifications; multiple purpose machines; varying operations; complex routing. Illustrated by machine shops.

Effect on Production and Distribution.

Where real Scientific Management has been applied there is observable the following effect on productive and distributive processes, all resulting from precise control made possible by intensive continuous investigation:

I Greater efficiency of the individual workman, without greater expenditure of physical and nervous energy.

2 Greater efficiency of equipment.

3 Greater efficiency of material.

4 Resultant lower costs, greater profits, higher wages, and in many instances lower selling prices.

5 Greater precision in deliveries.

Effect on the Industrial Workman

I do not know of any phase of the subject about which there are more incorrect statements, based either on prejudice or ignorance, than the influence on the workman. There is only one safe way to know what the facts are: that is to go and visit real Scientific Management plants. You cannot rely on printed literature. These misleading statements are in many instances deliberate falsehoods, but on the whole, I believe, rather a misrepresentation of facts because of the bias of some industrial philosophy. I am going to present the following generalizations based on personal observation and inquiry, concerning the effects of Scientific Management on the individual workman.

First The health of working people is not impaired, but on the other hand is usually improved by the better general working conditions established.

Second: There is always increased wage. In some cases it is very considerable-twenty-five or thirty per cent. Where it is not as considerable as that it takes the other form of shorter hours. In many cases it is a combination of increased wage and shorter hours.

Third: The attitude of mind and spirit of the working people in the plants I have inspected is conspicuously better than the attitude of mind and spirit I have seen under other types of management. Scientific Management to survive, depends upon that thing. The idea of precise control is impossible without it.

Fourth Contrary to your first impressions, based upon misinformation and upon a misconception of the nature of standardization, Scientific Management offers a greater opportunity for the promotion of working people freely from one position to another.

Fifth According to my observations, as a result of the spirit in the plant, and increased wage, and sometimes shorter hours, the standard of living of the working people is more satisfactory than that which accompanies ordinary conditions of management. This results not merely from the ability to

enjoy more things; it arises also from a different attitude toward things and toward each other.

Finally I think I see in it the opportunity for regularizing employment. One of the serious social problems confronting us is irregularity in employment. I do not see any possibility of regularization without precise knowledge of facts, ability to predict, and precise control; and one plant-a Scientific Management plant-has had the nerve to tackle the problem of regularizing employment by deliberately not making all it can in full season and holding production over to the dull season. feels confident of what it is doing, because of precise knowledge and precise control of its operations.

It

These effects of Scientific Management on the individual workman, reflected in the home and multiplied by the number of homes, represents its effect on the community. Higher wages make possible the enjoyment by the community of a greater number of things of life, and shorter hours of work afford the time for this enjoyment. The spirit of "the best way" and of "the reason why," developed in the shop, is carried into home and community life, as is also that broadmindedness and tolerance which develops with co-operative activity.

Modifications of Scientific Management

Just as there were fake physicians and shyster lawyers when medicine and law were young professions, so we have at present fake organizing engineers. They do as much damage to the plants by which they are engaged as the fake physician did to the health of his patient. I wish it were possible by some sort of prescription to abolish these fake and damaging selfstyled organizing engineers. I do not see how that can be done. We must rely upon the education of the employer, his refusal to employ them, and their ultimate extinction by starvation. The point I have just made does not concern the topic "Modification of Scientific Management," but it does concern the modification of the circumstances in which real Scientific Management finds itself.

I would not suggest any modification of Scientific Management, for Scientific Management is an attitude of mind rather than a physical thing. It is a body of principles rather than a mechanism. Who would suggest a modification of the three fundamental principles I have attempted to bring out? (1)

Continuous and intensive investigation of facts. (2) Prediction, so far as it is possible, on the basis of the facts ascertained. (3) Precise control of materials and processes so as to make actual operation conform to the facts ascertained by investigation. I cannot think of three more satisfactory universal principles.

Their honest application involves the idea that there shall be a strict regard for the exact facts surrounding the conditions of any particular application of the principles of Scientific Management. The consequence of that is that the mechanism and external manifestations of Scientific Management must in any particular plant be more or less different from those in any other particular plant. In that unreal sense of the word "modification," we may say then that there must be a modification of the mechanism of Scientific Management with every application of its principles; but its principles remain the same, for it is a corollary of the principles enumerated above that accurate investigation of every separate plant will find a separate combination of facts that will require separate application of the principles.

RELATION OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT TO LABOR1

Until recently the problem of the relation of scientific management to organized labor had, as one of its practitioners said, "merely an academic interest." There was no attempt to develop the system in closed shops. In other shops no one inquired or knew whether there were union men or not; nor, if there were such, did they offer any objection to the development of scientific management. About 1910 however, or even earlier, in some of the railroad brotherhoods, the attention of professional labor leaders was directed toward the possibilities of this type of management. Their reaction was unfavorable; but except for the refusal of locomotive engineers to accept the bonus proposals on the Santa Fe railroad, no opportunity to express their organized opposition to scientific management presented itself until that system was extended to a detail of the Watertown Arsenal, which is part of a highly unionized branch of the government service. This was seized upon by

1 By C. Bertrand Thompson. From an article in Quarterly Journal of Economics. 30:330-40. February, 1916.

the leaders, apparently without regard to the real feelings of the men or the facts in the case, as the occasion for a brief and insignificant strike and a long train of government investigations, reports, petitions, and bills in congress, whose aim is to discredit positive management generally by setting on it the stamp of governmental disapproval. In the last congress this agitation was partially successful, altho the labor leaders seem to have gotten through the wrong bill. The affair has at least been of sufficient importance to convert the question from one of academic interest to one of general industrial and economic consequence.

The traditional attitude of the practitioners of positive man-. agement is based on strong practical considerations of which they are fully cognizant, and on an economic theory which is rather implicit in their discussions. In general they admit certain historic advantages in trade unionism, such as the gradual shortening of hours, the improvement of working conditions, and the maintenance and raising of wages. They admit that labor organization is still necessary to secure and maintain these advantages in plants not using positive management. But they insist that positive management provides these advantages to the working man more quickly, more certainly, and in fuller measure, than labor organization ever has done or can do. Reduction of hours is a not uncommon practice under positive management. The standardization of conditions to the point of economic perfection is a fundamental principle. Wherever positive management prevails, basic wages are maintained as a matter of expediency, and are raised by the extent of the bonus. These results are brought about quickly, and without dispute or trouble. Why then, they ask, is labor organization necessary?

The advocates of positive management do not stop, however, with this negative position. They maintain that certain of the present principles and practices of labor unionism are not only incompatible with the fundamental principles and practices of scientific management, but are subversive of the public interest. This criticism applies to such practices as restriction of output, insistence on a uniform wage, collective bargaining on matters which are questions of fact rather than of opinion, restriction of membership, and the closed shop.

Socially controlled restriction of output may under some circumstances be advisable, as when there is regulation of the acreage to be sown in wheat or cotton or of the amount of coal