Scientific Management.

Scientific Management

Representatives of capital supporter scientific management. It proposes to increase industrial output by managing labour scientifically.

But organized labour does not want to be scientifically managed. It is not keen about being managed at all. It exists, in fact, to manage itself.

Labour controversies, as carried on by the American Federation of Labour, are demands for a "voice" in the settlement of conditions of work. But this demand is not recognized by capital as a principle. It is only recognized as a necessity when labour, through superior strength, secures its demands in this trade and that. The concession to labour of a voice in determining conditions of work means by implication to capital that management as a whole is still in its own hands; it also means that its actual title to superior, or ownership rights, is not in question.

The Industrial Workers of the World leaves no doubt in the mind of capital that it claims only a voice in the management of industry. It makes its fight on the grounds of labour’s sole ownership, as well as right, to sole management in all that labour produces. Every strike, every difference between organized labour and capital, is an attempt of the former to wrest management, or some degree of management, from the latter. Whether it is an A. F. of L. or an I. W. W. fights, there is in each and every one this issue of management. The question of management is, in fact, the labour movement.

If production is to be scientifically managed, organized labour insists that it shall have a hand in the management, or it shall do the managing. It refuses to grow enthusiastic over propositions, which are worked out for it, or without its cooperation, by others who claim to know better than labour knows what is for its good.

It was with something like pained surprise that the advocates of scientific management discovered that their propositions to manage labour more efficiently, and to lighten its burdens, met a cold reception at the hands of the conservative, as well as the radical, labour unions. It is conceivable that the efficiency systems of scientific management might admit the labour unions in conference in the settlement of conditions; but it is evident that nothing is further from the intention of the promoters of the science, and that such a proposition would quite seriously impair its purpose.

Mr. Frederick W. Taylor, the leader of the movement, states: "The greater advantage comes from the new and unheard-of burdens which are assumed by the men in the management, duties which have never been performed by the men or the management side." These new duties Mr. Taylor divides into four large classes, calling them "The Four Principles of Scientific Management," all of which, he says, are necessary to secure its object, which is "the increased output per unit of human effort."

The first of these four great duties (as he also names them), which are undertaken by the management, is to deliberately gather in all the rule of thumb knowledge, which is possessed, by all the twenty different kinds of tradesmen who are at work in the establishment. Knowledge, which has never been recorded, is in the heads, hands and bodies, in the knack, skill and dexterity, which these men possess....

The second of the new duties assumed by the management is the scientific selection and then the progressive development of the workmen. The workmen are studied; it may seem preposterous, ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

The second of the new duties assumed by the management is the scientific selection and then the progressive development of the workmen. The workmen are studied; it may seem preposterous, but they are studied just as machines have been studied....

The third duty is to bring the scientifically selected workmen and the science together. They must be brought together; they will not come together without it. I do not wish for an instant to have any one think I have a poor opinion of a workman; far from it. I merely state a fact when I say that you may put your scientific methods before a workman all you are a mind to, and nine times out of ten he will do the same old way ... when I say, make the workman do his work in accordance with the laws of science I do not say make in an arbitrary sense ... I want to qualify the word make, it has rather a hard sound. Some one must inspire the man to make the change....

The fourth principle is a deliberate division of the work, which was formerly done by the workman into two sections, one of which is handed over to the management. An immense mass of new duties is thrown on the management, which formerly belonged to the workmen ... requiring cooperation between the management and the workmen, which accounts more than anything else for the fact that there has never been a strike under scientific management.... In one of our machine shops, for instance, where we do miscellaneous work ... there will be at least one man on the management side for every three workmen....

Each one of these "scientific" propositions is perfectly familiar to the workman in spite of the rather naive assurance of the efficiency engineers that they are new. He has known them in slightly different guise for a century past. The new thing is the proposition to develop what has been in the past the tricks of the trade into a principle of production. Scientific management logically follows and completes the factory process.

The first and fourth of Mr. Taylor's great duties or principles is to deliberately gather in all the rule of thumb knowledge of all workmen, and transfer this knowledge to the management. That is exactly what machinery did and is still doing to craft workers. It usurped the knowledge of the worker and transferred that knowledge to the management. The great discovery of scientific management is that machinery is not absorbing completely, or as completely as it should, a workman's trade knowledge.

Mr. Taylor says: "This knowledge is the greatest asset that a workman possesses. It is his capital." The task, which efficiency engineers have set, themselves is to gather up the last vestiges of capital possessed by the workingman, and place it for safe keeping and efficiency under The Management.

There is an impression that all efficiency methods originate in the brains of efficiency engineers, or with the management. Mr. Taylor is not alone in assuring us that the methods are discovered in the heads and in the hands of the workers, that they are the result of the worker's experience in very great degree.

A manufacturer as an illustration told the following story:

A shoe manufacturer told one girl that he wanted to see how much she could do.... She said: "Well, there is a certain kind of a filler that I used in another factory. If you will use that kind of filler I can do my work so much more quickly. Another thing, the paper you are using on that tip is too coarse. If you will use a finer paper I won't have to use so much filler." The story concluded: "So that girl and this manufacturer worked out a condition that made it easier for her to perform more work."

Scientific management is a good scavenger. It is out for every scrap of trade knowledge. Following the machine, it proposes to clean up the last vestige of craftsmanship and to put the shipshape touches to modern industry. There are to be no chance bits of capital lying around loose in the hands of this man and that when the efficiency engineers have finished their job.

The second and third of the Four Principles show how this is done. Mr. Taylor says: "The workmen are 'studied' just as machines have been studied." And, finally, it is necessary "to bring the scientifically selected workman and the science together" by "inspiring" the workman.

The workman is to be scientifically selected by a teacher instead of by a foreman; he is to be "studied" by this teacher, as well as taught, and the "unit of human effort" is to be squeezed out of him by observing the law of rest and fatigue.

He is to be inspired by the same old bonus of the same old task system in which he has served his time. But the bonus or rate, according to efficiency engineers, is never to be cut, as employers who speeded up their workers have cut it in the past. If the old-time employer ever made so gentlemanly a promise regarding the continuous payment of a bonus, he knew he could not keep it. He knew that even out of the goodness of his heart he could not indefinitely continue a bonus or a rate, which his competitors did not pay.

But apparently scientific management requires of industry certain ethical standards. Mr. Taylor says that scientific management involves a complete revolution, both on the part of the management and of the men; a complete change in the mental attitude on both sides. Labour would agree with Mr. Taylor, and add that it would require as well a mental revolution in Wall Street. Apparently this is what the "New Capitalism," of which scientific management is a part, does require.

"New Capitalism" proposes to disregard the law of wages, and to substitute a beneficent law, which pays better wages, also better profits. But the results have not as yet justified the workers in surrendering their own agencies for self-protection. As yet labour is unconscious of any sloughing off in hardships under the law of supply and demand. It is not conscious that the introduction of methods, which have, for their object the "increased output of human effort" has had any appreciable connection with wages or wage rates.

Union men cite numberless cases where efficiency methods have been introduced, like the task and bonus systems, the stop watch, the observation of the laws of rest and fatigue, and yet wage rates were not increased, but were, in the course of time, reduced. The efficiency engineer answers: "Ah, then that is not scientific management!" But he will state in conventions to other efficiency engineers that he has great trouble in getting the management to carry out the end of their program, which will insure the worker, the receipt of his bonus. An efficiency promoter observed on one of these occasions: "I have had so many letters from people who look on scientific management as a new instrument by which they could squeeze a little more out of the workman and give him no return. I do not want to have anything to do with them. We must share what we get."

Organized labour appreciates the wish, but recognizes the difficulty for an efficiency engineer to be an engineer and a financier in action at one and the same time. It is not the efficiency engineer who can fulfil his own promise. He must leave it to the capitalists to "share what they get" of the new capital which the engineer has collected out of the hands or brains of the workers.

In scientifically managed plants there is no change whatever in the status of capital and labour, except the extended enslavement of the latter. Efficiency engineers might successfully promote scientific management by advertising their hope that the management will "share what it gets" if the factory system had been a less efficient teacher. But the factory system has taught the workers by a series of object lessons. Labour unions represent those workers who have learned that they must rely on schemes for relief, which they themselves initiate, or control.

The rest and fatigue schemes of scientific management are especially worthy of suspicion. These schemes propose to finish the job of reducing the labour to a machine attachment, to rob him of what little initiative may be left him in a certain freedom of motion. Mr. Taylor defines his idea of initiative. He says: "The manufacturer who has any intelligence must realize that his first duty should be to obtain the initiative of all these tradesmen who are working under him; to obtain their hard work, their good will, their ingenuity, their determination to treat the employer's business as if it were their own. And in this connection I wish to strain the meaning of the word 'initiative' to indicate all of these good qualities." All propositions to increase wealth make an appeal to imagination. No one, certainly not organized labour, doubts the ability of American capitalists to discover new schemes neither for increasing the output, nor of the American workman to produce it. It has been reported that the labour cost of production in England, with its lower wage rates, is higher than the cost in America, because the American workmen, through the pressure of management, yield an amount per worker unknown to English labour. Scientific management proposes to increase this yield by several hundred percent.

Workers looking back a generation or two may admit that with the introduction of machine processes they have here and there reaped a harvest of several cotton shirts instead of one woollen, a standing lamp instead of the ancestral candlestick, and, as clear gain, a Victor talking machine. But no one is ever jubilant over luxuries, which they have bought with their lives. It is organized labour alone that remembers the ghastly price paid for increased consumption; the generations of men, women, and children who have been maimed and murdered in the process. Greed and desire, not the well being of labour, are still the motive forces back of increased wealth production. If we are about to enter upon an era of a "New Capitalism" which recognizes that it will pay to increase the number of cotton shirts without exacting so heavy a toll as has been exacted in the past, organized labour still demands that it shall determine, or have a voice in determining, what that toll shall be and what shall be the reward.

Scientific management, the promoters say, recognizes no difference in determining standards of efficiency between management, capital goods and labour. Well and good; labour does.

Organized labour’s observations of a worker do not end with the day's work. They extend over the wear and tear of a lifetime. They take into consideration a worker's ability to react after work, mentally as well as physically. They take into consideration the worker's ability to realize his maximum in his non-labouring hours. And they would also consider his ability to realize his maximum in his labouring hours if labour had an opportunity to fix a maximum consistent with the life interests of labour as a whole. The difference between scientific management and organized labour is that the aim of the latter is to make men, the aim of the former is to make goods.