CHAPTER VII
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AS APPLIED TO WOMEN'S WORK
Within the last thirty years a new method of conducting work, called Scientific Management, has been established in various businesses in the United States, including "machine shops and factories, steel work and paper mills, cotton mills and shoe shops, in bleacheries and dye works, in printing and bookbinding, in lithographing establishments, in the manufacture of type-writers and optical instruments, in constructing and engineering work—and to some extent—the manufacturing departments of the Army and Navy." [[43]]
Three of the enterprises to a greater or less degree reorganized by this new system in this country employ women workers. These establishments are a New Jersey cotton mill, a bleachery in Delaware, and a cloth finishing factory in New England. The reduction of costs for the owning firms inaugurating Scientific Management has already received a wide publicity. It is the object of this account to present as clear a chronicle as has been obtainable of the effect the methods of Scientific Management have had on the fortunes of the workers—more especially on the hours, the wages, and the general health of the women workers in these houses who have so far experienced its training. [[44]]
What, then, are the new principles of management which have been inaugurated? What is Scientific Management? The expression may perhaps best be defined to lay readers by a lay writer by means of an outline of the growth of its working principles in this company—an outline traced as far as possible in the words of the engineers creating the system, whose courtesy in the matter is here gratefully acknowledged.
I
In 1881, Mr. Frederick W. Taylor, the widely reverenced author of "The Art of Cutting Metals" and of "Shop Management," then a young man of 21, closed, in grave discouragement, a long, hard, and victorious contest of his conducted as gang boss of the machinists of the Midvale Steel Company in Pennsylvania. In the course of the last three years, as he narrates in his book "Academic and Industrial Efficiency":— [[45]]
By discharging workers, lowering the wages of the more stubborn men who refused to make any improvement, lowering the piece-work rate, and by other such methods, he (the writer) succeeded in very materially increasing the output of the machines, in some cases doubling the output, and had been promoted from one gang boss-ship to another until he became the foreman of the shop.... For any right-minded man, however, this success is in no sense a recompense for the bitter relations which he is forced to maintain with all those around him. Life which is one continuous struggle with other men is hardly worth living.... Soon after being made foreman, therefore, he decided to make a determined effort in some way to change the system of management so that the interests of the workmen and the management should become the same instead of antagonistic.... He therefore obtained the permission from Mr. William Sellers, the President of the Midvale Steel Company, to spend some money in a careful scientific study of the time required to do various kinds of work.
Lack of information on the part of both workers and the management as to the quickest time in which a piece of work can be done constitutes what has been the most formidable obstacle in the path of all progress toward improved industrial conditions.... Every wasteful operation, every mistake, every useless move has to be paid for by somebody, and in the long run both the employer and the employee have to bear a proportionate share.... For each job there is the quickest time in which it can be done by a first-class man; this time may be called the "Standard Time," for the job.... Under all the ordinary systems this quickest time is more or less completely shrouded in mist.
Through a period of about twelve years the simplest operations in the shop were now timed, observed, and studied by graduates from science courses, different university men, engaged by Mr. Taylor, until a general law had been discovered regarding the exertion of physical energy a first-class worker could employ "and thrive under." It was found that the worker's resistance of fatigue in lifting and carrying the load depended, not on the amount of strength in terms of horse-power which he was obliged to exert to elevate and sustain the load, but on the proportion of his day spent in rest. For instance, a pig-iron handler, lifting and carrying pigs weighing 92 pounds each, could lift and carry 47 tons of iron in a day without undue fatigue if fifty-seven per cent of his working hours were spent in rest, and forty-three per cent were spent in work. If he lifted and put in place a number of pigs amounting to half that tonnage, he might work without undue fatigue for a greater part of the day. Under a certain far lighter load he could work without fatigue all day long, with no rest whatever.
With accurate time-study as a basis, the "quickest time" for each job is at all times in plain sight of both employers and workmen, and is reached with accuracy, precision, and speed.[[46]]
Operation—Wheelbarrow Excavation. Date, March 10, 189—
| Op. | Time | Av. | No. Shov. | Op. | Time | Av. | No. Shov. | Op. | Time | Av. | No. Shov. | Op. | Time | Av. | |
| Department—Construction | a | 1.37 | 1.37 | 15 | a | 1.12 | 1.12 | 12 | a' | 1.86 | 11 | ||||
| Men—Mike Flaherty | b | 1.56 | 0.19 | b | 1.39 | 0.27 | a' | 1.81 | 13 | ||||||
| c | 1.82 | 0.26 | c | 1.58 | 0.19 | a' | 2.14 | 16 | |||||||
| Materials—Sand requiring no pick | d | 1.97 | 0.15 | d | 1.70 | 0.12 | a' | 1.98 | 14 | ||||||
| Materials—Hard clay in bank | e | 1.97 | 0.15 | e | 1.92 | 0.22 | |||||||||
| Implements—No. 3 shovel; Contractors' wooden wheelbarrow | f | 2.36 | 0.09 | f | 2.36 | 0.09 | |||||||||
| Conditions—Day-work for a contractor. By previous observation | a | 1.24 | 1.24 | 13 | a | 2.05 | 0.13 | 13 | |||||||
| An average barrow load of sand is 2.32 cu. ft. measured in cut | b | 1.36 | 0.12 | b | 1.38 | 0.15 | |||||||||
| An average barrow load of clay is 2.15 cu. ft. measured in cut | c | 1.59 | 0.23 | c | 1.60 | 0.22 | |||||||||
| d | 1.83 | 0.24 | d | 1.78 | 0.18 | ||||||||||
| e | 2.08 | 0.25 | e | 2.05 | 0.27 | ||||||||||
| f | 2.23 | 0.25 | f | 2.23 | 0.18 |
| Time | Complete Operations | Total time min. | Total picking min. | Total shoveling & wheeling min. | Times per barrow min. | Detail Operations | No obs | Times per barrow min. | Time per pc. per shovel min. | No. shovels per barrow min. | Time wheeling 100 ft. min. |
| 7 A.M. | Commenced loading sand | ||||||||||
| 9.02 | 43 loads wheeled to a distance of 50 ft. | 122 | 122 | 2.84 | a—Filling barrow with sand | 4 | 1.240 | 0.094 | 13.2 | ||
| 9.50 | Picking hard clay | 48 | b—Starting | 4 | 0.182 | ||||||
| 11.39 | 29 loads clay wheeled to a distance of 50 ft. | 109 | c—Wheeling full—50 ft. | 4 | 0.225 | 0.450 | |||||
| 11.46 | Picking clay again | 7 | 55 | 1.67 | d—Dumping & turning | 4 | 0.172 | ||||
| 12.01 | 4 loads clay wheeled to a distance of 50 ft. | 15 | 124 | 3.76 | e—Returning empty—50 ft. | 4 | 0.260 | 0.520 | |||
| 301 | f—Dropping barrow & starting to shovel | 4 | 0.162 | ||||||||
| g— | 2.241 | ||||||||||
| h— | |||||||||||
| i— | |||||||||||
| j— | |||||||||||
| k— | |||||||||||
| l— | |||||||||||
| m— | |||||||||||
| a'—Filling barrow with clay | 4 | 1.948 | 0.144 | 3.5 |
Note.—Comparison of "Detail" with "Complete" operations shows that about 27 per cent of the total time was taken in rest and other necessary delays. About the same quantity loose as at the start. Observer: James Monroe.
Here is an account of the effect the result of this time-study and these tests in strength produced on the output and wage of a group of men at the Bethlehem Steel Co., whose work Mr. Taylor reorganized after that of the Midvale Steel Company:—
The opening of the Spanish War found some 80,000 tons of pig-iron piled in small piles in an open field adjoining the Bethlehem Steel Company's works. Prices for pig-iron had been so low that it could not be sold at a profit, and was therefore stored. With the opening of the Spanish War the price of the pig-iron rose, and this large accumulation of iron was sold. The ...steel company's ...pig-iron gang ...consisted of about 75 men ...good average pig-iron handlers, under an excellent foreman ...A railroad switch was run out into the field, right along the edge of the piles of pig-iron. An inclined plane was placed against the side of a car, and each man picked up from his pile a pig of iron weighing about 92 pounds, walked up the inclined plank, and dropped it on the end of the car.
We found that this gang were loading on the average of about 12½ tons per man per day in this manner. We were surprised to find, after studying the matter, that a first-class pig-iron handler ought to handle between 47 and 48 tons per day, instead of 12½ tons, which were being handled.
This task seemed so very large that we were obliged to go over our work several times before we were sure we were absolutely right.... The task which faced us as managers under the modern scientific plan ...was ...to see that the 80,000 tons of pig-iron were loaded on the cars at the rate of 47 tons per man per day in place of 12½ tons.... It was further our duty to see that this work was done without bringing on a strike among the men, without any quarrel with the men, and to see that the men were happier and better contented with loading at the new rate of 47 tons than they were when loading at the old rate of 12½ tons.
The first step was the scientific selection of the workmen.... Under ...scientific management ...it is an inflexible rule to talk to and deal with only one man at a time, since we are not dealing with men in masses, but are trying to develop each individual man to his highest state of efficiency and prosperity. The 75 men in the gang were carefully watched and studied for three or four days, at the end of which time we had picked out four men who were believed to be physically able to handle pig-iron at the rate of 47 tons per day. A careful study was then made of each of these men.... Finally one man was selected from among the four as the most likely man to start with.
This man, who had been receiving $1.15 a day, agreed to follow for $1.85 a day the directions of the time-student, who had determined the proportion and intervals of rest necessary for the regular accomplishment of the task, without overstrain or undue fatigue. The worker started to carry his accustomed load and at regular intervals was told by the time-student, observing the proper period for rest and work with a watch: "Now pick up a pig and walk. Now sit down and rest. Now, walk—now, rest, etc."
He walked when he was told to walk and rested when he was told to rest, and at half past five in the afternoon had his 47½ tons loaded on the car. And he practically never failed to work at this pace and to do the task that was set him during the three years that the writer was at Bethlehem.... Throughout this time, he averaged a little more than $1.85 a day; whereas he had never received more than $1.15 a day, which was the ruling wage at that time in Bethlehem.... One man after another was picked out and trained to handle pig-iron at the rate of 47½ tons a day, until all of the pig-iron was handled at this rate, and all of this gang were receiving sixty per cent more wages than other men around them.
Courtesy of "Industrial Engineering"
The New Method Of Providing The Bricklayer With Material
A very brilliant and extended investigation concerning the elimination of waste of human energy and labor by motion-study has been made independently of Mr. Taylor by Mr. Frank Gilbreth, whose discoveries in the field have already cut down the effort of the labor of bricklaying two-thirds. The two accompanying photographs show what Scientific Management and motion-study did in one case to serve the worker by an orderly and convenient arrangement of his material.
These extremely simple processes of bricklaying and carrying pig-iron have been selected as instances of the procedure of Scientific Management, because they reveal one of its most illuminating qualities. Scientific Management makes an art of all work. It gives the most primitive manual task its right dignity, and turns knowledge, science, and the powers of direction from the position of tyrants of labor to that of its servitors.
Scientific Management, then, besides eliminating waste in human energy, or rather by way of eliminating this waste, eliminates waste in equipment, waste in machine power, and evolves through an extended planning department such better appliances, such an improved programme of work and recording of individual work as has been only very imperfectly indicated here.
For an instance of the elimination of waste in equipment the account of the saving effected for one establishment by an efficient use of its belting may be narrated. This was the work of Mr. Harrington Emerson, widely known as a counselling engineer. In the '70's Mr. Emerson had become interested in the subject of Efficiency Engineering by his study of the successful conduct of the German Army during the Franco-Prussian War; and he has since then reorganized numerous large enterprises in accordance with the principles derived from his inquiry. Among these establishments was a machine shop where the belting [[47]]
"had cost (for maintenance and renewals) at one of the main shops about $12,000 a year—or $1000 a month—and it was so poorly installed and supervised that there was an average of 12 breakdowns every working-day, each involving more or less disorganization of the plant in its part or as a whole." The workmen in charge of the belts now received directions as to their charge from a general foreman, who received directions from an efficiency engineer. This engineer had derived his general information on the subject from a man who had made a special study of belts for nine years. He laid down a few general rules, requiring accurate records of breakdown, repair, and installation, full authority and responsibility for the special worker on belts, a better grade of work in installation and better operation of the belts. Under this method "the number of breakdowns declined from 12 each working-day to an average of 2 a day, not one of them serious ...and due to original defective installation, which it was impossible to remedy without unjustifiable expense.... The cost of maintaining belts fell from $1000 a month to $300 a month."
This elimination of waste of human power, and in connection with it the elimination of waste of equipment and of machine power, have, then, in the course of the last thirty years, been studied and applied in this country in the way roughly outlined by Mr. Taylor, Mr. Gilbreth, Mr. Gantt, Mr. Sanford Thompson, Mr. Barth, Mr. Cook, and Mr. Hathaway; and in somewhat the same manner by Mr. Harrington Emerson, Mr. Edward Emerson, Mr. W.J. Power, Mr. Arion, Mr. Playfair, and Mr. Chipman. These engineers have developed methods which have made it possible for them to reorganize the various businesses mentioned which have consulted them, and to decrease their costs and increase their profits. It will be seen at once that the procedure of Scientific Management in determining by scientific analysis the rate of speed and the working conditions under which machine power and human energy can be at once most productively and continuously employed, is really new, and differs radically from former business management, however ably systematized.
"But these," said Mr. Taylor, in speaking of the methods of Scientific Management, "are incidents in the course of Scientific Management. Its great underlying purpose is the achievement of prosperity for the workers and for the employers." Mr. Taylor's definition of prosperity, given on another occasion, is one of the finest the present writer has ever heard. "By a man's prosperity, I mean his best use of his highest powers."
It may be asked, after the efficiency of workers has been increased by scientific study, what provision is made by scientific study for their increased compensation. While Mr. Taylor was at the Bethlehem Steel Company, Mr. Henry L. Gantt, then engaged with him in reorganizing the Bethlehem Steel Works, first applied the Bonus and Task system of compensation, which may be described loosely as a premium paid if a certain predetermined amount be accomplished in a certain time. Its general principles are these: [[48]]—
1. "A scientific investigation in detail of each piece of work and the determination of the best method and the shortest time in which the work can be done."
2. "A teacher capable of teaching the best methods and shortest time."
3. "Reward for both teacher and pupil, when the latter is successful." [[49]]
II
About five years ago Mr. Gantt was consulted concerning the application of Scientific Management in a New England Cloth Finishing house. The installation of the new system here began on the eve of a strike which the workers lost. The history of this strike and its causes is not a part of this account. Only these facts concerning it bear upon the present subject. The strike started among the men folders, then folding 155 pieces of cloth a day for $10 a week on week wages, and asking for ten per cent increase of wage without increase of output. The women folders' wage on lighter work was $7.50. As will be seen, this request was met by Scientific Management. The wage was increased far beyond ten per cent. The output was increased, both by improved mechanical methods, and by a standard of more expert work, to from 447 to 887 pieces a day. The engineers of Scientific Management had not on either one side or the other any part whatever in the strike. But undoubtedly one of its contributing causes was a distrust aroused by the rumor that a new system of work was to be inaugurated.
The Cloth Finishing establishment bleaches, starches, and calenders dimities, muslins, percales, and shirtings, and folds and wraps them for shipping. The factory has good light and good air and an excellent situation in open, lightly rolling country. About two hundred young women, Americans, Scotch, English, and French-Canadians are now employed here on the bonus and task system, most of them whom I saw living with their families in very attractive houses in pleasant villages near. One or two were on the gloomy, muddy little streets of a French-Canadian mill town. These girls, too, were in well-built houses and not living in crowded conditions. But all their surroundings were dingy and disagreeable. At the Cloth Finishing factory and both the other establishments, every opportunity for the fullest inquiry among workers as to the result of the system for them was offered by the owning companies. Difficulties in the industry for the workers were frequently pointed out by managers; and the addresses and names of the less well-paid workers and those in the harder positions were supplied as freely as information about the more fortunate effects of the system. Both this firm and that of the cotton mill are anxious to obtain first-class work through first-class working conditions as rapidly as trade conditions will allow.
The first process at which women are employed is that of keeping cloth running evenly through a tentering machine. The machine holds on tenter hooks—the hooks of the metaphorical reference—the damp cloth brought from the process of bleaching, and rolls it through evenly into a drier, where it slips off. There are two kinds of tentering machines. At one kind two girls sit, each watching an edge of the cloth and keeping it straight on the tenter hooks, so it will feed evenly. The newer machines run in such a manner that one girl who may either stand or sit can watch both edges. Because of the nearness of the drying closet, the air would be hot and dry here but that outside air is driven in constantly by fans through pipes with vents opening close to the workers.
The tentering machines used to run slowly. This slowness enhanced the natural monotony and wearisomeness of the work. The girls used to receive wages of $6 a week, and to rest three-quarters of an hour in the morning and three-quarters of an hour in the afternoon, with the same period for dinner at noon in the middle of a ten-and-one-half hour day. After Scientific Management was introduced, the girls sat at the machine only an hour and twenty minutes at a time. They then had a twenty-minute rest, and these intervals of work and rest were continued throughout the day by an arrangement of spelling with "spare hands." The machines were run at a more rapid rate than before. The girl's task was set at watching 32,000 yards in a day; and if she achieved the bonus, as she did without any difficulty, she could earn $9 a week. The output of the tentering machines was increased about sixty per cent.
The girls at the tentering machines praised the bonus system eagerly. They said they could not bear to return to the former method of work; that now the work was easier and more interesting than before, and the payment and the hours were better. One of the "spare hands" showed me, as a memento of a new era at tenter-hooking machines, the written slip of paper the efficiency engineer had given to her, explaining to her how to arrange the intervals of rest, and to start the "rest" with a different girl on each Saturday—a five-hour day—so that the same girls would not have three intervals of rest every Saturday.
But in another part of the factory the girls at the tentering machines had wished to lump their rest intervals and to take them altogether in fifty-minute periods in the middle of the morning and of the afternoon. Here the "spare hands" intervals at the machines fell awkwardly, and they were obliged to work for an unduly long time. The girls became exhausted with the monotony in these longer stretches of work; and further wearied themselves by embroidering and sewing on fancy work in the long rest periods. Here the girls were much less contented than in the other departments.[[50]]
After the cloth is dry and passed through calendering machines where men are employed, it is run into yard lengths by a yarding machine or "hooker." At the yarding machines the girls stand under the frame holding the wooden arms that measure off the cloth back and forth. The workers here used to earn $7.50 a week. They watch the machine, mark defects in some kinds of cloth, by inserting slips of paper, stop the machine when the material runs out, and lift the pile of measured cloth to a table where it is taken up by the cutters and folders and inspectors.
After the bonus system was introduced at the machines where the heavier material is measured, the yarding machines were all elevated to small platforms, so that the pile when finished would be on a level with an adjacent table, and the worker need not lift and carry the heavy weight of cloth to the table, but could slide the work. The machine was run more rapidly. The task was increased to about 35,000 yards, or from about 155 pieces to about 610. The wage with the bonus was now about $10 on full time, and the hours were lessened 45 minutes, as at the tentering machines.
The worker stops the yarding machine by throwing her weight on her right foot, on a pedal to the right. The girls interviewed said they did not feel this as a strain, as there was a knack in doing it easily. On consulting a neighborhood physician it was found that within the last ten years, however, several women, both at the yarding and tentering machines, had strained themselves, probably by the tread at the yarding machine and by the slightly twisted seated position the older tentering machines necessitated. The number of these cases traceable to any one process of work had not increased under the new system. The whole number of these cases in the factory had, on the other hand, either decreased under the new system, or else had not come under this doctor's care. He believed, however, that there was a reduction of the cases, and that this reduction was attributable to the better general health achieved by shorter hours, better ventilation, and better working conditions and appliances.
Courtesy of "Industrial Engineering"
The Usual Method Of Providing The Bricklayer With Material
The increased task at the yarding machine seems to have increased the danger of accidents. A knife extends from the side of the machine; and when the girl's attention is concentrated on her work, she sometimes puts her fingers too near the blade, and cuts them, though no instance was known here of the loss of a finger or of serious injury.
The girls stand all day at the yarding machine and at most of the succeeding processes of preparation. These are various arrangements of inspecting, counting yards, folding in "book folds," of doubled-over material, or "long folds" of the full width, ticketing and stamping, tying selvages together with silk thread, or tying them to wrapping paper by means of a little instrument called a knot-tier—this process is called knotting—tying with ribbons, pasting on strips of silver tissue ribbon, further ticketing and stamping, and running the sets of tickets indicating the several yards in each piece through an adding machine, which then produces on a stamped card the total number of yards in each consignment, before it is finally rushed away for shipment.
The process of inspection is different for different qualities of material. Before the material is bleached, the number of yards and the character of treatment for each piece are specified on stamped orders issued from the planning room and sent with the cloth through the processes of production. It may as well be said here, that several girls have been promoted from manual work to work in this planning room, where they stamp orders, on a bonus at different rates, giving them a wage of about $10 a week in full time on office hours of 8 hours a day. [[51]]
The inspector receiving the bales from the yarding machines now counts off the number of yards and cuts the bale in accordance with these directions. Some material she inspects yard by yard for imperfections and dirt. After marking the yards on the cut piece, she sends it on to the folder if it is clean, and if it is spotted, to girls who wash out the spots and press the cloth. [[52]] On other material, imperfections are marked by the girl at the yarding machine, by the insertion of slips of paper. As the inspector has less to do on these pieces, she not only counts and cuts, but folds them.
Before the introduction of the bonus system, one girl used to fold, inspect, and ticket. She used also to carry her material from a table near the yarding machine. Boys now bring the material except where at the yarding machines for heavier stuffs it is pushed along the table. The hours, as for almost all of the bonus workers, have been shortened by 45 minutes. The wages which were $7.50 a week are now between $10 and $11 on full time. Almost all the workers here said they greatly preferred the bonus system and would greatly dislike to return to other work.
But in dealing with the heavier materials the work was tiring, and more tiring under the new system than before, as the number of pieces lifted had been increased. It was said while there was every intention of fairness on the part of the management in arranging the work; it was sometimes not evenly distributed in slack times, the same girls being laid off repeatedly and the same girls chosen to work repeatedly instead of in alternation.
In the further processes of folding, some of the work and the lifting to the piles of the sheer, book-folded stuff is light, but requires great deftness; other parts of the work and the lifting to the piles are heavier.[ [53]] The wage before the bonus was introduced was $7.50 a week, and with the bonus rose to $11 a week, in full time. As with the inspectors, the work was now brought to the folders, and the hours were shortened by 45 minutes. Here there was great variation in the account of the system.
One of the folders on light work, a wonderfully skilful young woman, who had folded 155 pieces a day before, and now folded 887, could run far beyond her task without exhaustion and earn as much as $15 a week. She and some of the expert workers paused in the middle of the morning for 10 or 15 minutes' rest and ate some fruit or other light refreshment, and sometimes took another such rest in the afternoon.
Another strong worker, employed on heavy material, though she liked the bonus system, and said "it couldn't be better," had remained at work at about the same wages as before, because she was a little ahead of the others before and earned $8 a week; and now, as there was hardly more than enough of her kind of work to occupy her for more than four days a week, she still earned about $8.
One folder was made very nervous by a constant fear that she would not earn her bonus. She always did complete the necessary amount; but when the system was first introduced, she had been sleepless night after night. Though this sleeplessness had passed away, she still took a nerve tonic to brace her through her work; and this was the case with another folder. The mothers of both these girls urged them to return to week work. But this was of poor quality—odds and ends—and the girls disliked it, and persisted in the new system.
In tying ribbons around the bolts of material, the girls sit at work. Their wages had been $1 a day for tying ribbons around 600 pieces; and now, on a bonus for 1200 pieces, is at times for quick workers, as high as $11. But the ribbon tying was not steady work. It is applied to only some of the material, and the task and bonus here are intermittent. The girls who knot, or run silk threads through the selvages, paste on tinsel ribbon, and wrap are younger than the other workers. Their wages before had been from $5.80 to $6 a week. Now they are in some cases over $8; in others about $7; in others about $6. The work reaches them in better condition than before. They said it was more interesting, and the chief difficulty was in lifting occasionally a greater number of heavy pieces in piling. Seats were provided for these workers except for those at tinselling; and if they found they were able to complete the task easily, they sat at the work. At the heavier work, the girl at yarding, the folder, knotter, and ticketer, all worked tandem, and if the girl at yarding loses her bonus, all the girls lose the bonus.
In the last process of stamping tickets and ticketing, the girls work without one superfluous motion, with a deftness very attractive to see; and both here and at book folding justify the claim made by Scientific Management that speed is a function of quality. The wages here had been $6 before, and were now in full time from $9 to $10. As the task before had been combined with various other processes, it was, as in other cases, impossible to determine how much the work of each worker had been increased. The present task was that of ticketing 39 bundles of 5 pieces each hourly, with different rates for different amounts of tickets, and was not considered at all a strain. But at the ticketing connected with the adding machines the work was not differentiated so carefully. More of the heavy work came to these ticketers, and the lifting was sometimes too exhausting. But the work was better than in former times, and the wages of from $9 to $10 were thought just, if a higher rate had been added for the heavier work here.
III
All this work described at the tenter hooking, the yarding, the folding, inspection, and ticketing, was of a different character from that carried on under the bonus and task system in a large room where sheets and pillowcases were manufactured. This work afforded the only instance of an application of Scientific Management to the processes involved in the great needle trades and was, on that account, of special interest.
The white cloth is brought on trucks to the girls, who tear it into lengths, in accordance with written orders received with each consignment. They snip the cloth with scissors, place the cut against the edge of an upright knife, set at a convenient height on a bench, and pull the two sides of the cloth so that the knife tears through evenly to the end; then they stamp the material, fold it over, and place it on a truck to be carried to the machine sewer. The weekly wages before the bonus was introduced had been $5.98 and were now with the bonus $6.75, though workers sometimes tore more than the 1190 sheets required by the task and made from $7 to $7.50 by a week's work. The quick workers occasionally stopped for 10 or 12 minutes in the morning and ate a light lunch. The task was severe for the muscles of the hand and forearm, and apt to cause swollen fingers and strained wrists, though the girls bound their wrists to prevent this. All the work was done standing. The loosened starch flying here was annoying, both to the tearers and the girls at the sewing-machines.
Since the time of the inquiry, all the girls engaged in tearing have been relieved and transferred to other positions, and the work of tearing has been done by men.
Here the sheets are turned back and hemmed by workers who sew tandem, one girl finishing the broader hem and the other the narrower one, their task being 620 sheets a day. The girls at the machines formerly earned $7.50, and now earn with the machine set at the higher rate of speed from $8 to $11. They stop for 10 minutes in the morning, and clean the machines and clear away the litter around them. The sewing and stooping are monotonous, and the work on bonus here is apt to cause nervousness, because of uncertainty occasioned by frequent breakages in the machines.[[54]]
There is a room at one side of the department, where the girls were to rest when they had completed their tasks. But the present foreman, not understanding the system, comes to the rest room and hurries them out again, even after the 620 sheets are finished. [[55]] One of the girls in the department, an Italian girl, who used to run far beyond the task at the machine, had fallen ill under the strain of the work, or at least left the factory looking extremely ill and saying that she had broken down and could not remain. Another unfortunate result of the speed at the sewing-machines is that the girls are more apt than before to run the needles through their fingers.
The folding in this department is also exhausting, and the management is trying to find a better system of conducting this process than that now employed. The folders here stoop and pick up the sheets and fold them lengthwise and crosswise. The task is 1200 a day; and the wage with the bonus comes to between $6 and $7 a week. But after the bonus is earned, payment is, for some reason, not suitably provided on work beyond the task. One worker said she used to fold one or two pieces above the amount without any objection, but lately she had folded as many as 200 beyond, without payment.
From the folders the sheets are carried away to a mangle, where they are folded over again by young girls. The work is light, but the payment of $5.80 to $6 for 770 pieces an hour is low. The mangle is well guarded. By an excellent arrangement here, the material is piled on a small elevator, so that the girl at the mangle does not have to stoop or lift, but easily adjusts the elevator, so that she can feed the mangle from the pile at her convenience. The girl at a mangle can earn from $7 to $8 and is not tired in any way by her work.
The final stamping and wrapping in paper and tying with cord are done at a rate of 25 pieces an hour, for a wage coming to $6 a week, by young girls; and the situation is otherwise about the same as with the other wrappers.
Except at the mangle, the operation of the sheet and pillow-case factory was unsatisfactory to the management, who had begun to study the department for reorganization just before the time of the inquiry. Competition had so depressed the price of the manufacture of sheets that the commission men, for whom these processes described were executed, paid 25 cents a dozen sheets for the work. This does not, of course, include the initial cost of the material. It means, however, that all of the following kinds of machine tending and manual labor on a sheet were to be done for 2½ cents:—
- Tearing; (men workers)
- Hemming; (women workers)
- Folding; (women workers)
- Mangling; (women workers)
- Book-folding; (women workers)
- Wrapping; (women workers)
- Ticketing; (women workers)
The management lost in its payment for labor here, and yet felt the work was too hard for its workers, and should be changed. Alterations in the rest periods are now being introduced. For the girls the system of operation at the time of the inquiry in the sheet and pillow-case factory, except on the mangle, was undoubtedly more exhausting than the old method, though their wages had been increased and their hours shortened.
In general in the Cloth Finishing establishment Scientific Management had increased wages.
It had shortened hours.
In regard to health and fatigue, outside the sheet factory, when the general vague impression that the new system was more exhausting than the other was sifted down, the grist of fact remaining was small, and consisted of the instances mentioned. About forty young women told me their experience of the work. Sometimes their mothers and their fathers talked with me about it. Every one whose health had suffered under the new task had been exhausted by some old difficulty which had remained unremedied. This point will be considered in relation to the industry of the other women workers in the other houses after the accounts of their experience of Scientific Management.
IV
There are over 600 workers in the New Jersey cotton mill. Of these 188 are women. One hundred and ten of the women workers are at present engaged under the bonus and task system, though the management expects to employ eventually under this system all of its workers, and is in this establishment markedly in sympathy with Scientific Management. The mill is a large, well-lighted brick structure, with fields around it, and another factory on one side, on the outskirts of a factory town. The establishment is composed of a larger and newer well-ventilated building, with washed air blown through the work-rooms; and an older building, where the part of the work is carried on which necessitates both heat and dampness to prevent the threads from breaking.
The cotton, which is of extremely fine quality, comes into the picker building in great bales from our Southern sea-coast and from Egypt. It is fed into the first of a series of cleaners, from the last of which it issues in a long, flat sheet, to go through the processes of carding, combing, drawing, and making into roving. The carding product consists of a very delicate web, which, after being run through a trumpet and between rollers, forms a "sliver" of the size of two of one's fingers, from which it issues in a long strand. This strand or sliver Is threaded into a machine with other ends of slivers and rolled out again in one stronger strand; and this doubling and drawing process is innumerably repeated, till the final roving is fed into a machine that gives it a twist once in an inch and winds it on a bobbin. There are three kinds or stages of twisting and winding roving on these machines, and at the last, the "speeders," women are employed.
Up to this point all the workers have been men. These speeders are in the carding rooms, which are large and high, filled with great belts geared from above, and machines placed in long lanes, where the operatives stand and walk at their work. Humidifying pipes pass along the room, with spray issuing from their vents. The lint fibres are constantly brushed and wiped up by the workers, but there is still considerable lint in the air. The heat, the whir of the machines, the heaviness of the atmosphere, and the lint are at first overpowering to a visitor. While many of the girls say that they grow accustomed to these conditions, others cannot work under them, and go away after a few days' or sometimes a few hours' trial.[[56]]
The speeders stand at one end of a long row of 160 bobbins and watch for a break in the parallel lines of 160 threads, and twist the two ends together when this occurs. The greater number of the speeders used to earn $6 a week. But two or three women, on piece-work, earned about $9 and did nearly twice as much as the other workers. The speeders had helpers who used to assist them to thread the back of the machine and to remove and place the bobbins in front. The change or "doff" occupied about 20 minutes. It generally occurred five times in the day of the better worker and thus consumed an hour and forty minutes of her working time. The hours in the cotton mill are ten and a half a day with five and a half on Saturday,—58 hours a week.
In order to ascertain the proper task for the speeders, a time-study was made of the work of one of the abler workers, who may be called Mrs. MacDermott, a strong and skilful Scotch woman, who had been employed at speeding in the mill for 14 years. Mrs. MacDermott was employed to teach the other speeders how to accomplish the same amount in the same time. The girls now thread the back of the machines with her help. Mrs. MacDermott, the speeder tender herself, and the doff boys, all working together, remove the bobbins and fill the frame, thus accomplishing the change in 7 minutes instead of 20 minutes. The girls are paid, while learning better methods from Mrs. MacDermott, at their old rate of a dollar a day. If they accomplish the task allotted, they receive a dollar a week more flat-rate, a bonus equivalent to a few cents a pound on each pound received by the management; and this brings the wage to $1.65 a day, or between $8 and $10 a week. The work tires the girls no more than it did before. They receive about thirty per cent more wages, and the management receives from the speeders nearly twice as great an output as before. Mrs. MacDermott's wage as a teacher has been raised to $12.
From the speeders, the doff boys send the roving—called fine roving in the mill, because the other rovings in preceding operations are coarser—upstairs in the older building to the spinners. Spinning is a more difficult task than speeding. Two rovings are here twisted together by the machines. The spinners have 104 bobbins on one side of a frame, and watch for breakage, and change the bobbins on three frames, or six "sides." Spinners formerly worked at piece-work rates and by watching eight sides, and frequently doing the work very imperfectly, would earn about $9. After a time-study was taken, the task was set at six sides, and doffs as called for by a schedule. With the bonus the girls' weekly wage comes to about $10. In the spinning department there is a school for spinners. The heads receive a dollar for every graduate who learns to achieve the task and bonus.
The yarn is carried from the spinners to the spoolers, and wound from bobbins to spools for convenience in handling. The work of the spool tenders seemed to the present writer to be the severest work for women in this cotton mill. The bobbins run out very rapidly, and require constant change. The girls watch the thread for breakages just as at the other machines. In replacing the bobbins and fastening the broken threads with a knot tier, the girls have to stoop down almost to the floor. Before the time-study was taken, the girls were watching 75 bobbins, hurrying up and down the sides, bending up and down perpetually at this work. Some of the spool tenders had $6 a week on piece-work; others, more experienced workers, were able to earn $10.50 at piece-work, although the work was frequently unsatisfactory and had loose ends. A little Italian girl, who may be called Lucia, an extremely rapid worker, used to run wildly from one end of the frame to the other, and in the summer-time fainted several times at her work from exhaustion. A time-study was taken from the work of a very deft young Polish girl, and from Lucia. The other spoolers were taught to work with the same rapidity, and were soon able to earn with the bonus and the work done beyond the task a sum which brought their wage up to nearly $12 a week.
This lasted for about two months. But the work was so improperly done and the spools were so full of loose and untied ends, etc., that the number of spindles to be tended was reduced from 75 to 50, and the machines were run at a lower rate of speed. The task was changed accordingly so that the worker's wage, simply with the bonus, was as it had been before. But she was unable to overrun the task as far as she had, formerly. By the workers' constant attention, the work now improved in quality, but the limit of quantity, was, of course, lower. The wages with the bonus dropped back to a smaller excess, or $1.47 a day. This was, of course, disheartening, though Lucia said it was better, she was so much less tired by the work than she had been before. But the work is still undoubtedly very wearying and difficult. The spoolers still give incessant attention to their work, still do their best, and yet make by close application far less than they had grown accustomed to expect whether justly or unjustly. [[57]] The task is now 12 doffs a day—each doff requiring a change of 208 bobbins. So that in changing bobbins alone the girls have to stoop down over 2000 times a day, without counting all the stooping for knot tying, which the forewoman said would about equal the labor of bending and working at bobbin changing. She had talked with the management about having the frames raised, so as to eliminate this exhausting process of stooping to work for the spoolers. This change had been made in two machines and will doubtless be extended. [[58]]
At the further twisting and plying of the cotton, the processes succeeding the spooling, men are employed. From these the yarn goes to the winding room in the newer building, where better air and temperature are possible than in the carding and spinning rooms. The winding room is large and light. At one side stand the warps, very tall and interesting to see, with their lines of delicate filament and high tiers of bobbins. In the winding room girls are engaged at machines which wind the yarn from spools back to bobbins for filling in the looms and also for the warp.
In winding the filling bobbins the girls watch the thread from eighteen bobbins, and replace and stop bobbins by pressing on foot pedals. The worker had made from $7 to $7.50 a week before a time-study was taken and the task increased. She can now make from $8 to $10.50 a week. The work is lightened for her by the fact that whereas she formerly placed the bobbins on the warp, doffers now do this for her. But the increased stamping of the pedals made necessary by the larger task is very tiring.
There are no women on bonus in the weave room, where the warp and the filling are now carried. After the woven product comes from the weaving room—an extremely heavy, strong stuff of the highest grade, used for filter cloth and automobile tires—it is hung in a large finishing room in the newer building over a glass screen lighted with sixteen electric lights which shine through the texture of the material and reveal its slightest defect. After it has been rolled over the screen, it is sent to girls who remedy these defects by needlework.
It is again run over the lighted screen by the inspectors and returned to the girls if there are still defects. Before the bonus system was applied, the girls had made $5.04 a week, and finished about 5 rolls a day. After the system was applied, they made from $7 to $8 and did sometimes 10 and sometimes 12 rolls a day. But, in spite of the greatest care on Mr. Gantt's part in standardizing the quality in this department, here, as with the spool tenders, requirement as to quality had recently caused a temporary drop in wages. This change in requirement was occasioned, not as at the spool tending by the negligence of the workers, but by the somewhat unreasonable caprice of a customer. Knots in the texture, formerly sewed down as they were, are now cut and fastened differently. To learn this process meant just as hard work for the girls, and put them back temporarily to their old day rate, [[59]] though they were recently becoming sufficiently quick in the new process to earn the bonus as well as before.
By and large, the wages of the women workers in the cotton mill had been increased by Scientific Management.
Their hours had not been affected. These were in all instances 10½ a day and 5½ on Saturday. There was no overtime. But on five nights in the week, women preparing yarn for the following day worked at speeding and spinning from six at night until six in the morning, with half an hour for lunch at midnight. This arrangement had always been the custom of the mill. The girls go home at six for breakfast, sleep until about half past four, rise, dress, and have supper, and go to work in the mill again at six. The night workers I visited had worked at night in other mills in New England before they worked in New Jersey. Their sole idea of work, indeed, was night work; and if it were closed in one mill, they sought it in another. One of the youngest girls, a clever little Hungarian of 17, who had been only 3 years in this country and could barely speak English, knew America simply as a land of night work and of Sundays, and had spent her whole life here like a little mole. The present owner, the superintendent, and the head of the planning department all seriously disliked night work for women, and said they were anxious to dispense with it. But they had not been able to arrange their output so as to make this change, though they intended to inaugurate it as rapidly as possible.
Concerning the health and conservation of the strength of the women workers in the mill under Scientific Management, the task of the speeders and of the women at cloth inspection tired the girls no more than it had before. In the spool tending and the winding, as the two most exhausting operations in each process, the stooping and the stamping of the pedals, had been increased by the heightened task, the exhaustion of the workers was heightened. But the work of the excitable little spool tender mentioned was finally so arranged as to leave her in better health than in the days when she was employed on piece-work, and the management was now endeavoring to eliminate the stooping at the bobbins. At spinning almost all the spinners found the work easier than before, probably because Scientific Management demands that machine supervision and assistance shall be the best possible. It must be remembered that the adjustment of conditions in the mill here is comparatively new. Almost all the girls said: "They don't drive you at the mill. They make it as easy for you as they can." It was of special value to observe the operation of Scientific Management in an establishment where all the industrial conditions are difficult for women. As in the white goods sewing for the Cloth Finishing establishment, these industrial conditions are unfortunately controlled to a great extent by competition and by custom for both the employer and the employees. The best omen for the conservation of the health of the women workers under Scientific Management in the cotton mill was the entire equity and candor shown by the management in facing situations unfavorable for the women workers' health and their sincere intention of the best practicable readjustments.
V
The application of Scientific Management to women's work in the Delaware Bleachery was very limited, extending only to about 12 girls, all employed in folding and wrapping cloth. [[60]] The factory, on the outskirts of a charming old city in Delaware, is an enormous, picturesque cement pile, reaching like a bastion along the Brandywine River, with its windows overlooking the wooded bank of the stream.
The girls stand in a large room, before tables piled with great bolts of material, and stamp tickets and style cards, fasten them to the roll, fold over the raw edges of the material in a lap, tie two pieces of ribbon around the bolt, wrap it in paper, stamp and attach other tickets, and tie it up with cord to be shipped. Here, after a time-study was made of the quicker girls in all the operations, different tasks were set for different weights of material; and if the task was accomplished, a bonus was paid, amounting, roughly speaking, to a quarter of the worker's hourly wage. The arrangement of the different processes was so different for each worker, after and before the system was installed, that none of the girls could compare the different amounts of work she completed at the different times. But the whole output, partly through a better routing of the work to the tables, and by paying the boys who brought it a bonus of 5 cents for each worker who made her bonus, was increased from twenty-five to fifty per cent.
The girls' hours were decreased from 10¼ a day with frequent overtime up to nine at night to 9¼ a day with no overtime, the Saturday half-holiday remaining unchanged. Here is a list of the changes in the week wages. The work at the time of the inquiry was slack. Sometimes there were only a few hours in the day of wrapping of a kind on which the task and bonus was applied. Besides, these workers were in the midst of an establishment managed by another system. The bonus was given on the basis of the former wage. And this remained lower in the case of workers employed fewer years by the firm, though sometimes their task was the same as that of workers employed longer. Where the girls wrapped both the heavier and the lighter materials, the allotment of these was in the hands of a sub-foreman, who, instead of being in the new position of a teacher rewarded for helping each worker to make her bonus, was in the old position of a distributor of favors. The slackness of the work had led the management, in a good-willed attempt to provide as well as possible for the employees, to place several girls from other departments under this sub-foreman. One of these less strong and experienced girls, at the time of the inquiry, was receiving such an amount of heavy work that she could wrap only enough of the task to enable her to earn from $3 to $5 a week. The firm's policy was paternalistic, and while in many ways it had a genuine kindness, it was not in general sympathy with Scientific Management, though the superintendent is a thorough and consistent supporter of the new system. But he had not been able, single handed, to achieve all the necessary adjustments, in spite of the decided increase of output the new methods had already obtained for the company.
| Per Week | Formerly | |
| Folding and ticketing on light material | $5 to 6 | $4.84 |
| Folding and ticketing on light material | 5 to 6 | 4.84 |
| Wrapping light material | 6 to 7 | 4.56 |
| Wrapping light material | 7 to 8 | 4.84 |
| Wrapping light and heavy material | 6 to 6.50 | 4.56 |
| Wrapping light and heavy material combined with napkin tying | 6 to 7 | 4.84 |
| Folding and ticketing both light and heavy material | 5 to 6 | 4.84 |
| Folding and ticketing both light and heavy material (unaccustomed to the work) | 4.59 (once 6.69) | 4.56 |
| Folding and ticketing both light and heavy material (unaccustomed to the work) | 5 | 4.56 |
| Folding and ticketing both light and heavy material (unaccustomed to the work) | 3 to 5 | 7 |
| (in another department) | ||
Even considering slackness, these increases per week for first-rate speed and work, though in many cases the work was light, cannot but seem small. All the girls lived in attractive houses and pleasant places. All but one were with their families. The city has an open market. People of all grades of income go to market properly with market-baskets, choose food of excellent quality, and have fresh vegetables through the winter. The ladies of the house, the girls' mothers, preserve fruit from June strawberries to autumn apple-butter, and exhibit it proudly in row after row of glass jars. But the girls' wages could not pay for such living conditions. The girl who was boarding, and whose wages were sometimes $5 a week, could not always pay her board bill and had almost nothing left for other expenses. [[61]]
In regard to health and fatigue the main difficulty here, as at the Cloth Finishing factory, was in the lifting of heavier pieces of cloth. Two of the girls had suffered, since the introduction of the bonus and task, by straining themselves in this way. One of them was at home ill for a week, and is now quite well again. The other girl was away for two months, and though she is now at work, had not fully regained her health. The company had at once obtained employment less straining for the first of these girls, and the second said that the firm had always been fair with her in arranging the work. It was said that it had been Mr. Gantt's intention to have the heavier lifting done by men and boys, instead of combining it with the larger tasks the girls now accomplished under the new system. But the department had never fully carried out its intention, and unfortunately since Mr. Gantt's departure rather more of the heavy material had been ordered from the house than before.
The general good will of the firm, the picturesque factory site, the pleasant work-rooms, and the attractive living conditions of the Delaware workers gave them an extraordinary opportunity to pursue their labor healthfully. But because of its incomplete adoption, Scientific Management, though it had shortened hours, and in most cases had raised wages, had proven of less potential value to the workers than to those in the more difficult industrial situation obtaining in the cotton mill.
VI
In general, then, Scientific Management for women workers in this country may be said as far as it has been applied to have increased wages, to have shortened hours, and to have resulted fortunately for the health of women workers in some instances and unfortunately in others.
Wherever a process presented a difficulty which remained unremedied, if the task were multiplied, the difficulty, of course, was multiplied. No matter how greatly the weight of a wagon is lightened, if there is a hole in the road of its passage, and the road is now to be travelled sixty times a day, instead of twenty times, as before, the physical difficulty from this hole is not only trebled, but while it may be endured with patience twenty times, is not only a muscular, but a nervous strain at the sixtieth. This was the situation in regard to all unrelieved heavy lifting wherever cloth was manipulated, the situation in regard to the stooping for the spool tenders, the stamping at the winding machine, and the stooping and breakages at the sewing-machine. But these points, instead of being ignored by the management, were seriously regarded by the employers as inimical to their own best interests in combination with those of their employees, and in all the establishments were in process of adjustment.
In the present writer's judgment this adjustment would have been inaugurated earlier in several processes and would have been more rapid and effective for both the employer's interest and that of the women workers if the women workers' difficulties had been fairly and clearly specified through trade organization. Such an organization would also be of value in preventing danger of injury for workers whose attention under Scientific Management should be concentrated on their tasks, and of value in supporting the tendency of Scientific Management to pay work absolutely according to the amount accomplished by the worker, and not under a certain specified rate for this amount.
Scientific Management as applied to women's work in this country is, of course, very recent. This synthesis of its short history is collected from the statements made by about eighty of the women workers, by Mr. Gantt, and by the owner, superintendent, and head of the planning department of the cotton mill, by the superintendent and one of the owners of the Cloth Finishing factory, and the superintendent and one of the owners of the Bleachery. The account should be supplemented by several general observations.
The first is that it is difficult to determine where the health of a worker has been strained by industry and where by other causes. Quite outside any of the narratives mentioned were those of two young women employed under Scientific Management whose health was hopelessly broken. Both of these poor girls were subject to wrong and oppressive maltreatment at home. Indeed, from oppression at home, one of the girls had repeatedly found refuge and protection in the consideration shown to her by the establishment where she worked. It was not she who blamed the new way of management for her breakdown, but people whose impression of her situation was vague and lacked knowledge.
The whole tendency of Scientific Management toward truth about industry, toward justice, toward a clear personal record of work, established without fear or favor, had inspired something really new and revolutionary in the minds of both the managers and the women workers where the system had been inaugurated. Nearly all of them wished to tell and to obtain, as far as they could, the actual truth about the experiment everywhere. Almost no one wished to "make out a case." This expressed sense of candor and coöperation on both sides seemed to the present writer more stirring and vital than the gains in wages and hours, far more serious even than the occasional strain on health which the imperfect installation of Scientific Management had sometimes caused.
These strains on women's health in industry in America—stooping and monotony in all the needle trades, jumping on pedals in machine tending, dampness and heat in cotton production, the standing without pause for many hours a day throughout the month, the lifting of heavy weights in packing and in distribution—all these industrial strains for women constitute grave public questions affecting the good fortune of the whole nation and not to be answered in four years, nor by one firm. It is undoubtedly the tendency of Scientific Management to relieve all these strains.
No one can see even in part the complications of contemporary factory work, the hundred operations of human hands and muscles required for placing a single yard of cotton cloth on the market, the thousand threads spinning and twisting, the thousand shuttles flying, the manifold folding and refolding and wrapping and tying, the innumerable girls working, standing, walking by these whirring wheels and twisting threads and high piled folding tables, without feeling strongly that ours is indeed an industrial civilization, and that the conditions of industry not only completely control the lives of uncounted multitudes, but affect in some measure every life in this country to-day.
No finer dream was ever dreamed than that the industry by which the nation lives should be so managed as to secure for the men and women engaged in it their real prosperity, their best use of their highest powers. By and large, the great task of common daily work our country does to-day is surely not so managed, either by intent or by result, either for the workers or for the most "successful" owners of dividends. How far Scientific Management will go toward realizing its magnificent dream in the future will be determined by the greatness of spirit and the executive genius with which its principles are sustained by all the people interested in its inauguration, the employers, the workers, and the engineers.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] Brief on behalf of Traffic Committee of Commercial Organizations of Atlantic Seaboard, p. 70. Louis D. Brandeis.
[44] Fourteen years ago Scientific Management was applied to women's work in a Rolling Machine Company in Massachusetts. Here the women's hours were reduced from 10½ day to 8½; their wages were increased about 100 per cent; and their output about 300 per cent. All the women had two days' rest a month with pay. The work consisted in inspecting ball-bearings for bicycles. Their department of the business, however, closed twelve years ago. Accurate facts other than those listed concerning the workers' experience as to hours, wages, and general health under Scientific Management are at this date too few to be valuable.
[45] "Academic and Industrial Efficiency," by F.W. Taylor and Morris Llewellyn Cook.
[46] The specialistic and detailed care necessary for practical and exact time-study may be indicated by the reproduction below of a method of record used by Mr. Sanford E. Thompson in timing wheelbarrow excavations. (Explanation. The letters a, b, c, etc., indicate elementary units of the operation: "Filling barrow" = (a); "starting" = (b); "wheeling full" = (c), etc.)
[47] "Efficiency." Harrington Emerson.
[48] "Work, Wages and Profits," pp. 110 to 111. H.L. Gantt.
[49] While the bonus system as a means of compensation has been used very often in connection with the Scientific Management, it must not, however, be supposed that this method of compensation is alone and in itself Scientific Management. In fact, as employed without Scientific Management, it is to be regarded with some apprehension.
[50] The work in this department was, besides, rather slack at the time of year when I visited the factory, and wages for some of these workers were $6 a week, as low as they had been before the bonus was introduced.
[51] The girl who directs them and issues the orders receives a bonus for every stamper earning a bonus and earns on full time from $12 to $15.
[52] These girls are not employed under the bonus and task system. But it is interesting to observe that they may either sit or stand to iron, as they prefer.
[53] The men folders at the heaviest work here now receive with the bonus from $14 to $17 a week.
[54] A worker does not lose her regular wage if she is stopped by a breakage. Her time-card is altered. And she has credit on a time basis for the period while the machine is not running. A breakage in the first machine of a tandem pair stops both sewers. But a breakage in the second means that work piles up for the second sewer, and unless she makes it up, she will prevent her companion from earning a bonus, though not a time wage.
[55] The management, on learning of this, said the practice would be stopped at once.
[56] "The cotton as it grows in the field becomes more or less filled with blown dust.... Lint is given off in all processes up to and including spinning.... The only practical way to keep down the dust in all of these operations is by frequent sweeping and mopping the floor and wiping off the machinery." Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-earners in the United States. Vol. I, p. 365.
"What degree of moisture is safely permissible from the standpoint of the operatives' health is an unsettled question.... When the operative after a day's work in a humid and relaxing atmosphere goes into one relatively drier, the assault on the delicate membrane of the air-passages is sharp. The effect of these changes is greatly to lower the vital resistance and make the worker especially susceptible to pulmonary, bronchial, or catarrhal affections. It is very possible that the dust and lint present in the mill have been credited with effects which are due in part to these atmospheric conditions." Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-earners in the United States. Vol. I, p. 362.
[57] Besides, work had lately been slack, and this had further decreased the wages.
[58] Since visiting the New Jersey cotton mill, the present writer has seen spool tenders at work at a machine requiring no stooping, and provided with a board below the bobbins, placed at such a height, that the worker can relieve her position while standing by resting her weight against the board, above one knee and then above the other.
[59] At the same time work was slack so that week wages had dropped to $3 and $4.
[60] One of the girls issues batches of tickets. Another girl unfolds one end of certain of the packages, and inserts a ticket and stamps an outside label, to accord with the invoice system of some of the purchasers. These girls had received before $5.40 and $4.84 a week, respectively, and now receive, the one $5.73, and the other between $5 and $6.
[61] All the firms have rest rooms for the girls. The Delaware firm and the New Jersey cotton mill have pleasant lunch-rooms, where an excellent lunch is provided at cost.
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The Macmillan Company
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
American Social Progress Series
Edited By
Professor Samuel McCune Lindsay, Ph.D., LL.D.
Columbia University
A series of handbooks for the student and general reader, giving the results of the newer social thought and of recent scientific investigations of the facts of American social life and institutions. Each volume about 200 pages.
1—The New Basis of Civilization. By Simon N. Patten, Ph.D., LL.D., University of Pennsylvania. Price, $1.00 net.
2—Standards of Public Morality. By Arthur Twining Hadley, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Yale University. Price, $1.00 net.
3—Misery and Its Causes. By Edward T. Devine, Ph.D., LL.D., Columbia University. Price, $1.25 net.
4—Government Action for Social Welfare. By Jeremiah W. Jenks, Ph.D., LL.D., Cornell University. Price, $1.00 net.
5—Social Insurance. A Program of Social Reform. By Henry Rogers Seager, Ph.D., Columbia University. Price, $1.00 net.
6—The Social Basis of Religion. By Simon N. Patten, Ph.D., LL.D., University of Pennsylvania. Price, $1.25 net.
7—Social Reform and the Constitution. By Frank J. Goodnow, LL.D., Columbia University.
The Macmillan Company
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
By Scott Nearing, Ph.D.
Of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Social Adjustment
Cloth, 377 pages, $1.50 net
"It is a good book, and will help any one interested in the study of present social problems."—Christian Standard.
"A clear, sane gathering together of the sociological dicta of to-day. Its range is wide—education, wages, distribution and housing of population, conditions of women, home decadence, tenure of working life and causes of distress, child labor, unemployment, and remedial methods. A capital reading book for the million, a text-book for church and school, and a companion for the economist of the study desk." —Book News Monthly.
Wages in the United States
Cloth, 12mo. Preparing
This work represents an examination of statistics offered by various states and industries in an effort to determine the average wage in the United States. As a scholarly and yet simple statement it is a valuable contribution to the study of one side of our social organization.
Economics
By Scott Nearing and Frank D. Watson, both Instructors in Political Economy in the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, University of Pennsylvania
Cloth, 8vo, 493 pages, $1.90 net
The book discusses the whole subject of prosperity of the factors which enter into the complex economic life of the nation. A young man who wishes to read even the daily paper with full intelligence would find time spent in reading this book well employed for the help which it would give him in understanding current discussions of such topics as the standard of living; the natural resources of the country and their conservation; the relations of labor and immigration; of the labor of women and children to industrial progress; of organization in business and its tendencies; of the growth and functions of large corporations; of public ownership; of the various experiments which have been tried at different times, or the programmes which social leaders are now proposing for the remedy or the prevention of economic injustice.
The Macmillan Company
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
By Mary W. Brown
Secretary of the Henry Watson Children's Aid Society, Baltimore
The Development of Thrift
Cloth; 12mo, $1.00 net
"An excellent little manual, a study of various agencies, their scope and their educating influences for thrift. It abounds in suggestions of value."—Chicago Inter-Ocean.
The Principles of Relief
Cloth, $2.00 net
"Text-books of sociology which are at once theoretical and practical, aiding alike the citizen who seeks to fulfil intelligently his duty toward the dependent classes and the volunteer or professional worker in any branch of social service, are rare enough; and Dr. Devine's book is a valuable addition to this class of literature.... Comprehensive in scope, and masterly in treatment, the book shows thorough knowledge of all phases of the relief problem of to-day; and it combines with the student's careful presentation of facts as they are, the humanist's vision of what they yet may be."—Boston Transcript.
"A distinct contribution to the literature of scientific philanthropy. It marks a step in the development of that literature, for in it are brought to consciousness, perhaps for the first time fully, the underlying principles on which the charity organization society movement is based. Moreover, it undertakes to give a comprehensive statement of the elementary principles upon which all relief giving, whether public or private, should rest; and it correlates these principles with the general facts of economics and sociology in such a way as to leave no doubt in the mind of the reader that the author has mastered his subject. The point of view of the book is constructive throughout, as its author evidently intends; and it is safe to say that for many years to come it will be, both for the practical worker and for the scientific student, the authoritative work upon the 'Principles of Relief.'"—Annals of the American Academy.
The Macmillan Company
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
Edited by Robert W. De Forest and Lawrence Veiller
The most authoritative and comprehensive work on this subject, written by various authors and illustrated with eighty photographs and charts.
Volume One
Contents:—Tenement Reform in New York since 1901; The Tenement House Problem; Tenement House Reform in New York City, 1834-1900; Housing Conditions in Buffalo; Housing Conditions and Tenement Laws in Leading American Cities; Housing Conditions and Tenement Laws in Leading European Cities; A Statistical Study of New York's Tenement Houses; The Non-enforcement of the Tenement House Laws in New Buildings; Tenement House Fires in New York; Tenement House Fire Escapes in New York and Brooklyn; Back to Back Tenements; Tenement House Sanitation; Small Houses for Working Men; Financial Aspects of Recent Tenement House Operations in New York; The Speculative Building of Tenement Houses; Tenement Evils as seen by the Tenants; Tenement Evils as seen by an Inspector; Tuberculosis and the Tenement House Problem; The Relation of Tuberculosis to the Tenement House Problem.
Volume Two
Contents:—Parks and Playgrounds for Tenement Districts; Prostitution as a Tenement House Evil; Policy; A Tenement House Evil; Public Baths; A Plan for Tenements in Connection with a Municipal Park; Foreign Immigration and the Tenement House in New York City; Appendices.
In Two Volumes, Cloth, 8vo, $3.00 net
The Macmillan Company
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York