In factory work it is feasible to have all the men go through a gate which is closed one minute after the hour and not opened again for perhaps 25 minutes, so that, if a man is two minutes late, he loses a half-hour's pay. This has the merit of not working injustice to anyone, and, after being instituted, seems to be accepted by the men with a reasonable degree of contentment. It is not easy to start a strike because some men lose their jobs from being late.
Such a system as this, however, is practically impossible on outside contract work; and while it may be feasible to institute a modification of the time clock method, it is not known that this has yet been successfully done. Probably the most satisfactory way of insuring prompt arrival of the men, is to measure the output of each gang and make each foreman responsible for it, thus giving him a personal incentive to get his men on the job promptly.
9. Enough Foremen. It is necessary, in any organization, to have the chain of responsibility lead through a sufficient number of foremen; otherwise a superintendent or supervisor will find himself "spreading out too thin," and will be attempting to perform a lot of work that should be done by a foreman. One superintendent can supervise the work of 20 or 30 foremen with a favorable layout, and each foreman can supervise the work of from 10 to 25 men. If, however, there be more gangs than there are foremen, the superintendent will find himself trying to play the part of foreman in instructing the men, and not able to do his own work, which is to instruct and supervise the foremen. In the matter of drilling, a number of able managers are not in favor of having a foreman over the drills. It is calculated that by substituting a boy to keep the records of the drilling, and putting bonuses on the drills, the difference between the pay of a foreman and the pay of a boy is saved, with no appreciable loss in performance.
There are strong grounds for the opinion that there should be no process, such as drilling, without a foreman, where the work is on a large scale. When 10 drills are working, they will employ altogether 20 men on the drills, a number of muckers clearing the ground, and a pipe man. The work of these men cannot fail to be improved by their being at all times under the watchful eye of a man to whom they are responsible for the quantity and quality of their work. Aside from this, if the foreman is an expert driller, the instruction that he can give to the less able of the drill runners will be worth ten times its cost.
The same argument applies to all processes in the field.
10. Education on the Work. As a general thing, men who take money for their labor are more than willing to deliver a square deal to their employer; and it will almost invariably be found that the more familiar a man is with the difficulties and possibilities of his fellow-workmen, the more efficient he will be himself. For this reason it has been found highly satisfactory, in some lines of work, to change the men around on the job. In a certain concrete building 12 stories high, the upper stories were built in a small fraction of the time required for the corresponding lower stories. The greater part of the extraordinary increase in efficiency was attributed to the fact that the men were so educated that a man at the top of the building knew how the men at the mixer and in other parts of the job were doing their work, and knew that the superintendent in charge was measuring the speed of the deliveries from the hoist. The disadvantage of this method is that it takes a long time to work up the efficiency. It is, however, an admirable method for disciplining an organization.
Discipline. To the practical man, or to the intelligent student, there seems to be no necessity for arguing in favor of discipline as an essential to economical field work; but so large a percentage of contract work in the field is badly disciplined, and the general principles seem to be unknown to so many field organizations, that a brief statement of them appears to be called for in this volume.
By discipline is meant the cultivation of a spirit of:
1. Co-operation;
2. Obedience;
3. Responsibility;
4. Personal loyalty.