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.