Part 18 (2/2)

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 Finis.h.i.+ng 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 Finis.h.i.+ng establishment bleaches, starches, and calenders dimities, muslins, percales, and s.h.i.+rtings, and folds and wraps them for s.h.i.+pping. 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 Finis.h.i.+ng 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-cla.s.s work through first-cla.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day--a five-hour day--so that the same girls would not have three intervals of rest every Sat.u.r.day.

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 pa.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 s.h.i.+pment.

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.

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