Part 20 (1/2)
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 pa.s.sage, 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 Finis.h.i.+ng 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 cooperation 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 const.i.tute 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 mult.i.tudes, 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:
[Footnote 43: Brief on behalf of Traffic Committee of Commercial Organizations of Atlantic Seaboard, p. 70. Louis D. Brandeis.]
[Footnote 44: Fourteen years ago Scientific Management was applied to women's work in a Rolling Machine Company in Ma.s.sachusetts. Here the women's hours were reduced from 10-1/2 day to 8-1/2; 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.]
[Footnote 45: ”Academic and Industrial Efficiency,” by F.W. Taylor and Morris Llewellyn Cook.]
[Footnote 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.)]
[Footnote 47: ”Efficiency.” Harrington Emerson.]
[Footnote 48: ”Work, Wages and Profits,” pp. 110 to 111. H.L. Gantt.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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.]