The Principles of Scientific Management

THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 137 not universally, the employés have obtained materi- ally higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions. But in the end the major part of the gain has gone to the whole people. And this result will follow the introduction of scientific management just as surely as it has the introduction of machinery. To return to the case of the pig-iron handler. We must assume, then, that the larger part of the gain which has come from his great increase in output will in the end go to the people in the form of cheaper pig-iron. And before deciding upon how the balance is to be divided between the workmen and the employer, as to what is just and fair compensation for the man who does the piling and what should be left for the company as profit, we must look at the matter from all sides. First. As we have before stated, the pig-iron handler is not an extraordinary man difficult to find, he is merely a man more or less of the type of the ox, heavy both mentally and physically. Second. The work which this man does tires him no more than any healthy normal laborer is tired by a proper day’s work. (If this man is overtired by his work, then the task has been wrongly set and this is as far as possible from the object of scientific management.) Third. It was not due to this man’s initiative or originality that he did his big day s work, but to the knowledge of the science of pig-iron handling developed and taught him by some one else.