The Principles of Scientific Management

28 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT of nearly thirty years. And during this time the employés of one company after another, including a large range and diversity of industries, have grad- ually changed from the ordinary to the scientific type of management. At least 50,000 workmen in the United States are now employed under this system; and they are receiving from 30 per cent, to 100 per cent, higher wages daily than are paid to men of similar caliber with whom they are sur- rounded, while the companies employing them are more prosperous than ever before. In these com- panies the output, per man and per machine, has on an average been doubled. During all these years there has never been a single strike among the men working under this system. In place of the suspicious watchfulness and the more or less open warfare which characterizes the ordinary types of management, there is universally friendly cooper- ation between the management and the men. Several papers have been written, describing the expedients which have been adopted and the details which have been developed under scientific manage- ment and the steps to be taken in changing from the ordinary to the scientific type. But iinfortu- nately most of the readers of these papers have mistaken the mechanism for the true essence. Sci- entific management fundamentally consists of certain broad general principles, a certain philosophy, which can be applied in many ways, and a description of what any one man or men may believe to be the best mechanism for applying these general principles