Motion Study
A Method for Increasing the Efficiency of the Workman

94 MOTION STUDY ing standards for the largest down to the smallest insig- nificant tool or device used. Much toward standardizing the trades has already been done. In this, as in almost countless other lines of activity, the investigator turns oftenest with admiration to the work of Frederick W. Taylor. It is the never-ceasing marvel concerning this man that age cannot wither nor custom stale his work. After many a weary day’s study the investigator awakes from a dream of greatness to find that he has only worked out a new proof for a problem that Taylor has already solved. Time study, the instruction card, functional foreman- ship, the differential rate piece method of compensation, and numerous other scientifically derived methods of de- creasing costs and increasing output and wages—these are by no means his only contributions toward standardizing the trades whose value it would be difficult to overesti- mate; they are but a few of the means toward attaining standards which have been placed by Taylor, their dis- coverer, within the hands of any man willing to use them. Future Work in Standardizing the Trades The great need to-day in standardizing the trades is for cooperation. In other times all excellent methods or means were held as “trade secrets,” sometimes lost to the world for generations until rediscovered. The day for this is past. Thinkers of to-day recognize that the work to be done is so great that, given all that every one has