Shop Management

22 SHOP MANAGEMENT be said that this condition has as yet been at all generally recognized as the necessary foundation for good management. On the contrary, it is still quite generally regarded as a fact by both sides that in many of the most vital matters the best interests of employers are necessarily opposed to those of the men. In fact, the two elements which we will all agree are most wanted on the one hand by the men and on the other hand by the employers are generally looked upon as antagonistic. What the workmen want from their employers beyond anything else is high wages, and what em- ployers want from their workmen most of all is a low labor cost of manufacture. These two conditions are not diametrically opposed to one another as would appear at first glance. On the contrary, they can be made to go together in all classes of work, without exception, and in the writer’s judgment the existence or absence of these two ele- ments forms the best index to either good or bad management. This book is written mainly with the object of advocating high wages and low labor cost as the foundation of the best management, of pointing out the general principles which render it possible to maintain these conditions even under the most try- ing circumstances, and of indicating the various steps which the writer thinks should be taken in changing from a poor system to a better type of management. The condition of high wages and low labor cost is far from being accepted either by the average man- ager or the average workman as a practical working