Shop Management

SHOP MANAGEMENT 47 the large increase in output is due partly to the actual physical changes, either in the machines or small tools and appliances, which a preliminary time study almost always shows to be necessary, so that for purposes of illustration the simple case chosen is the better, although the gain made in the more compli- cated cases is none the less legitimately due to the system. Up to the spring of the year 1899, all of the ma- terials in the yard of the Bethlehem Steel Company had been handled by gangs of men working by the day, and under the foremanship of men who had themselves formerly worked at similar work as laborers. Their management was about as good as the average of similar work, although it was bad; all of the men being paid the ruling wages of laborers in this section of the country, namely, $1.15 per day, the only means of encouraging or disciplining them being either talking to them or discharging them; occasionally, however, a man was selected from among these men and given a better class of work with slightly higher wages in some of the com- panies’ shops, and this had the effect of slightly stimulating them. From four to six hundred men were employed on this class of work throughout the year. The work of these men consisted mainly of unload- ing from railway cars and shoveling on to piles, and from these piles again loading as required, the raw materials used in running three blast furnaces and seven large open-hearth furnaces, such as ore of vari- ous kinds, varying from fine, gravelly ore to that