Shop Management

SHOP MANAGEMENT 63 answer was, “ If I had to choose now between aban- doning my present organization and burning down all of my plants which have cost me millions, I should choose the latter. My plants could be rebuilt in a short while with borrowed money, but I could hardly replace my organization in a generation.” Modern engineering can almost be called an exact science; each year removes it further from guess work and from rule-of-thumb methods and estab- lishes it more firmly upon the foundation of fixed principles. The writer feels that management is also destined to become more of an art, and that many of the elements which are now believed to be outside the field of exact knowledge will soon be standardized, tabulated, accepted, and used, as are now many of the elements of engineering. Management will be studied as an art and will rest upon well recognized, clearly defined, and fixed principles instead of de- pending upon more or less hazy ideas received from a limited observation of the few organizations with which the individual may have come in contact. There will, of course, be various successful types, and the application of the underlying principles must be modified to suit each particular case. The writer has already indicated that he thinks the first object in management is to unite high wages with a low labor cost. He believes that this object can be most easily attained by the application of the following principles: (a) A Large Daily Task. — Each man in the establishment, high or low, should daily have a