Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

INTRODUCTION 3 tific organization would come, and they should ground themselves in its principles so well that they could take advantage of any proposals put forward, and get the best possible results for the worker when occasion placed him in a position to assume any part in the control of industry.” 1 The result of enquiry into the methods is cer- tainly to show that they have to be reckoned with in the future, and that no person with position and influence in British industry—employer, manager, Trades Union official, consultant or economist— can afford to be ignorant of them, and what they undertake to accomplish. The pressing needs in our industrial world during reconstruction have been summed up as “ vigour and enterprise and adapta- bility in management, the application of science to industry, and hearty and friendly co-operation between management and labour.”2 For more than ten years past the disciples of Taylor’s ideas of management have advocated these three requisites, not only as necessary, but as attainable by the proper and complete use of their methods. It is of further importance to us that the ideas emanate from America, and are being closely studied and tried in Germany, as well as in other nations, including Japan. After the war American and German industrial developments must have the same powerful in- fluence on ours that they had before it. We must 1 See whole Report of Presidential Address in Birming- ham Daily Post, June 12, 1916. It should be noted that the Workers’ Union is one of semi-skilled workers. 1 The Round Table, Sept., 1916.