Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

REMUNERATION 135 industrial concerns have to be measurement by out- put ; although it is necessary in many of the railway operations with which he has been personally con- cerned to find some other means of computing efficiency. The English workman has been, especially of late years, very strong in his disapproval of the theory upon which premium-bonus systems are founded, and also of them in practice, on the ground that the employer takes a considerable portion of the extra profit created solely by the workman. This opinion is voiced by Mr. G. D. Cole1 thus: “ It is the business of the Unions to resist with all their might all attempts to introduce the premium-bonus system and the like into their works.” A workman in the engineering industry, writing to the New Statesman, Oct. 14, 1916, speaks of the system as “ a palpable fraud,” and a “ despicable cheating system.” In the same letter he puts the workman’s general case against piece-work very well: "In ten piece-work establishments in which I have worked I have found the maximum to vary from time-and-one-eighth to time-and-one-half, and any attempt to earn more was followed by a reduction in price. Therefore where organization existed among the men, the speed of the slowest man became the speed of the shop.” We must now discuss the methods used in Scientific^Management. We have said that Taylor and his followers use * “ The World of Labour,” p. 323.