Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

l60 EFFICIENCY METHODS automatic machines that utilize semi-skilled labour will try to use these machines, when peace comes, for the production of different articles; and will then try to retain the same kind of labour, as far as they can resist the claims of the skilled men returning to industrial work. All employers will find that they are more likely to have disputes and friction with the Craft Unions, which contain only skilled men, than with the Industrial Unions, which contain men of all degrees of skill, and which are better able, and more inclined, to admit women workers. These aspects of our own affairs stand out pre- eminently as soon as we open the subject. But before pursuing the discussion of how efficiency methods, if adopted here, will be greeted by the English Trades Unions, of one kind and another, it will be better to review briefly the relations between scientific management and organized labour in America. Mr. R. F. Hoxie, who undertook such a review, gives a very thorough, and on the whole a very just account of the present state of things ; though it is naturally criticized by American journalists writing in the capitalist interest as being too favourable to the views of labour. But it gives hardly enough prominence to the fact that, while the new principles have been developing in many directions under Taylor’s initial stimulus and inspiration, the attitude taken by his disciples to Unionism has been gradually altering ; it may, indeed, be said that alteration has been forced on them.