Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

TRADES UNIONS 169 overhauling the management itself first so as to increase its efficiency to the highest degree, stan- dardizing conditions, making time-study a real, conscientious and scientific undertaking, approach- ing workmen tactfully and proving beyond doubt that their health, welfare and financial prosperity are made the direct concern of the management— all these have in numerous instances gone by the board, and the name of scientific management has been used to mask the worst sins of the old kind— reckless speeding-up and exhaustion of the workers, impossibly hard tasks set on insufficient knowledge and experiment, rates ruthlessly cut if mistakes turn out at all to the employer’s loss, and so on. Moreover there are self-styled experts who call themselves efficiency engineers ready to take over the management of works and to commit all this havoc with fervent vague promises of making the " concern pay." One of the leaders has aptly christened them “ stunt-peddlers ” ; but the matter is too serious for epigram. Any arrangement which has resulted in increased output has often been assumed by the workmen, or by the outsider, to be a form of scientific manage- ment. Hoxie says very frequently that the new methods as planned by the leaders would not produce results of this disastrous nature, and he admits that there are works existing which amply prove this. Certainly organizations where fatigue-sWjy is taken up seriously, quite apart from making fatigue allowances merely, cannot allow injurious