Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

 EFFICIENCY METHODS speeding-up to continue if it should manifest itself; and the programme of efficiency cannot countenance the rapid exhaustion of the worker. We will not expatiate further on this controversy, important though it is, because there is already plenty of matter published on the subject, and Mr. Hoxie’s book puts the two cases with fairness and generosity to both sides; and also because it is necessary to consider possibilities for scientific management in the United Kingdom rather than its successes and failures in the United States. But it must be pointed out that the study of papers and articles giving the views on increase of output of American employers who have not the aims and ideals of the Taylorian methods would impress every reader with an appalled sense of the brutal speeding-up that has gone on in America during the last twenty years, during the development of costly rapid machinery. Fitch’s book entitled the “ Steel- Workers of Pittsburg ” has already been mentioned. He describes graphically the terribly long hours, the ceaseless driving by foremen, the premature ageing of workers, the absolute prohibition of Trades Unions. An article in the Engineering Magazine, August, 1895, entitled “ Production to the Power Limit,” explains how, since it is more economical to wear out each machine tool as fast as possible, the men must be speeded up on a piece-rate with high wages. If a man does not speed up “he is followed, without harshness (?), until he does do so, or he goes.” The piece prices are subject to small but