Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

172 EFFICIENCY METHODS employer cannot understand, and I should earnestly recommend him to a preliminary course of reading in labour and socialistic journals. There he will, of course, find only one side, but it will be a side which he has never realized, and, by his difficulty in understanding it, he may suspect that the worker has as much difficulty in understanding him.” These “ Thoughts,” however, may seem rather advanced in their attitude. But Prof. Ashley has definitely stated that in the wages bargain the isolated workman is usually at a disadvantage in comparison with the employer.1 A writer on economics treating of the situation since the war has pointed out that the recognition of a Trades Union as a body with which various aspects of industrial work can be discussed tends to eliminate all forms of tacit conspiracy among workers which result in restriction of output.2 And this is practically the same point as the one made by Mr. J. R. Commons in his recent article, re- printed in the Thompson Collection, where he says: “ Organized labour is the organized ex- pression of what labour itself would express if organized.” 3 It may be said, too, that all writers on the present 1 “ Adjustment of Wages,” p. 17. The same admission may be found in other economic writers, as he points out. 2 Paper by Mr. H. Clay, of Leeds University, in the Industrial Outlook, edited by Sanderson Furniss. (Papers read at Ruskin College, 1916.) 8 Journal of Political Economy, 1913. English people will probably prefer the first and less abstract expression of the point.