Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

TRADES UNIONS 173 industrial outlook are laying stress on the necessity of better understanding and co-operation between employer and employed, and therefore urge that the Unions should be given the very best opportunities to express the workers’ point of view, that they should be fairly and frankly met in consultation. Do modern economists make any suggestions which tend in the same direction as the aims of scientific management ? The quotations from Smart given at the end of the second chapter show how much he felt it the duty of the employer to organize industry so that workmen have opportunity to do good work. He says again on p. 157 : “ What I am trying to suggest in this disquisition on Trades Unionism is that the function of the employer has become ever so much more complex and responsible than it was, and really requires for its conduct very special qualities, including, I may say, an extraordinary amount of patience with and understanding of those employed.” Prof. Chapman, in vol. iii. of “ Work and Wages,” says: “ The physical and mental vigour of the workers is ... a national concern, even if regard is paid solely to the output ” (p. 4). And the following passage hints at the work which can be done by education, to which reference is made in our next chapter. “ The end of production is to secure what is demanded at the least sacrifice. ... So far as possible, the methods of production should be such that their mere performance yields satisfaction, or