Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

jg6 EFFICIENCY METHODS scientific management has had—Mr. R. F. Hoxie. In his last article on the subject1 he has devoted much space to the question of education, and words in any case well worth quoting have now a double significance as the last from his pen. Those who have conceived him as the implacable foe of the efficiency methods will see here how he envisaged it, in its possibilities, as something that ought to be a great national or international asset ; but the safe- guards that would be necessary he desired to see sup- plied by a perfectly independent national education. He closes the discussion thus : “ To attempt to limit specialization and restore the old apprenticeship system in the shop would mean to prevent to a large degree the productive effectiveness and the productive improvements which we cannot afford to forego. Moreover, to require that scientific managers themselves maintain training-schools for all their workers, effective in a social sense, would severely penalize and handicap if it did not eliminate, the system. “ Nor do we wish the training of the worker to be centred in the hands and under the control solely of the employer. It seems that what we really need, as a supplement to scientific management—so that we may avail ourselves of its beneficial possibilities and eliminate or minimize its possible evil effects— is an adequate system of industrial education, socially launched and socially controlled—an integral part of our public school system.” 1 Journal of Political Economy, Nov., 1916.