Except in the important particulars of time study and functional foremanship, the system advocated by the experts and the system practised by the railroads are not very far apart. Both have for their object that which is desired by the railroads and the public,-ability to give good, safe and economical service. And if achieved either by an improvement of present methods, or by an adaptation of the new system, private management of railways will have strengthened its claim to continuance.

WILLIAM J. CUNNINGHAM.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

LIGHT FROM SIR HUBERT.

Who do you suppose said this?

"Today efficiency in management is in danger of being punished, whereas it should be rewarded. Efficiency is naturally reflected in large net earnings; and as no ready means exist for determining whether greater net earnings are due to greater efficiency in management, or to higher rates, large earnings are frequently accepted as evidence that rates are too high, and invite a demand for reduction; whereas, in fact, the large earning may be due wholly to better judgment, greater efficiency, and economy in administration. To take from railroad corporations the natural fruits of efficiency—that is, greater money rewards-must create a sense of injustice suffered, which paralyzes effort, invites inefficiency, and produces slipshod management. Private capital embarked in a quasi-public business ought to receive compensation on a sliding scale, so that the greater the service to the public, the greater the profit to those furnishing that service. We should endeavor to approximate results similar to those obtained in Boston by applying the sliding scale system to the production and sale of gas. There the dividend to the stockholders rises as the selling price to the public is reduced."

???

Why Mr. Louis D. Brandeis before the Railway Securities Commission.

HOW IT APPEARS TO THE EMPLOYE

FROM THE RAILROAD TRAINMAN.

The Review of Reviews for March explains in an article written by Mr. A. W. Shaw, what is meant by scientific management, which is the means to be adopted to make the workman more valuable to himself. His definition is as follows:

"By a system of records it determines the workman's special capacities that permit him to be set at the work at which he is most proficient and by means of a bonus system it provides for the adequate remuneration of the worker, not on the basis of effort expended but upon the more modern basis of effort practically applied and expressed in units of production. As a consequence the workman's value to himself and to the employer is increased as rapidly and as highly as his capabilities will permit."

This reads splendidly, but the experience of employes will not create any degree of enthusiasm on their part for a change in the methods affecting their employment. The entire piece-work and bonus system is based on what the high-capacity, physically perfect man can accomplish. His strength, his superior skill in his trade, or his willingness to overexert himself to the detriment of his mental and physical well being, regardless of their effect upon his fellowmen, are accepted as the basis for general capacity. The employes have had to fall back on the establishment of the minimum wage, efficiency of the average man, and have had to get away from a sliding scale based on the performances of the extra efficient who, if let alone, inaugurates a sweatshop system whereever wages are based on piece-work and the bonus plan.

Scientific efficiency can be explained in a very few words by one of its most ardent admirers, who said that it means "Scientifically selecting, developing and teaching the worker so as to get the highest grade of efficiency out of him." He said a number of other things calculated to make the worker believe that scientific efficiency was the only way open for his salvation as a wage earner which can be taken with due allowance because it is prompted by the personal interest of the employer.

At a meeting of business men in Philadelphia recently, examples of what is meant by scientific management were quoted One of them was as follows:

"The burden or responsibility assumed by the management is that of scientifically selecting, developing and teaching the worker so as to get the highest grade of efficiency out of him and to give to him the highest degree of personal prosperity.

"The next task for the manager is to bring together the science of the business which has been developed and the workmen.

"Again the management does a vast amount of work which it never did before and takes it from the workman. The old idea of the slave driver is abandoned and there is substituted an intimate co-operation between the management and the worker.

"An illustration was given of an establishment where 126 girls were employed to select bicycle balls. The speaker said, "They worked 101⁄2 hours a day and when I proposed that they vote on whether they should cut the day down to ten hours, they all voted against it. Pretty soon we had them working eight hours a day and doing the same amount of work.'

"We found that the one essential in their work was a low personal coefficient, or a quickness of the mind to respond to an impression. By determining which girls had the low coefficient we cut the force down to thirty-five girls working 71⁄2 hours and doing the same amount of work that the 126 girls had been doing. Furthermore, the thirty-five girls were given other work and they earned twice the amount of money they did before and were turning out more than twice the work."

This is from the view-point of the employer. A little story entitled, "The Piece-Worker," was written by Miss Mary McDowell, some time ago, from which we quote, as an answer to the promising reference as to what efficiency and the bonus rule mean to the employe. Miss McDowell undoubtedly takes her story from the actual life of the employe. She said:

In an atmosphere heavy with turpentine she painted, lifted and piled thousands of these cans a day in order to earn the average of twelve dollars a week which her expenses required. With her deft fingers she soon outstripped the others and thus set the pace. The rest were urged and goaded to keep abreast with her. This won for her the hateful name of 'Pacemaker.'

"They did not realize that her pace and her pay were part of the great machine that never ceased its dreadful pressure. There had been a time when the girls were given a few minutes for lunch

in the middle of the morning, but now even that was not per mitted. From five o'clock in the morning it was paint, paint, paint through the long ten hours. Nerved to a tension that only a machine could endure, the fingers flew faster and faster till the eyes grew dull and the brain dizzy. With the tongue thick with the taste of paint, food and drink were impossible while in the workroom.

"Just as Mary's goal of twelve dollars a week seemed a surety there was a sudden cut in the wages. No explanation was given. Helpless, unorganized, with no power to enforce their demands, there was nothing left but to start again. With redoubled effort, because it now took twice the number of cans to make the weekly income, Mary's speed again reached the twelve dollar goal, but many fell back to an eight dollar and even a five dollar limit. "Then a second cut was made. 'The girls were wild,' Mary said, when she told me. "They kept saying, "It ain't fair. We won't stand for it. We'll walk out. Ain't we been painting their fourteen-pound cans like machine creatures, and what good has it done us? We've got to have day's work." But we couldn't do anything,' Mary added, quickly, 'except get mad and quit, because we had no union.'

"It was Mary's last cut. The pacemaker's race was finished. One day she fainted from over-exhaustion and they carried her home."

This is what stands for "efficiency" in most employments.

Another reference of the speaker, at the Philadelphia meeting, was to the scientific management of labor at the Bethlehem Steel Company's plant. In regard to it he said:

"As to the art of shoveling, for it is an art, the important thing to determine in shoveling is the proper shovel load.

"We put teachers over the men to show them the art of shoveling. In that yard the force of 600 men was cut down to 140, wages went up from $1.15 to $1.85 and the company was saved between $75,000 and $80,000 a year.'

Here is a division of profits and work that shows what effi ciency means to the man.

It will be remembered that only last year the employes of the Bethlehem iron works struck on account of the exacting rules of service, long hours and inadequate pay for the work performed. Investigation was conducted by a most reliable board of investi

gators that brought out the severest direct censure against methods of employment and the treatment of men that have been delivered against a corporation since the day of the murder of the steel workers at the time of the Homestead strike. It proved absolutely that scientific management so far as the men were concerned was absolutely unfair, that it took advantage of the employes generally to the extent that a general strike was ordered which was a protest against the conditions of employment as in operation under this "efficient" system of management.

No one who has not been employed in the larger industries that are demanding the scientific plan of employing labor can realize what it means. They do not understand the mental and physical exactions made upon the men, nor do they realize the disappointment and despair that are a part of the job of every responsible employe in the large industries in this country. They do not know that employes are worked to the limit, that regardless of the rules for their protection they cannot take the time to observe them. They do not know, because these things are skillfully covered up, that the man cannot spare the time to obey the rules laid down for his protection, because, for him to do so would suspend for a brief period the work of his fellow employes who would resent any interruption that would mean a loss of wages to them.

A story in Everybody's Magazine for March, entitled "The Cog," by James Oppenheim, while a story, is unquestionably written with an accurate knowledge of the subject. We quote a part of it and it will not take a vivid imagination to supply what has been left out. The story is of a steel worker occupying a responsible position, overworked through the demands of his mill to pile up extra tonnage within a given time, who wakes from his heavy sleep, ill and physically unfit to perform his duty, but who feels that he dares not stay away from employment because to do so would mean his dismissal. Here follows a part of the story:

She (his wife, Molly) leaned closer, and spoke her

heart out, the words lashing him.

"The steel mill's killing you. It's the twelve-hour day. Twelve hours a day for a whole week-and then twelve hours for seven nights. Seven nights you don't sleep with me. I never