III
"The twenty-one hotels where we conducted our inquiry were extremely varied, ranging from a yellow brick house near the Haymarket, with red and blue ingrain carpets and old-fashioned bells that rang a gong when one twisted a knob, to the mosaic floors and the pale, shaded electric lights of the most costly establishments in New York.
"As to the sanitation of the twenty hotels visited, only six had their laundries above ground. All the others were in basements or in cellars. In most of these the ventilation was faulty and the air at times intolerably hot. It is a striking fact—showing what intelligent modern regulation can accomplish—that one laundry two stories underground in New York was so high-ceiled and the summer cold-air apparatus so complete that it was comfortable even in the hot months. In most of the hotel laundries there were seats for the takers-off. Only three of the laundries had wet floors; only three were dirty; only one had an insanitary lavatory and toilet room.
"In regard to the danger of injury, of the nineteen mangles that I inspected for dangerous conditions, six were insufficiently protected. It is the custom in most hotels, when an article winds around the cylinder of the mangle, to pluck it off while the mangle is in motion. The women sometimes climb up on the mangle and reach over, in imminent danger of becoming entangled either by their dresses catching or by pitching forward. The machinery of hotel laundries is even less carefully guarded than is that of a commercial laundry, and in some establishments is, besides, dangerously crowded. This was the case in one laundry in a hotel cellar. I worked here at the ironing-table on a consignment of suits from the navy-yard. As work came in from outside the hotel, the establishment should have been under the State inspection. The rooms were narrow. There was a ventilating fan, placed very low, near where the girls hung their wraps, and as soon as I came in, they warned me that it caught up in its blades and destroyed anything that came near it. The belting of the machines was unboxed. A blue flame used sometimes to blow out four inches beyond the body-ironer, directly into the narrow space where the girls had to pass before it. In connection with the danger from machinery, danger from employees' elevators should be noted. In one hotel I rode forty-four times on an elevator where the guard door was closed only once, though the car was often crowded, and twice I saw girls narrowly escape injury from catching their skirts on the landing doors and the latches. In another hotel, inexperienced elevator boys were broken in on dangerous cars containing signs that read: 'This elevator shall not carry more than fifteen persons.' The cars were used, not only for people, but for trunks and heavy trucks of soiled linen. On one trip a car carried one of these enormous trucks, two trunks, and twelve girls; on another trip there were twenty-two people.
"At eight of the hotels wages were paid partly in board and lodging. The money wages are given below:—
| Workers Living In | |
| Per Month | |
| Ironers on flannels, stockings, and plain work | $22 |
| Ironers—skilled workers on family wash | 25-30 |
| Shakers | 14-16 |
| All beginners | 14-16 |
| Workers Living Out | |
| Per Week | |
| Ironers | $ 7 and upward |
| Shakers | 6 and upward |
| Feeders | 6 and upward |
| Folders | 6 and upward |
| Starchers (shirt), piece-work wages, average. | 8 |
| Starchers (collars and cuffs) | 15 and upward |
"The eight hotels varied widely in living conditions. The food was reasonably well cooked, but, like most hotel fare, monotonous, and destitute of fresh vegetables and of sweets. One of the results of this is that the women spend a large part of their wages for fruit and other food to supplement their unsatisfactory meals. Only two hotels planned meals intelligently.
"The dining rooms were usually below the street-level, and varied in ventilation, crowding, and disorder. In one the waiters were Greek immigrants, who were in their shirt-sleeves, wore ticking aprons and no collars, and were frequently dirty and unshaved. In the fourteen meals I had there, I sat down only once to a clean table. The coffee boilers along the side of the room would be boiling over and sending streams of water over the charwomen. The dirty dishes would be piled into large tin tubs with a clatter, and pulled out rasping over the floor. The charwomen would beg the waiters to clear the tables, which looked as if garbage-cans had been emptied upon them. The steward could not enforce his authority. There was constant noise and disorder in the room. In another dining room, that of a pleasant, ramshackle old hotel near the river, where a breeze came into our laundry through sixteen windows, the employees were seated in one of the restaurant dining rooms after the noon rush hour was over, served by the regular waiters, and given attractive and varied fare and meat from the same cuts as the guests. 'They have respect for the help here,' said one of the women.
"The dormitories were, with one exception, on upper stories. One room in an expensive modern hotel, where there were twenty-seven beds, in tiers, was aired only by three windows on an inner court. The room looked fresh and pleasant because of its white paint and blue bedspreads; but it was badly ventilated, both by condition and because the girls would keep the windows closed for warmth. This was a frequent cause of poor ventilation in other dormitories and in work-rooms.
"The hours of work were irregular, and varied in different places. In one large laundry I worked over ten hours for seven days in the week—more than seventy-two hours. About nine and a half hours seemed to be the usual day. Four hotels gave fifteen-minute rest pauses for tea, morning and afternoon; two gave them once a day. These rests are of incalculable relief. One hotel gave twenty-minute pauses, so that the hours were: 7.20 to 9; 9.20 to 11.25; 12.30 to 2; 2.20 to closing time. This arrangement gave very short work periods, but during them the women were able to work vigorously; and they accomplished an astounding amount.
"However, in most of the hotel laundries the women were tired all the time. They dragged themselves out of bed at the last possible minute. They lay in their beds at noon; they crawled into them again as soon as the work was over in the evening. Some did not go out into the air for days at a time. The greatest suffering from any one physical cause came from feet. 'Feet' was the constant subject of conversation. But the women had no idea what was the trouble with their feet, and, in many cases, accepted as inevitable discomfort that could have been alleviated by foot-baths, care, plates, and proper shoes. Colds hung on endlessly. Sore throats were common. A girl who fed doilies into a mangle complained that constantly watching a moving apron made her eyes 'sore,' so that she could not see distinctly and sometimes fed in several doilies at a time without noticing it. The lack of air undoubtedly had a profound influence on the women's vigor. In the old hotel near the river, where the laundry had sixteen windows, the women were in capital health.
"In general, the older hotels, in spite of their more insanitary dressing-rooms and less well-guarded machines, were more considerate of their workers. But in one of the newer, more expensive hotels a sick girl is attended by the hotel physician, and is provided with soup, milk, etc. Her pay is not docked. She is treated with genuine sympathy. Here I once overheard a woman telling the boss that she was ill and asking permission to go to the dormitory. He gave the permission without question. None of the women ever abused his kindness. The women here were in fairly good shape, except, it must be admitted, for the extreme fatigue which seems to sweep over almost all the laundry women, and which arises from their hours of standing.
"I used to notice one girl who was as light on her feet as a kitten, and who seemed tireless; but every noon, as soon as she had finished her lunch, she would wrap herself up in a blanket and lie motionless for the whole period. One evening a woman stumbled into a dormitory, sat down on a trunk, pulled off her shoes and stockings, and, as she rubbed her swollen foot, cursed long and methodically all her circumstances—cursed the other workers who had held back work by their slowness; cursed the manager, who had asked of her extra work; cursed the dormitory and the laundry; cursed the whole world. At the first word of sympathy I offered her, she paused, and said with quiet truth, 'Dear heart, we're all tired.'
"Here are my notes for one day:—
When I went into the dormitory a little before half past seven, several of the girls were dragging themselves out of bed to dress. These went to work without breakfast, needing an extra half hour of rest more than they craved food.
Two stayed in bed. One had an ulcerated tooth extracted the night before. I asked the other if she were sick. She groaned. "I'll get up just as soon as the pains are gone out of my stomach." Within an hour she was in the laundry, carrying armfuls of men's working-suits to the drying-closet. She worked until half past eight that night.
All the morning I stood beside Old Sallie, who kept asking, "What time is it now, dear?" because she could not see the clock.
At noon, as we sat or lay on the beds in the dormitory, one of the girls said, "My God! I wish I could stay in bed this afternoon."
In the afternoon I stood beside Theresa, who kept repeating: "It is so long to work until half past five! If I could only go to bed at half past five!"
I walked out to supper with a girl named Kate, who had sprained her ankle a week ago. I said, "Hasn't the doctor seen it?" She turned on me. "My God! when do I get time to see a doctor?" She has a bad humor on her face, which is scarlet, and sometimes, in the morning, covered with fine white scale. She obtains relief by wiping her cheeks with the damp napkins she shakes.
After supper I went up to the dormitory for a minute. Here I found a cousin of Theresa's giving her some tea in bed, where I urged her to stay. The cousin shook her head. "Ah, na," she said, "she must na' give up; she's new yet at the job—they wou'na like her to be sick." Theresa arose and crawled back to the shaking-table, to work until seven o'clock.
Throughout the evening I stood beside a girl, whose foot, when she walked, hurt her "'way to the top of her head." She said, "I've been on it ever since half past seven."
On my way back to the dormitory at half past eight, one of the girls told me how her arms ached and her legs ached. In the dormitory, the girl who had been in bed all day was sobbing and feverish. She had a sore throat, and was spitting blood. She had been lying there all day, with no care, except to have tea and toast brought to her by a maid.
In looking back on this past week, it seems impossible it could have been true. Watching these women has been like seeing animals tortured.
"Such a day of long hours as this generally follows some large festivity. The Hudson-Fulton celebration, or the automobile show, or a great charity ball, or the dinner of an excellent sociological society are the occasions of increased hotel entertainment and a lavish use of beautiful table linen, to be dried and mangled and folded next day by the laundry girls underground.
"All this pressure of extra work in the hotels here is produced, not by ill-willed persons who are consciously oppressive,—indeed, as will be seen, much of it was produced by sheer social good will and persons of most progessive intent,—but simply by the unregulated conditions of the laundries."
IV
Such, then, is the account of what women workers give and what they receive in their industry in the commercial, hotel, and hospital laundries of New York.
It cannot be said that the unfortunate features of the laundry conditions observed are due to the greed of employers. These features seem to be due rather to lack of system and regulation. Financial failures in the New York laundry business are frequent. Even in the short time elapsing between the Department of Labor's inspection of laundry machinery, early in February, and a reinspection of the twenty-six establishments that had improperly guarded machinery, made in August by Miss Westwood, two out of these twenty-six firms had collapsed. Miss Westwood found some of the same unfortunate features that characterized commercial and hotel laundries in existence in hospital laundries, which are quite outside trade.
After the New York City Consumers' League had received the inquirers' report, it determined that the wisest and most effective course it could take for securing fairer terms for the laundry workers would be an effort for the passage of the following legislation:— [37]
First: That an appropriation be made for additional factory inspectors.
Second: That no woman be employed in any mechanical establishment, or factory, or laundry in this State for more than ten hours during any one day.
Third: That the laundries of hotels and hospitals be placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor.
A New York State law now exists providing for proper sanitation and plumbing and clean drinking water for employees in factories and laundries. [38] A law exists requiring that work-rooms where steam is generated be so ventilated as to render the steam harmless, so far as is practicable. [39]
A law exists requiring the provision of suitable seats for the use of female employees in factories and laundries; and this law should cover the installation of seats for great numbers of workers now standing.[40]
The establishment of juster wages, as well as the observance of all these laws, and of the sixty-hour-a-week law, might be most practically furthered by the existence of a trade-union in the laundries, backed by stronger governmental provision for inspection.
V
It has been said that the unfortunate features observed in the laundry business in New York seemed to be due primarily to lack of general regulation. In February 1911, the Laundrymen's Association of New York State (President, Mr. J.A. Beatty), the Manhattan Laundrymen's Association (President, Mr. J.A. Wallach), and the Brooklyn Laundrymen's Association (President, Mr. Thomas Locken) conferred with the Consumers' League, and asked to coöperate with it in obtaining additional factory inspection, the legal establishment of a ten-hour day in the trade, and the placing of hotel and hospital laundries under the jurisdiction of the State Labor laws.
The League agreed to print on a published white list the names of the laundries conforming within a year to a common standard determined on at the conference. These are the main points agreed upon and endorsed.
White List Standard For Laundries
Physical Conditions
1. Wash rooms are either separated from other work-rooms or else adequately ventilated so that the presence of steam throughout the laundry is prevented.
2. Work, lunch, and retiring rooms are apart from each other and conform in all respects to the present sanitary laws.
3. All machinery is guarded.
4. Proper drains under washing and starching machines, so that there are no wet floors.
5. Seats adjusted to the machines are provided for at the
- a. Collar ironer feeder.
- b. Collar ironer catcher.
- c. Collar dampener feeder.
- d. Collar dampener catcher.
- e. Collar straightener.
- f. Collar starcher feeder.
- g. Collar starcher catcher.
- h. Handkerchief flat-work feeder and catcher.
- i. Folders on small work.
- j. Collar shaper.
- k. Collar seam-dampener.
- l. Straight collar shaper.
6. The ordinances of the city and laws of the State are obeyed in all particulars.
Wages
1. Equal pay is given for equal work irrespective of sex, and no woman who is eighteen years of age or over and who has had one year's experience receives less than $6 a week. This standard includes piece-workers.
Hours
1. The normal working week does not exceed 54 hours, and on no day shall work continue after 9 P.M.
2. When work is continued after 7 P.M. 20 minutes is allowed for supper and supper money is given.
3. Half holidays in each week during two summer months.
4. A vacation of not less than one week with pay is given during the summer season.
5. All overtime work, beyond the 54 hours a week standard, is paid for.
6. Wages paid and premises closed on the six legal holidays, viz: Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and New Year's Day, the Fourth of July, Decoration Day and Labor Day.
The Laundrymen's Association of New York State appeared with the Consumers' League at Albany at the last legislative session, and repeatedly sent counsel to the capitol in support of a bill defining as a factory any place where laundry work is done by mechanical power. The association's support was able and determined. The bill has now passed both houses.
Such responsible action as this on the part of the commercial laundry employers of the State of New York, Brooklyn, and Manhattan is in striking contrast with the stand taken by the Oregon commercial laundry employers in the matter of laundry employees' legal hours of industry.
VI
The constitutionality of the present New York law concerning the hours of labor of adult women in factories, laundries, and mechanical establishments was virtually determined by the Federal decision in regard to the Oregon Ten-Hour Day Law for working-women.
About three years ago the State of Oregon enacted a law of practically the same bearing as the New York law on the same subject, though superior in that it limited the hours of labor of adult women in mechanical establishments, factories, and laundries to ten hours during the twenty-four hours of any one day, where the New York law, of the same provision in other respects, limits the hours of labor of adult women to sixty in a week.
The laundries and the State of Oregon agreed to carry a test case to the Federal Supreme Court to determine the new law's constitutionality.
Mr. Curt Muller of Oregon employed a working woman in his laundry for more than ten hours. Information was filed against him by an inspector. Mr. Muller's trial resulted in a verdict against him, and a sentence of a ten-dollar fine. He appealed the case to the State Supreme Court of Oregon, which affirmed his conviction. Mr. Muller then appealed the case to the Federal Supreme Court.
In the defence of the law before the Federal Supreme Court, the National Consumers' League had the good fortune to obtain, in coöperation with the State of Oregon, the services of Louis D. Brandeis, the most distinguished services that could have been received, generously rendered as a gift. This fact alone may serve to indicate the vital character of the case, and the importance, for industrial justice in the future, of securing a favorable verdict for the laundry workers.
The argument of Mr. Muller was that the Oregon Ten-Hour Law was unconstitutional: First, because the statute attempted to prevent persons from making their own contracts, and thus violated the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. [41] Next, because the statute did not apply equally to all persons similarly situated and was class legislation. And, finally, because the statute was not a valid exercise of the police power; that is to say, there was no necessary or reasonable connection between the limitations described by the act and the public health and welfare.
Mr. Brandeis' brief replied that, first, the guaranty of freedom of contract was legally subject to such reasonable restraint of action as the State may impose in the exercise of the police power for the protection of the general health and welfare. It submitted that certain facts of common knowledge established conclusively that there was reasonable ground for holding that to permit women in Oregon to work in a mechanical establishment or factory or laundry more than ten hours in one day was dangerous to public welfare.
These facts of common knowledge, collected by Miss Josephine Goldmark, the Publication Secretary of the National Consumers' League, were considered under two heads: first, that of American and foreign legislation restricting the hours of labor for women; and, second, the world's experience, upon which the legislation limiting the hours of labor for women is based.
These facts comprised the governmental restrictions of the number of hours employers may require women to labor, from twenty States of the United States, and from Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Italy, and Germany. The laws were followed by authoritative statements from over ninety reports of committees, bureaus of statistics, commissioners of hygiene, and government inspectors, both in this country and in all the civilized countries of Europe, asseverating that long hours of labor are dangerous for women, primarily because of their special physical organization.
In reply to the second allegation,—that the act in question was class legislation, as it did not apply equally to all persons similarly situated,—the plaintiff answered that the specific prohibition of more than ten hours' work in a laundry was not an arbitrary discrimination against that trade; because the present character of the business and its special dangers of long hours afford strong reasons for providing a legal limitation of the hours of work in that industry as well as in manufacturing and mechanical establishments. Statements from industrial and medical authorities described conclusively the present character of the laundry business.
Mr. Brandeis finally submitted that, in view of all these facts, the present Oregon statute was within Oregon's police power, as its public health and welfare did require a legal limitation of the hours of women's work in manufacturing and mechanical establishments and in laundries.
Justice Brewer delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States. The case was won. Here are, in part, the words of the decision:—
It may not be amiss in the present case, before examining the constitutional question, to notice the course of legislation as well as expressions of opinion from other judicial sources. In the brief filed by Mr. Brandeis ... is a copious collection of all these matters. The ... legislation and opinions referred to ... are significant of a widespread belief that woman's physical structure and the special functions she performs in consequence thereof, justify special legislation restricting or qualifying the conditions under which she should be permitted to toil.
Constitutional questions, it is true, are not settled by even a consensus of present public opinion.... At the same time, when a question of fact is debated and debatable, and the extent to which a special constitutional limitation goes is affected by the truth in respect to the fact, a widespread and long-continued belief concerning it is worthy of consideration. We take judicial cognizance of all matters of general knowledge....
That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even when they are not, by abundant testimony of the medical fraternity, continuance for a long time on her feet at work, repeating this from day to day, tends to injurious effects upon her body, and as healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.
Nobody knowing the actual strain upon women laundry workers, no one who had seen them lying motionless and numb with fatigue at the end of a long day, or foregoing food itself for the sake of rest, could listen unmoved to these thrilling words of the greatest court of our country.
The most eloquent characteristic of the Supreme Court's affirmation was the fact that it was essentially founded simply upon clear, human truth, firmly and widely ascertained, founded on a respect, not only for the past, but for the future of the whole nation.
Too often does one hear that "law has nothing to do with equity," till one might believe that law was made for law's sake, and not as a means of deliverance from injustice. "The end of litigation is justice. We believe that truth and justice are more sacred than any personal consideration." Such was the conception of the office of the law expressed by Justice Brewer twenty years before, on his appointment to the Supreme Bench. It was this conception of law that made the determination of the Oregon case a great decision in our country's history.
From time immemorial, women as well as men have been workers of the world. The vital feature of the statement that six million women are now gainfully employed in this country is not the "entrance" of multitudinous women into industry, but the fact that their industry, being now carried on in public instead of private, has been acknowledged and paid. This acknowledgment has led to the establishment of juster terms for women's labor by the Federal Supreme Court. Such an establishment, as the opinion of the court affirmed, is surely a distinct gain, not only for women, but for children, for men, for the race.
When the preparation of food and clothing, the traditional household labor of women, passed in large measure from household fires and spinning-wheels into the canning factories and garment trades with the invention of machinery, women simply continued their traditional labor outside their houses instead of inside them. [42] The accounts of the laundry, the shirt-waist and the cloak making trades in New York seem to show that, where men and women engage in the same field of activity, their work is, by a natural division, not competitive or antagonistic, but complementary. Indeed, so little is it antagonistic that the very first spark that lit the fire of the largest strike of women that ever occurred in this country, the shirt-waist makers' strike, was kindled by an offensive injustice to a man.
The chronicles of what self-supporting women have given and received in their work in wage and in vitality, these working girls' budgets obtained by the Consumers' League, will not have told their story truly unless they have evoked with their narrative the presence of that impersonal sense of right instinctive in the factory girls who go year after year to Albany to fight against the long Christmas season hours for the shop-girls, in the cloak makers in their effort to stop sweated home work, in the responsible common-sense of countless working women. So that the fact that six million women are now gainfully employed in this country may finally tend to secure wiser adjustments and fairer returns for the labor, not only of women, but of all the workers of the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] Its severity may be indicated by an account of the work a machine ironer in Illinois regularly performed before the passage of the Illinois Ten-Hour Law, when conditions in that State were as they now are in the hotel and hospital laundries of New York. Miss Radway used to iron five hundred shirt bosoms a day. Holding the loose part of the shirt up above her head to prevent the muslin from being caught in the iron, she pressed the bosom in a machine manipulated by three heavy treads—by bearing all of her weight on her right foot stamping down on a pedal to the right; then by bearing all her weight on her left foot, stamping down a pedal to the left; then by pressing down both pedals with a jump. To iron five hundred shirt bosoms required three thousand treads a day.
[34] State Labor Law, paragraph 81.—Protection of Employees Operating Machinery: "... If a machine or any part thereof is in a dangerous condition or is not properly guarded, the use thereof may be prohibited by the Commissioner of Labor, and a notice to that effect shall be attached thereto. Such notice shall not be removed until the machine is made safe and the required safeguards are provided, and in the meantime such unsafe or dangerous machinery shall not be used."
[35] Here is a letter from the Secretary of the Women's Trade-Union League, stating the results of organization in the West in the laundry trade: "The laundry workers in San Francisco eight years ago were competing with the Chinese laundries. The girls working in the laundries there received about $10 a month, with the privilege of 'living in.' Three days in the week they began work at 6 A.M. and worked until 2 A.M. the next morning. The other three days they worked from 7 A.M. to 8 P.M. Since organization, they have established the nine-hour day and the minimum wage of $7. They have extended their organization almost the entire length of the Pacific Coast."
[36] Perhaps a better survey of the standard of wages for all departments of laundry work in which women are employed can be given by the table below. By the word "standard" I mean the usual wage of a worker of average skill who has been at work in a laundry for a period of at least one year.
| Hand starching (shirts) | $ 13 |
| Hand ironing | 10 |
| Hand starching (collars) | 9 |
| Hand washing | 8 |
| Machine ironing | 7 |
| Feeders | 6 |
| Folders | 6 |
| Catchers | 5 |
| Machine starching (shirts) | 5 |
| Collar ironing | 5 |
| Machine starching (collars) | 4.50 |
| Shakers | 4.50 |
[37] One of the suggestions the inquirers had made, in regard to danger of injury, was the recommendation of the passage of the State Compensation Act, drafted by the joint conference of the Central Labor Bodies of the city of New York. This act became a law in September, 1910, but has since then (July 22, 1911) been declared unconstitutional.
[38] Laws of New York, Chapter 229, section 1, paragraph 88. Became a law May 6, 1910.
[39] Laws of New York, Chapter 31 of the Consolidated Laws, as amended to July 1, 1909, paragraph 86. Inquirers' suggestion: This law would be simpler to enforce if an amending clause required that, in laundries, washing be done in a separate room from the rest of the work.
[40] Laws of New York, Chapter 3 of the Consolidated Laws, as amended to July 1, 1909, paragraph 86.
[41] "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States: nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
[42] Jane Addams, "Democracy and Social Ethics."
CHAPTER VII
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AS APPLIED TO WOMEN'S WORK
Within the last thirty years a new method of conducting work, called Scientific Management, has been established in various businesses in the United States, including "machine shops and factories, steel work and paper mills, cotton mills and shoe shops, in bleacheries and dye works, in printing and bookbinding, in lithographing establishments, in the manufacture of type-writers and optical instruments, in constructing and engineering work—and to some extent—the manufacturing departments of the Army and Navy." [43]
Three of the enterprises to a greater or less degree reorganized by this new system in this country employ women workers. These establishments are a New Jersey cotton mill, a bleachery in Delaware, and a cloth finishing factory in New England. The reduction of costs for the owning firms inaugurating Scientific Management has already received a wide publicity. It is the object of this account to present as clear a chronicle as has been obtainable of the effect the methods of Scientific Management have had on the fortunes of the workers—more especially on the hours, the wages, and the general health of the women workers in these houses who have so far experienced its training. [44]
What, then, are the new principles of management which have been inaugurated? What is Scientific Management? The expression may perhaps best be defined to lay readers by a lay writer by means of an outline of the growth of its working principles in this company—an outline traced as far as possible in the words of the engineers creating the system, whose courtesy in the matter is here gratefully acknowledged.
I
In 1881, Mr. Frederick W. Taylor, the widely reverenced author of "The Art of Cutting Metals" and of "Shop Management," then a young man of 21, closed, in grave discouragement, a long, hard, and victorious contest of his conducted as gang boss of the machinists of the Midvale Steel Company in Pennsylvania. In the course of the last three years, as he narrates in his book "Academic and Industrial Efficiency":— [45]
By discharging workers, lowering the wages of the more stubborn men who refused to make any improvement, lowering the piece-work rate, and by other such methods, he (the writer) succeeded in very materially increasing the output of the machines, in some cases doubling the output, and had been promoted from one gang boss-ship to another until he became the foreman of the shop.... For any right-minded man, however, this success is in no sense a recompense for the bitter relations which he is forced to maintain with all those around him. Life which is one continuous struggle with other men is hardly worth living.... Soon after being made foreman, therefore, he decided to make a determined effort in some way to change the system of management so that the interests of the workmen and the management should become the same instead of antagonistic.... He therefore obtained the permission from Mr. William Sellers, the President of the Midvale Steel Company, to spend some money in a careful scientific study of the time required to do various kinds of work.
Lack of information on the part of both workers and the management as to the quickest time in which a piece of work can be done constitutes what has been the most formidable obstacle in the path of all progress toward improved industrial conditions.... Every wasteful operation, every mistake, every useless move has to be paid for by somebody, and in the long run both the employer and the employee have to bear a proportionate share.... For each job there is the quickest time in which it can be done by a first-class man; this time may be called the "Standard Time," for the job.... Under all the ordinary systems this quickest time is more or less completely shrouded in mist.
Through a period of about twelve years the simplest operations in the shop were now timed, observed, and studied by graduates from science courses, different university men, engaged by Mr. Taylor, until a general law had been discovered regarding the exertion of physical energy a first-class worker could employ "and thrive under." It was found that the worker's resistance of fatigue in lifting and carrying the load depended, not on the amount of strength in terms of horse-power which he was obliged to exert to elevate and sustain the load, but on the proportion of his day spent in rest. For instance, a pig-iron handler, lifting and carrying pigs weighing 92 pounds each, could lift and carry 47 tons of iron in a day without undue fatigue if fifty-seven per cent of his working hours were spent in rest, and forty-three per cent were spent in work. If he lifted and put in place a number of pigs amounting to half that tonnage, he might work without undue fatigue for a greater part of the day. Under a certain far lighter load he could work without fatigue all day long, with no rest whatever.
With accurate time-study as a basis, the "quickest time" for each job is at all times in plain sight of both employers and workmen, and is reached with accuracy, precision, and speed. [46]
Operation—Wheelbarrow Excavation. Date, March 10, 189—
| Op. | Time | Av. | No. Shov. |
Op. | Time | Av. | No. Shov. |
Op. | Time | Av. | No. Shov. |
Op. | Time | Av. | |
| Department—Construction | a | 1.37 | 1.37 | 15 | a | 1.12 | 1.12 | 12 | a' | 1.86 | 11 | ||||
| Men—Mike Flaherty | b | 1.56 | 0.19 | b | 1.39 | 0.27 | a' | 1.81 | 13 | ||||||
| c | 1.82 | 0.26 | c | 1.58 | 0.19 | a' | 2.14 | 16 | |||||||
| Materials—Sand requiring no pick | d | 1.97 | 0.15 | d | 1.70 | 0.12 | a' | 1.98 | 14 | ||||||
| Materials—Hard clay in bank | e | 1.97 | 0.15 | e | 1.92 | 0.22 | |||||||||
| Implements—No. 3 shovel; Contractors' wooden wheelbarrow | f | 2.36 | 0.09 | f | 2.36 | 0.09 | |||||||||
| Conditions—Day-work for a contractor. By previous observation | a | 1.24 | 1.24 | 13 | a | 2.05 | 0.13 | 13 | |||||||
| An average barrow load of sand is 2.32 cu. ft. measured in cut | b | 1.36 | 0.12 | b | 1.38 | 0.15 | |||||||||
| An average barrow load of clay is 2.15 cu. ft. measured in cut | c | 1.59 | 0.23 | c | 1.60 | 0.22 | |||||||||
| d | 1.83 | 0.24 | d | 1.78 | 0.18 | ||||||||||
| e | 2.08 | 0.25 | e | 2.05 | 0.27 | ||||||||||
| f | 2.23 | 0.25 | f | 2.23 | 0.18 |