life of us see any way out of our trouble. If you will just drop all of this and get right down to friendly relations with the employés in the plant, you will find that while this suggestion may not amount to much, and that suggestion may not amount to much. . . the total of all the suggestions and opinions you get from the people in the plant will come nearer to getting at the actual truth and solution of the trouble than the racking of your pretended penetrating intellects.' "22 The control exercised by a sympathetic personality is enhanced by making the employment manager a medium through which the workmen are to be impressed with the benevolence of the employing company. The various "welfare" or "service" enterprises for workmen, in many companies, are intended to win the allegiance of workmen away from the unions, or to prevent the rise of a sentiment for unionism. These service activities are put under the control of the employment manager. Rises in salary apparently come through his influence. He calls the attention of workmen to the company life and other insurance, incidentally pointing out its advantages over trade union benefits. The increasing difficulty of controlling labour by crude domination is causing an emphasis on the sentimental appeal, and has prompted some employers to favour the intellective appeal used by Mr. Wolf. But there are two conditions that limit the possibilities of the latter. First, the strongest impulses of workmen are to submit to superior force and thus experience the relief of submission, to admire superiority and to be grateful for generosity. Not many centuries ago, workmen were used by lords, at their will, for working or for fighting, and the instincts of personal allegiance that were fostered under serfdom remain today among man's strongest instincts. They are still fostered by most business enterprises which aim to control workmen by stirring submission, or a sense of pride in the superiority of the business enterprise in which they work, or gratitude for the company's benevolent treatment of them. The capacity of workmen to respond to the intellective appeal is, therefore, very limited. This is apt to discourage idealistic managers and to seem to justify the attitude of the rivalrous, ambitious type of manager who cleverly works his way upward through winning the favour of the powers that be, among other ways by accepting the attitude to labour of the individualistic employer. 22 "Human-Being Management," Industrial Management, Dec., 1916, 398-400. A second condition limiting the possibilities of an intellective appeal is the lack of close touch of the owners and directors of an enterprise with the industrial situation, so that their intelligence and sympathy is not involved, wherefore they maintain the traditional autocratic attitude. As Mr. Dennison said,23 in an address to employment managers: "Inside your factory or store you will have to face, if you face this issue of democracy, that very difficult question of absentee ownership and absentee management. It is perfectly apparent to my mind ... that if the concern is managed by directors who do not live there you cannot get the touch of true management. If the concern is owned by stockholders who never visit it . . . the ultimate control, the ultimate ownership resting in their hands, will always make a chasm between the working force and that so-called 'owning' body of men. This is a problem big enough for a national association of its own."24 23 President of the Dennison Manufacturing Co., Framingham, Mass. 24 Dennison, What the Employment Department Should be in Industry, Proceed. Employ. Man. Conf., 1917, 79. T CHAPTER XI SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AND JOINT MANAGEMENT AS REMEDIES HE most common form of business organization is the traditional "line" or "military" form. Here workmen are divided 2 into groups under gang-bosses, several gang-bosses are under a foreman, several foremen under a superintendent, superintendents under a department head, and the department heads under the general manager. The advantage of this organization is that it facilitates giving orders and fixing responsibility. This is essential in an army, but, in industry, the work to be done is less simple and less easily understood, and consequently the giving of orders and holding those ordered accountable is a more difficult matter. Those above have to know many things and are apt to make unwise decisions because of insufficient knowledge, and subordinates who are held responsible must find means of executing the unwise orders or pass them on to subordinates. Consequently there is a tendency to hold subordinates responsible for failures due to lack of knowledge of superiors, and for superiors to take the credit for unusually good work done by a subordinate. The net result is that the burden due to lack of wisdom of those above finally lands on the shoulders of foremen who, through gang-bosses, drive the men to accomplish what has been ordered. The deficiencies of this military type of organization have caused modifications of it, one of which is known as "line-and-staff" organization. This is merely the line or military organization assisted by a staff of experts-chemists, engineers, and other experts-who investigate the problems of the business and make recommendations, which may or may not be accepted. The hierarchy of managers, accepting from above the profit-seeking attitude, seek advice of the experts at any part of the line, but accept or reject it according to its effect on profits. 1 Gerstenberg, Principles of Business, 190-193. 2Ibid. 193. 8 Ibid. 195. 4 Ibid. 195-196. 5 The line or line-and-staff organization represents the extreme of autocratic control of business. In making decisions and issuing orders the manager is influenced only incidentally by the suggestions of the staff. In some establishments an attempt has been made to modify this arbitrary management by "committee management." Advisory committees are formed composed of department heads and workmen selected by the workmen of the department or appointed by the management. There may be, also, a suggestion system for encouraging workmen to make written suggestions for the improvement of the business.8 But the management may make much or little use of advice from these various sources, and the whole arrangement may be used merely to give the appearance of consulting the workmen. Industrial democracy conceivably might develop out of autocracy little by little in this way, leaving autocracy merely a form, as political democracy developed out of autocracy in England, leaving a merely formal political autocrat. But, so far, the industrial autocracy remains vital, in spite of the democratic forms, for at any moment the private owners may do away with the advisory committees or even dismiss the general manager who should go too far in surrendering the absolute control with which they had vested him. Scientific management developed under the impulse to lessen the discontent and inefficiency caused by this autocratic management of business. It had resulted in the "soldiering" or "stalling" of workmen, that is, in indifferent work, in doing as little as possible, and this appeared to be the greatest obstacle to the increase of the productivity of workmen. Accordingly a system was devised with a view to lessening discontent and inefficiency and thereby increasing profits. The basic idea of scientific management is the analysis of the work of supervision and of manual labour into distinct tasks, and the distribution of tasks in such a way that each supervisor and each group of workers shall have so few distinct tasks as to be able to work at the highest efficiency. The work of supervision is divided among foremen each with his particular function; gang-bosses and superintendents are abolished and the foremen all are made co-ordinate, and subordinate to the works manager and he to the general manager.1 5 Ibid. 198. • Ibid. 199. 7 Ibid. 199. • Ibid. 200. Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management, 13-24. 10 Gerstenberg, op. cit., 201-206. 10 The work of manual workmen in like manner is divided into tasks, workmen are shifted to tasks for which they are best fitted, are trained to perform those tasks with the least expenditure of effort, and are given increased pay as a reward for their greater efficiency.11 But the basis of the increase is arbitrarily determined by the management. Under scientific management as it has developed, therefore, management is as autocratic as before. Scientific management in its development did not follow the ideal of its founders because this ideal was contrary to the profit-seeking attitude of employers. A profit-seeking attitude begets a dominating attitude to labour, the idea being that wages must be kept down if there are to be profits, and this made scientific management as it developed as autocratic as any other form. According to Frederick W. Taylor, the father of scientific management, it must begin with a change in the attitude of the employer, and without this change scientific management does not exist in the fundamental sense that he conceived it. It is merely a new way of more effectively handling labour in the interest of private profits. He stated his ideal emphatically as follows: "Now, in its essence, scientific management involves a complete mental revolution" in the attitude of the management to the workmen and of the workmen to the management. think it is safe to say that in the past a great part of the thought and interest both of . . . the management, and of . . . the workmen in manufacturing establishments has been centred upon what may be called the proper division of the surplus resulting from their joint efforts. "I "The great revolution that takes place in the mental attitude of the two parties under scientific management is that both sides take their eyes off of the division of the surplus as the all-important matter." "And without this complete mental revolution on both sides, scientific management does not exist."12 As Mr. Taylor emphatically stated in conversation with the author, "There must be a new attitude on the part of employers and workmen toward one another; it is like a religious attitude, it is the most fundamental thing in the mind." There 11 Taylor, Shop Management, 26; Gantt, Work, Wages and Profits, 39-40; Emerson, A Comparative Study of Wage and Bonus Systems, 36; Babcock, The Taylor System in Franklin Management, Ch. VI; Knoeppel, Installing Efficiency Methods, Ch. XVII. 12 Hearings before Special Committee of the House of Representatives to Investigate the Taylor and Other Systems of Shop Management, III; 1387-1388, |