FREDERICK W. TAYLOR FATHER OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

Frederic!^ JV. Taylor

FATHER OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

BY

FRANK BARKLEY COPLEY

IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME II

HARPER AND BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

MCMXXIII

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^, p.

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COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY HARPER & BROTHERS

THE PLIMPTON PRESS-NORWOOD • MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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CONTENTS

VOLUME TWO BOOK V — THE GREAT ADVENTURE AT BETHLEHEM

CHAPTER PAGE

I. His Call to Bethlehem 3

II. The Opposing Groups 15

III. Barth Devises his Slide Rule 26

IV. Systemizing Schmidt and his Fellows 37

V. A Tale of Shoveling 56

VI. Taylor and his Assistants 68

VII. The Discovery that Led to High-Speed Steel 79

VIII. How THE Discovery was Made 91

IX. What Followed the Discovery 107

X. Progress with Shop Methods and Mechanisms 119

XI. The Overthrow 139

XII. After Taylor Left 156

BOOK VI — SERVING THE PUBLIC WITHOUT PAY

I. Back in Germantown 167

II. The First Complete Developments of his System .... 175

III. Boxly ; 186

IV. Better Greens for Golfers 202

V. On the Links 215

VI. En Famille 224

VII. His Campaign and its Motives 233

VIII. President of the A. S. M. E 243

IX. On Colleges and Education 260

X. Lecturing at Home and Afield 281

XI. Serving the Navy 299

XII. Serving the Army 328

XIII. Toward the Close 0F1910 353

BOOK VII — IN CONCLUSION

I. The Railroads and Scientific Management 369

II. The Publication of his Last Paper 378

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V

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vi CONTENTS

PAGE

III. The Crowded Year of 191 1 » 385

IV. Toiling on Toward the Evening 394

V. On Labor Leaders and Unions 403

VI. No Compromise 417

VII. The Onc®ming of the Shadow 433

VIII. His Final Effort 443

IX. The End of the Pilgrimage 45 1

ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME TWO

PAGE

BoxLY Frontisfiece

Carl G. Barth 3°

A Barth Slide Rule 3 ^

A Group of Bethlehem Steel Company Executives 84

The High-Speed Steel Exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900 85

James Mapes Dodge 178

Wilfred Lewis I79

Robert Bender 190

Showing the height of the century-old box

The Old Garden Before Moving the Box 194

A Section of the Box Crated for Moving 194

A Crated Section of the Box En Transit 195

Near View of a Section of the Box after Moving 195

General View of the Box after Moving 196

A Vista in the Garden 197

Moving the Fifty- Year-Old Wistaria While in Bloom 198

Moving a Thirty-Foot White Pine 199

A Part of the Grass-Growing Laboratory 212

Buildjng Synthetic Soil in Obliquely Vertical Layers 213

The Putting Green at Boxly 218

Taylor's Highly Unique Putter 219

Mrs. Frederick W. Taylor 226

A Family Group at Boxly 227

Henry R. Towne 240

Henri Louis le Chatelier 241

Rear Admiral Caspar F. Goodrich 324

Major General William Crozier 325

Taylor Inspecting Concrete Work 396

BOOK V THE GREAT ADVENTURE AT BETHLEHEM

The power of persistence, of enduring defeat and of gaining victory by defeats' is one of these forces which never loses its charm. The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one direction. He becomes acquainted with the resistances, and with his own tools; increases his skill and strength and learns the favorable moments and favorable accidents. He is his own apprentice, and more time gives a great addition of power, just as a falling body acquires mo- mentum with every foot of the fall. How we prize a good continuer!

Emerson's Perpetual Forces

CHAPTER I

HIS CALL TO BETHLEHEM

IF one were asked to name the most remarkable community in the United States, one surely would have to consider the town of Bethlehem, situated on both banks o£ the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania, fifty-seven miles by rail north by west of Philadelphia/ Never a large community, it for years has been celebrated equally for religion and steel, for music and manufacturing j a combination that in recent times has become largely personified in Charles M. Schwab, prin- cipal patron of Bethlehem's famous Bach Choir and principal owner of Bethlehem's famous steel works.

Its religious and musical celebrity Bethlehem owes to the fact that it was founded (in 1741) by the Moravians, that remarkable sect which, due to the teachings of John Huss, sprang up in Bohemia and Moravia in the fifteenth century, and when persecuted by the Hapsburgs, established itself in the adjoining land of Saxony. Doubtless due to its Slavic and South German origin, it early adopted a liturgy with such a strong musical tendency that its followers naturally came to praise the Lord with flutes, horns, violas, and trombones. Thus as early as 17 80 Bethlehem had an orchestra, and it is said to have been the first in America. Equally natural was it that, with the removal of the main body of Moravians to Saxony, their musical service should become dominated by the compositions of that noble and scholarly soul, Johann Sebas- tian Bach, so long an organist and director of music in churches

^ Though for many years it was divided politically into the boroughs of Bethlehem, West Bethlehem, and South Bethlehem, it all along has been es- sentially one community.

3

4 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

at Leipslc. Hence Bethlehem's famous Bach Choir and its annual Bach festival.

At Bethlehem the Moravians still maintain a theological seminary, colleges for men and women, and parochial schoools. Here also, on a site overlooking South Bethlehem, is that important non-sectarian institution, Lehigh University. And between this Moravian and university influence, Bethlehem could not well fail to offer the initiate some of the most de- lightful society to be found anywhere.

,Yet also in and around Bethlehem one of the strangest peoples to be found in America j namely, the Pennsylvania Dutch. For that is what they call the main body of the descendants of the Germans (not Hollanders) who emigrated to Pennsylvania in our pre-Revolutionary days. Born here for many generations, they have lost all attachment to Ger- many, but never have become quite Americanized. In the main, they have forgotten how to speak German, and never have learned to speak English. As clannish as they are canny, they have a speech all their own. Among them are un- doubtedly many fine individuals j hardworking, saving, orderly. But also among them typical penny-pinchers j nar- row, bigoted, suspicious folkj dull as to wit and sluggish as to mind J typical little brothers to the ox. And of such, we shall see, was Schmidt^ Fred Taylor's world-famous pig- iron handler, for whom the tender-hearted have so sorely grieved, seeing that Taylor did not treat him in anything like the fashion one would treat a delicate, poetic genius.

In Bethlehem also a mixture of races from all over the earth. This, at any rate, in South Bethlehem. For here, besides other manufacturing enterprises, are the steel works, which, as the World War came to stimulate their business, offered employment to more than 25,000 persons.

At this writing, the Bethlehem Steel Company is only one of the many subsidiary companies of the Bethlehem Steel

HIS CALL TO BETHLEHEM 5

Corporation, which Charles M. Schwab organized in 1904, with the object of linking up directly with the manufacture of steel the shipbuilding companies in which he had become interested. The old Bethlehem Steel Company, we are told, had its origin about i860, when Augustus and Francis Wolle, members of one of the old Moravian families, bought a farm in South Bethlehem, and to develop this property established a blast furnace. For many years their enterprise was called the Bethlehem Iron Company j indeed, to be strictly accurate, it was not until 1899, a year after Taylor went there, that the iron in the company's name was changed to steel.

As the business developed, John Fritz, then of Johnstown, was employed to lay out the buildings and design the ma- chinery. This indeed was the John Fritz beloved of all engineers, hailed throughout his latter years as the dean of the American engineering fraternity, and intensely admired by Taylor as probably the finest product of the old empirical school. It was at Bethlehem that Fritz made his great contri- bution to the development of the Bessemer process of steel making, and he was general superintendent of these works so long that it became difficult to separate his identity from that of the company.

But now let us see what lay behind the letter written by Davenport in November of 1897 to tell Taylor that Robert P. Linderman, who then had become the president of the company, wished to talk with him about introducing into the machine shop a piece-work system.

Along about 1885, the Bethlehem Company decided to reach out for a share of the big business that was promised at this time by the development of a new navy under the enter- prising administration of William C. Whitney. In 1886 it entered into an arrangement with the English firm of Sir Joseph Whitworth & Company, by which that company agreed to supply machinery similar to that which it was using for

6 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

the manufacture of steel forgings. A contract also was made with Schneider & Company, of Le Creuzot, France, by which this latter company agreed to supply drawings of machinery for making steel armor plate, as well as all the information it possessed as to manufacturing methods and shop practice. This done, the Bethlehem Company built a plant able to make heavier forgings than could be produced at either of the for- eign establishments.

In 1887 the company obtained from Secretary Whitney contracts both for forgings for heavy cannon and for armor plate. It was realized, however, that something needed to be done to brace up the works management. Probably no one realized this better than John Fritz. But he had ruled there now for more than a quarter of a century, and it was getting time for him to retire from all active work. Brilliant as had been his work in the old days, the new days with their new methods were calling for a younger man. The empirical was passing, the scientific was coming.

As the works management problem at Bethlehem became more pressing, eyes there were turned to Midvale. Not that they wished to copy their rival's methods. Of course not. But Midvale appeared to have an exceptionally good works management, and it was thought it would be just as well to get a Midvale man. So, in 1888, they reached out for Russell W. Davenport.

It always was maintained by Davenport that he went to Bethlehem with the distinct understanding that when John Fritz retired as general superintendent, he was to succeed him. As it turned out, however, a Mr. Owen F. Leibert succeeded Fritz, while Davenport was conducted into the office of second vice-president, and there quietly sidetracked as far as the management of the works was concerned. At that he found at Bethlehem a high sphere of usefulness. Un- doubtedly the metallurgical work there was brought to a state

HIS CALL TO BETHLEHEM 7

of excellence, and we have the disinterested testimony of government inspectors that the chief credit for this belonged to Davenport. Nevertheless, this did not settle the works- management problem, and along about 1897 it became acute.

By many it has been supposed that Davenport brought Taylor to Bethlehem. The fact is, however, that Davenport had no authority to take such a step. Although he approved of it, he was not even the instigator. And the president, Robert P. Linderman, on whose behalf Davenport wrote to Taylor, was not the instigator either. The man primarily responsible was that enterprising Philadelphian, Joseph Wharton.

Up to the middle of the i88o's, the ownership of the Bethlehem Company had been shared among such leading local families as the Lindermans, the Sayres, and the Wilburs. But when the plant was greatly enlarged to prepare it for government work, outside capital had to be enlisted, and thereupon Wharton stepped in, to play a quiet but none the less leading and insistent part in the direction of its affairs. Our information is that when the negotiations to bring Taylor to Bethlehem began, Wharton owned one-quarter of the company's stock, besides holding the majority of its bonds.

That the works management was backward at this time is not astonishing in view of the existing general conditions. Robert P. Linderman, the company's chief executive, was a son of Dr. Garrett B. Linderman, at first a local physician and then a coal operator and financier. And it was to finance that Robert Linderman was brought up. It is to be assumed that he served the financial end of the company's business with ability, but it is certain that about the operation of the works he knew practically nothing. Moreover, in those works nepotism was rifej most of the important positions were filled by men who had been put in them chiefly because of their connection or " pull " with some one of the local families

8 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

among whom the ownership of the company had so long been divided. This is not to say that there were not some able men in the lot. There were. But if there was a man holding an important position for which he was well qualified, it was due more to accident than to design. And here we can find the explanation of Davenport's being sidetracked. Worst of all was the fact that no one man was directly responsible for the operation of the works as a whole. As John Fritz had made the ofiice of general superintendent, this office was concerned almost exclusively with the design and erection of buildings and machinery, and with the planning of developments. The actual operation of the works in the living present was largely left to the various heads of the departments, as armor plate, forging, melting, tempering, and machine shop, and among these departments there was little or no cooperation.

The negotiations with Taylor lasted off and on from No- vember, 1897, throughout the following winter. To him the prospect of going to Bethlehem was more than pleasing. Here again he saw opening for him the door of a great opportunity. The Bethlehem Company at this time had a nominal capital of $5,000,000, while its value was placed at $15,000,000 or more. Between five and six thousand men were then em- ployed. From Davenport, however, Taylor gained an exten- sive knowledge of the general conditions, and he had no illusions as to the difficulties that there would confront him. On January 4, 1898, he sent from Fitchburg the following letter, marked personal:

My DEAR Davenport:

While I was in Philadelphia about ten days ago I stopped in to see Jos. Wharton and find his views regarding piece work. He told me that he had urged upon the Board of Directors several times during the last five years the necessity of running the Bethlehem Steel Works on piece work, and that he was very heartily in favor of same. When I told him, however, that it involved paying from 33 to 50% higher

HIS CALL TO BETHLEHEM 9

wages in order to get out properly really hustling piece work he said at first that this was out of the question. After talking with him for some time, however, and explaining that men would not work extraordinarily hard for ordinary wages he seemed convinced on this point. At any rate he said he was heartily in favor of having piece work.

I suggested that you were as well qualified as anyone in the country to introduce piece work and I took upon myself to recommend your transfer to the head of the manufacturing department. He, however, was absolutely non-committal on this point, neither acquiesced nor the contrary.

As has been said, Joseph Wharton always will have the distinction of being one of the first financiers in this country to recognize the value in industry of the scientific expert. It was due to his belief in experts that he was attracted to Taylor. Yet when Taylor told him that the Bethlehem Company must pay high wages, Wharton balked. This despite the fact that in A Piece-Rate System^ it was stated, with all the emphasis that italics can lend, that the whole object of the system was to combine high wages with low labor costs. Verily to write is one thing, and to get yourself understood is something else, especially when you are dealing with persons who are not pre- pared to understand you by anything in their education or ex- perience. Taylor told Davenport that he talked with Wharton for " some time." Well we can believe that It was a characteristic Fred Taylor outpouring of high principle mixed with sagacity, of imperiousness blended with persuasive- ness} the whole lighted up with a wondrous enthusiasm.

It also will be seen from the foregoing letter that Taylor was bent from the beginning on getting Davenport placed at the head of the works. This, of course, was not just be- cause Davenport was his old friend. It was because he wanted to have the backing of a man who, having had a scientific training, would understand his general methods.

Now, it may occur to the reader that there was something

10 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

irregular in the way Taylor dealt with Wharton, a director, over the head of Linderman, the president. Certainly there was nothing underhanded about itj Linderman's letters to Taylor show that he was fully aware that Taylor was having talks with Wharton. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that it contravened one of the first principles of organization. There was, as a matter of fact, something false about the whole situation at Bethlehem during Taylor's association with the company, and this will go far to explain the trouble that developed. Nominally Taylor was employed by Linderman. Actually he was employed by Wharton. It was Wharton who held him responsible for results. It was from Linderman he had to demand the authority necessary for the discharge of his responsibility. The falseness of this situation was not created by him; it was of a piece with the irregularity of things in general at Bethlehem beginning with the fact that Linderman, though supposed to be responsible for the works, knew next to nothing about manufacturing j and hardly could Taylor be blamed for meeting this situation as best he could.

There can be no possible doubt that from the start he did his level best to enlighten Linderman as to what he proposed to do, how he proposed to do it, and what probably would be the consequences. Before us is a letter which proves this. Incidentally it will afford some insight into the heartbreaking opposition he had encountered in the past and was again pre- pared to encounter:

Hotel Vendome, Boston, Mass., Jan. 19, 1898 Mr. Rob't p. Linderman, Pres.y Bethlehem Iron Co., So. Bethlehem, Pa. Deiar Sir:

I have yours of Jan 6th asking me to go into further particulars re- garding the methods which I would propose adopting for the intro- duction of Piece Work in your machine shop.

HIS CALL TO BETHLEHEM ii

I find it difficult, however, to explain very much about the subject vv^ithout writing more than you would care to read. The chief objects which I have in view in systematizing the shop are:

First: — ,To render the management of the shop entirely independ- ent of any one man or any set of men so that the shop will be in a position to run practically as economically if you were to lose your foreman, or if, in fact, a considerable body of your workmen were to leave at any one time.

Second: — To introduce such system and discipline into the shop that any policy which may be decided upon by the management can be properly carried out.

Third: — To introduce the best kind of Piece Work in place of Day Work and thus stop the loafing which takes place under all Day Work and also to very materially increase the rate of speed and the accuracy of each man in the shop.

Before any move can be made toward actively introducing Piece Work many of the details connected with running the machines and the management of the work in the shop which are usually left to the individual judgment of the workmen must be standardized and taken entirely out of their control; such items for instance as the dressing and grinding of all the small cutting tools in the shop and the storing of all these tools in a suitable tool room from which they are issued under the check system to the men.

An illustration of a particular case may perhaps more fully explain my meaning in this regard. If, in the ordinary machine shop, a fore- man were to order any one of his men to do a certain job on Piece Work and attempted to tell the man what cutting speed and feed to use the result would be in nine cases out of ten that the man would grind his tools so that they could not do the work. If the foreman were then to put another man onto the machine he would probably find that the first man had either hidden many of his best tools belonging to the lathe or transferred them to some friend in the shop, so that the new man coming onto the machine would have to spend perhaps two or three days in getting tools dressed and ground before he could start to do the work, and even then unless he were skilled in the art of designing machine shop tools, which not one machinist in a thousand is, he would

12 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

probably have tools made that would fail to do the work economically on this particular machine.

It is just such obstacles as this that prevent the introduction of Piece Work in most shops. The first step therefore taward intro- ducing Piece Work lies in a careful study of all the trifling details of the shop and a thorough systematizing of this part of the establishment.

When the endeavor is made to instruct each workman as to the best method to be pursued in doing his work instead of leaving it to each individual's judgment it is absolutely necessary that all orders should be written instead of verbal, otherwise the responsi- bility for an error cannot be properly located. Therefore the whole method of putting orders into the shop and for inspection and payment for the work, and of making up your labor returns, must be overhauled and improved before Piece Work can be in- troduced. After reforms similar to the above have been introduced in the shop it is then possible to introduce Piece Work.

I am very much in favor of the differential rate system of Piece Work which is in use in the Midvale Steel Works and several other works in the country, and in order that you may understand this system I send you under separate cover several copies of a paper read before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers describing this system.

Any move toward accomplishing the above ends will undoubt- edly be strenuously opposed by the workmen in your shop, and probably also by most of your foremen and superintendents. It seems to be therefore that the following conditions are indispensable to success.

First: — That the man whom you wish me to train to run your shop on Piece Work must be loyal to the Piece Work system, a competent man, and not subject to the influence or control of anyone who is opposed to Piece Work.

Second : — This man must have the power to discharge any man in the shop and any workman discharged by him should not again be employed in any part of your Works without the written consent of the man who discharged him.

HIS CALL TO BETHLEHEM 13

Third : — In selecting men for promotion only one thing should be considered, namely, the fitness of the man, and the question of whose friend a man may be or what influence he' has should carry absolutely no weight.

Fourth: — If you are content with stopping the loafing which goes on in every " Day-Work " shop and in increasing the output by having better shaped cutting tools than are generally used, and by an improved system for caring for the small details of the shop, it will not be necessary to pay your workmen any higher wages on Piece Work than they are now paid on Day Work. If, however, you expect your workmen to work very much harder than they do on Day Work (and my experience is that the greatest gain is to be made by increasing the pace of all your men) then you must recognize the fact that workmen will not double their rate of speed for the same wages for which they* will work by the day. My experience is that it is necessary to pay them on Piece Work from 25 to 50 per cent more than they get on Day Work in order to stimulate them to their maximum.

I do not think that Piece Work can possibly be introduced in your shop under from nine months to two years. The time will of course very greatly depend upon the tractability of your men and upon the energy of the foreman and assistants who are at work in introducing the system.

I am afraid that the above very inadequately describes the neces- sary conditions. By referring to the pamphlet which I send you, however, you will I think be able to form a better judgment. If you wish it I shall be glad to come to Bethlehem and spend a day with you or any of your Directors in talking the matter over and answering such questions as may occur to you, and it seems to me that this might possibly be more satisfactory to you.

My terms are $35.00 per day, with my living expenses added. These generally amount to about $5.00 per day. If I have to do any traveling for the Company my traveling expenses should also be paid.

Very truly yours,

Fred W. Taylor

14 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

All the subsequent happenings show that this letter, though written in the plainest of English, was to Robert P. Linder- man as so much Choctaw. The mental attitude and viewpoint of the engineer was to him terra incognita. In fact, justice to him requires us to recognize that those whose training has been confined to finance are extremely likely to go through life with the fixed idea that anything desirable can be bought with money i that if you hand out the money, the rest should follow automatically, and your whole duty has been dis- charged.

The evidence is that, after negotiating with Taylor, Lin- derman was sure only of these things: that something needed to be done to speed up the works j that this man Taylor, hav- ing the backing of Joseph Wharton, was probably the one to do itj and that the Bethlehem Company should pay him his price, high though it seemed to be.

On the other hand, it is plain that Taylor, with spirit soar- ing triumphantly above all his setbacks, was indomitably re- solved on getting the Bethlehem Company to accept his methods complete, and that when it finally was settled that he should begin his work in May, 1898, he prepared himself for the struggle of his career.

CHAPTER II

THE OPPOSING GROUPS

ANTICIPATING a long stay in this community, he and his wife rented a house pleasantly situated in the hill section of South Bethlehem. For the first time in many years they were able to take their household things out of storage, and establish a real home. Just previous to their arrival in Bethlehem, they had spent several days at Lakewood, the resort in the New Jersey pine country. There Mr. Taylor had a good deal of golf. From Bethlehem he frequently returned to the Lakewood links, and we believe that among the persons he used to meet on those links was that distinguished joker, Harrah of Midvale. In Bethlehem he continued to use the bicycle he had taken to riding in Fitch- burg 5 at all events, it was his custom to use it in journeying to and fro between his home and the steel works.

Here he had particular reason to believe that mill people are able to scent the approach of a reformer from afar. No sooner did he arrive in town than the excitement began, and it was by no means confined to the steel works. Such a leading part did those works play in the life of the community that the local newspapers were concerned with every move made there. They reflected the fear even of plain Bill Smith that he might be separated from his job. Presently the community in general was gaping at the unheard-of doings of the new- comer. He acquired among these Bethlehemites the sobriquet of " Speedy " Taylor. It was not merely that some thought him a crank. It was wondered whether he was an entirely respectable person. It was feared that, among other things,

IS

1 6 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

as we shall presently see, he would disturb real-estate values.

His state of mind at this time is indicated by his talks to the young men whom he gathered about him at the works. " Keep out of trouble as long as you possibly can," he would say J " but make the other fellow realize that if he is bent on forcing it on you, he will have his hands fullj and be ready to get in the first blow." If the people at the works had scented his approach from afar, he, now getting to be an old war-horse, had himself snifFed the battle afar off. Speaking with entire seriousness, you hardly could say that he arrived looking for trouble. But he did go to Bethlehem expecting it J and if that was inevitable, it was none the less unfortunate, especially in the case of one with his intensity of temperament.

That he really was bent on avoiding trouble, that he had no desire to jam in his methods or ram them down people's throats — this is evidenced by the written reports and recom- mendations that he, throughout 1898 and 1899, kept present- ing to Mr. Linderman. He endeavored with infinite pains to keep that gentleman informed as to every phase of his workj as to what had been done, and why, and what should be done, and why. It was his purpose to take no step involving a definite change in policy without getting Linderman or the directors to commit himself or themselves to it. For the benefit of the officers of the works, he for a long time gave talks in the luncheon room at noon, in explanation of his methods and their purpose.

On May 27, 1898, the day he formally began his work, he addressed to Linderman his "Recommendation No. i. Subject: Desirability of establishing standards throughout the works." What he referred to was " such details, for example, as the care of the belting, the shapes of the cutting tools, and the method of dressing, tempering, grinding, storing and issuing the same, the quality of the tool steel from which they are made, and the quantity to be kept on handj the speeds

THE OPPOSING GROUPS 17

and feeds used on the machine tools, etc., etc." And he went on to say:

Any attempt toward the adoption of standards of this kind will meet with great opposition, the chief ground of which is based on the supposition that uniform conditions of this sort discourage originality and individual improvement among the men. If this system of standards, however, is properly applied it produces quite the opposite effect, since each workman then understands that if he succeeds in making any improvement that such improvement may be adopted as the work's standard, and his credit for same be far greater than would be the case under the other system.

In view of the above, it seems to the writer of great importance, 1st. To determine whether you wish to adopt a series of standards

for the small details throughout your works. 2nd. If you decide in the affirmative, to convince your leading

assistants in the works of the desirability of standards. 3rd. To determine upon the best method of establishing these standards and enforcing their adoption and maintenance throughout the works.

Yes, Linderman allowed that such standards should be established. But who was going to do the work of convincing his "leading assistants" of this desirability? Aye, there was the rub. Not a soul there was who actually was responsible for the works as a whole. So Taylor talked with Linderman about this and was told by him to investigate and report. And about a month later he did report, and that elaborately j and it was a fine example of how discreet, diplomatic, and tactful he could be when he considered it necessary. There was recognition of the " superior quality " of the company's product. There was judicious praise of the " good workmen and competent heads of the departments." But Linderman was told that there was an " almost entire absence of a high order of cooperation throughout your [his] A^orks, not only among the workmen in your [his] departments, but among

1 8 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

the departments themselves." So Taylor proposed that there should be established a " new office or position, namely, that of Superintendent of Manufacture." And he continued:

The duty of this officer, as his title indicates, should be to have charge of the manufacturing throughout the works. The heads of all the departments should receive their orders from him and should report to him; and no one, high or low, should have authority to give orders to them, or any of their men, or to receive reports from them, except through this superintendent. Under his supervision should be the piece work rate fixing, the wages of the workmen in the manufacturing departments, the direction of the laying out of the departments, the estimate of the cost of new work, and the making of promises for dates of delivery, together with the cost keeping. He and his assistants, clerks, etc., should be located in the center of the manufacturing departments, and he should have no duties which would take him away from these departments, so that he may be available at all times to your heads of departments for consultation. He should have nothing whatever to do with the work of your Gen- eral Superintendent, i.e., with the design and erection of new machin- ery or buildings, or the inauguration of new methods or processes.

Of course Taylor needed to have Davenport placed in this position. But here he was particularly diplomatic j his report showing that in this connection he canvassed every official in the works. The general superintendent, Owen F. Leibert, and the assistant general superintendent, Robert H. Sayre, Jr., were " emphatic in their opinion that Mr. Davenport was entirely unfitted for the position." As a matter of fact, these gentlemen thought that the works should have not one head but three! However, Taylor got every superintendent of an operating department, as well as the engineer in charge of construction, to indorse Davenport. And the outcome of his report was that the position of superintendent of manufactur- ing was duly created, and Davenport installed in it.

THE OPPOSING GROUPS 19

As for Taylor's recommendation that the superintendent of manufacture " and his assistants, clerks, etc., should be located in the centre of the manufacturing departments," this quota- tion from Shop Management ^ will indicate what followed from it:

The large machine shop of the Bethlehem Steel Company was more than a quarter of a mile long, and this was successfully run from a single planning room situated close to it. The manager, superin- tendent, and their assistants should, of course, have their offices ad- jacent to the planning room and, if practicable, the drafting room should be near at hand, thus bringing all of the planning and purely brain work of the establishment close together. The advantages of this concentration were found to be so great at Bethlehem that the general offices of the company, which were formerly located in the business part of the town, about a mile and a half away, were moved into the middle of the works adjacent to the planning room.

All along he had been moving unconsciously — that is, wholly in natural response to the conditions he met with — in the direction of functional foremanship and its full develop- ment, the planning department, and here at Bethlehem he became fully conscious of this thing as a definite principle. At first he held it tentatively. But the further he progressed with his work at Bethlehem, the more he came to believe in it, until at length he accepted it fully.

He was brought to Bethlehem mainly to speed up the machine shop, more particularly the big one, which was known as No. 2. It was this machine shop which had been the neck of the bottle in limiting the output of the establishment. While he remained at Bethlehem, his personal activities mostly were confined to this shop. However, he in person also directed the systemizing of the yard labor, and set out to improve the company's accounting system. Through

1 p. no.

20 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

Davenport his methods were more or less introduced into the other departments of the works.

In the machine shop he at once was confronted with that question he had been compelled to leave unsettled at Cramp's — the question as to which make of self-hardening tool steel then on the market was the best to adopt as standard. As he again attempted to settle it, he was brought directly in contact with a man whose name was destined to become associated with his in international fame. This was J. Maunsel White, who, also a graduate of Stevens Institute, had been for several years in the employ of the Bethlehem Company as its metallurgical engineer.

Hardly could Taylor have become associated with a man whose personal habits and general outlook on life were in greater contrast to his own. It was as if old New England formed a partnership with old New Orleans, which, founded by the French, still is far famed for its cooks and cookery. Of New Orleans White was a native and true son. A bon vivant and a connoisseur in both food and drink, he took life easy, and over his glass loved to exercise his skill as a racon- teur. Some of White's habits caused Taylor to shake his head. But when he, Taylor, would get out the little bottle of saccharin that he carried as a substitute for sugar, or more particularly his bottle of lithia or other medicinal water, then it would be White's turn. But White didn't shake his head. He laughed. " If you, Taylor," he would say, " would think a little more of what you eat, would put your mind on your food and enjoy it, and take a little drink now and then, you wouldn't have to fill up on that bellywash." And who can doubt that, at least as regards the food, there was in what he said more truth than poetry? Taylor was ascetic because of the way his life's forces centred in his intellect.

Dissimilar in other respects, Taylor and White both were scientific investigators of the most thorough type. It may

THE OPPOSING GROUPS 21

be said that of all the men who were of the Bethlehem Com- pany when Taylor went there, White was the only one, be- sides Davenport, who had any ability to appreciate what in the industrial world Taylor stood for.

In the case of the operating chiefs it was not merely that they were in general unfamiliar with scientific methods. As they saw that these methods when applied to the manage- ment would carefully prescribe the duties of each man high and low, and place upon each a definite, clear-cut responsi- bility, they were alarmed. The men who held their positions mainly through pull had, of course, the best reasons to fear, and it was perfectly natural that a threat to one should be viewed as a threat to all. No man, in fact, could be sure what effect upon himself the changes at which Taylor was aiming would have.

Justice, however, requires us to point out that when some of the bigger operating chiefs said later that they could have stood Taylor^s methods if it had not been for Taylor himself, they probably were sincere. He never had postponed his victories over the hard and disagreeable. Thus he had put on power. When he entered a place, you felt an addition. When he left a place, you were conscious of a subtraction. And you were likely to have great pleasure either in his coming or his going. And it is not difficult to understand why many men at Bethlehem preferred the back view of him to the front. He must needs be conscious of his power, and he manifested this consciousness in an insouciance which, if you could not know what a modest man he was at bottom, you were likely to find more trying than outright boasting. And there is the fact that to expect men to oppose you is one of the quickest ways to induce them to do so.

One of the first results of this general situation was that when Taylor went to the operating chiefs to get them to recommend men to assist Davenport and himself, they had no

22 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

recommendations to make. Thus in February, 1899, we find Taylor reporting to Linderman:

Aside from the men who have been engaged in this experimental work in your Smith Shop [that pertaining to the heat treatment of tools], the writer has had great difficulty in getting suitable men to assist in the introduction of piece work, and in the speeding up of your tools. Out of the 3,500 men in your Works he has only suc- ceeded in getting two, who are engaged in this work, all the others having been brought in from outside your Works.

He added that it seemed unfortunate that more of the old employees could not be trained in the systemizing work, since the men who had this training must necessarily " occupy very important positions in the works in the future." He asked that at least fifteen or twenty competent men now be taken from other work and assigned to the systemizing. But these men never were forthcoming.

It is easy from all this to see how there arose in those works two distinct groups: a small one made up of Taylor men, and a big one composed of anti-Taylor men.

Among the first young men Taylor brought in was Dwight V. Merrick. Becoming in later years a leading specialist in time study as a part of Scientific Management, Merrick had his earning power doubled and redoubled j and here was a phenomenon exhibited by practically all the men who, be- coming associated with Taylor, were willing to forego exercis- ing their initiative until they learned what he had to teach them. Two of the other young men Taylor brought to Beth- lehem and for whom he had a high regard were David C. Fenner and Sidney Newbold. The two old Bethlehem em- ployees to whom Taylor referred as being the only ones he could get out of the total force of 3,500 were James Kellogg and Joseph Welden, and they also were among those of whom in his later years he made special mention for their services.

THE OPPOSING GROUPS 23

Early in 1899 he again reached out for Henry L. Gantt, and induced him to come to Bethlehem mainly to assist Daven- port in introducing piece work. It must be considered un- fortunate that there have been people who praised Gantt at the expense of his former chief. The fact would appear to be that such difference of temperament as there was between Gantt and Taylor was creditable to each. If Taylor's slogan was " no responsibility without authority," Gantt told you that as a consulting engineer he wanted neither responsibility nor authority J it was his method to have you come to him that he simply might advise you what to do. It was Taylor's in- stinct to say, " What ought we to have? " It was Gantt's instinct to say, "What can we do with what we have? " Taylor was thoroughgoing j Gantt did not wish to go any farther than you were willing to have him. Taylor was pro- found, revolutionary J Gantt adaptable, opportunist. It is true that Taylor felt that Gantt never fully grasped the underlying philosophy of Scientific Management, and that before Taylor's death he and Gantt had largely got out of sympathy with each other as regards various details pertaining to the practice of their profession j but this does not alter the fact that each continued to have for the other a lively regard and respect. It is certain that at Bethlehem, as elsewhere, Gantt's ready ability to make the best of whatever situation arose was of great service in supplementing Taylor's bulldog ability to cling to whatever he undertook until he got there or something broke.

But now, at Bethlehem, Taylor again was confronted by the problem of taking the metal-cutting laws he had discovered and embodying them in a form so simple that these laws could be practically taken advantage of by the every-day working mechanic. This was the end to which all of his metal-cutting investigations were directed. Until there had been found some ready and practical means of determining

24 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

with accuracy the feed and speed question every time it arose in a machine shop, it would be impossible to set for the mechanic each day a scientifically-measured task, with detailed written instructions and an exact time allowance.

It will be remembered that when Taylor and Gantt were at Midvale, they devised a " crude sliding table " which, still involving a resort to the slow method of " trial and error," yet represented an approximate solution of the problem. Soon after Gantt's arrival in Bethlehem, they resumed work on this problem. Between them they made slow progress, and then it was that Taylor's old friend Wilfred Lewis suggested that he enlist the services of Carl G. Barth, who, it will be recalled, had been employed with Lewis at William Sellers & Company. At this time, however, Barth could not be obtained, as he just had taken a position as a teacher of mathematics and manual training in the Ethical Culture School of New York City. In his stead, Taylor employed S. L. Griswold Knox, then a professor or instructor at Lehigh University. The result of the collaboration among Taylor, Gantt, and Knox was what Taylor in his metal-cutting paper called " an especially made slide rule accompanied by diagrams, by means of which a still more rapid solution of the problem was obtained." It pres- ently proved that Taylor and Knox could not get along, and Taylor was not satisfied with the " more rapid solution." He, in fact, was in a quandary. Without a full or direct solution, his efforts to put metal cutting on a strictly scientific basis would fail, " except," as we are told, " for isolated cases in which the cuts to be taken with a single feed and speed would be so long that an appreciable time might be spent profitably in predetermining the feed and speed." He intuitively felt that a direct solution of some kind must be possible, and while he still was brooding on this question there occurred the inci- dent that led him to write under date of March 22, 1899, the following letter:

THE OPPOSING GROUPS 25

Mr. Carl Barth,

54 Morningside Ave., New York. My dear Mr. Barth:

Our mutual friend, Mr. Freeman, was here a few weeks since and in the course of conversation told me that he understood from you that the work you are now engaged in was not entirely satisfactory in some respects.

An opportunity has come up at the Works here which, I am in- clined to think, would offer very satisfactory work to you. Can you not come over to Bethlehem in the near future and talk the matter over with me? I want to let you see for yourself the exact nature of the work which is involved, so that you may readily judge whether it will be to your liking or not. To my mind, the position in question offers very great opportunity.

CHAPTER III

BARTH DEVISES HIS SLIDE RULE

WRITING to General William Crozier in 1909, Taylor referring to Carl Barth, said: "He is one of the most brilliant minds I have ever met." And in a letter addressed in 19 14 to Lionel S. Marks, pro- fessor of mechanical engineering at Harvard, who had just written an article on Scientific Management, Taylor said: " In your text I do not think you give Mr. Carl G. Barth the credit which belongs to him. He is certainly foremost among those who are interested in and are installing scientific manage- ment, and a more honest, straightforward and accomplished man never lived."

His full name is Carl Georg Lange Barth. He was born in Norway in i860, and thus was four years younger than Taylor. His body is both short and slender. With his glasses and close-cut beard, he has a severe, professorial look. Norway is not a smiling land. But when Carl Barth gets excited, as he does readily, and the lock of hair on an other- wise bald forehead sticks up straight like the horn of a satyr, then there is a look of devilish animation about the little man that fully compensates for the absence of smiles.

How embarrassing it would be, it has been suggested, if the faculty of telepathy were so developed in us that the inmost mind of each would stand naked to all. Such a thing hardly would embarrass Carl Barth. As it is now, whatever is in his mind comes out. If it comes out in the manner of an enfant terribley the embarrassment is all yours. His is the honesty and fearlessness of the elements. For all his mathematical

26

BARTH DEVISES HIS SLIDE RULE 27

and mechanical genius, he is no narrow-minded specialist. His mind sweeps the universe. He could become interested in anything, if only he had the time. If you ask him to talk about himself, he does. He is interested in himself because he is interested in things in general. That what he says may have an egotistical or conceited sound, concerns him not at all. He presumes you want the facts. He is as free to tell you what he thinks is to his discredit as what he thinks is to his credit. The only thing is, he is not at all sure what, funda- mentally, is to his credit or discredit.

He is proud to call himself a workman. As he told the Industrial Relations Commission, about the only difference he can see between himself and the workman he meets on the street and in the cars is that he, apparently, has more time to get clean than they have. " I don't care how dirty I get," he said, " but, my God! I want to get clean afterward." He is a sublimated workman. And if it is one of the rewards of work well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness, he has that haughtiness in full. Some of the biggest business men this country has produced have had the lesson taught them that Carl Barth courts no one. When in his younger and more frisky days he would walk into a shop to report on what could be done to reorganize it on a Taylor basis, he had no hesitation in letting it appear how forcibly he was struck by the contrast between it and what he was used to. It was as if he said: " My God! so this is what you call a machine shop! " Hearing of this, Fred Taylor would beseech him not always to find that everything was wrong — would beseech him to have a little tact. Whereupon Carl Barth would experience all the emotions of a pot called black by a kettle. What Homeric laughter would pass all down the line of the Taylor following at the bare mention of the word tact! And the spectacle of Fred Taylor and Carl Barth locking horns over this issue — that surely was the limit.

28 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

It is to be regretted that we cannot here reproduce any of the charm lent to Mr. Earth's speech by his foreign accent. What has been said, however, should prepare us for this bit of candid autobiography taken from his testimony in 191 2 before the Special House Committee:

I received in my native country, Norway, what you in this country consider a high-school education before I entered a small technical school run under the auspices of the navy department, when I was only fifteen and a half years old. I was the youngest pupil ever admitted. It was only a short and purely theoretical course of a year and a half. I graduated with higher honors than anybody ever had done before in that school. It was a course that was absolutely stripped of the numerous fool things with which we spoil technical education in this country. . . .

After I graduated from this school I apprenticed myself in the navy yard. After working about two years in the shops, for the second time such pressure was brought to bear upon me to take an instructorship in that technical school that I finally yielded, greatly against my personal wishes, because I never spent two happier years in my life than when working in those shops. I was an instructor in mathematics for half of each day for one year in the technical school and then was in the shop superintendent's office in the navy yard for the other half of the day, after which I was prevailed upon to give my whole time to the school, teaching mathematics in the mornings and mechanical drawing in the afternoons, the following year. However, in spite of receiving my superior's recognition of my services as an instructor, the pay connected with the position was so poor that while I could amply pay my board I could not fully clothe myself, and for that reason I concluded to emigrate to this country to try to get a job that would enable me to earn a complete livelihood. . . .

Arriving in Philadelphia, he was led by a fellow countryman in the employ of William Sellers & Company to call on that firm with his school examination drawings, and by these Mr. William Sellers was greatly impressed.

BARTH DEVISES HIS SLIDE RULE 29

As a consequence [said Barth] I was offered a place in the drawing room of this company at $2 a day. This was more than I could imagine myself worth, however, and I humbly suggested that they better start me off at $1.50 only, until they actually found out what I would be able to do for them; but, even so, I can assure you that my first week's pay looked pretty big to me.

I got along very rapidly with William Sellers & Co., and my efforts were well appreciated by little voluntary increases in my pay from time to time until I reached $20 per week, after which I had to make a fight for every additional cent of increase I received.

I had in the meantime married and gotten a family on my hands, and as the demands on me became more pressing I was made to realize more readily than I otherwise would have done that I was getting more and more valuable to the company; and as this grew on me I got my Dutch up from time to time and made demands for wages more commensurate with my services.

I mention this to show you that I know what it is to have to fight for one's rights.

After being with the Sellers Company for nearly fourteen years, he left it in 1895, at which time he had become chief designer. Continuing, he said:

I had several reasons for leaving William Sellers & Co. when I did. In addition to working for them during the day I taught mechanical drawing in the Franklin Institute evening schools for six years, and gave private lessons in mathematics during the remaining evenings of the week. After this I ran an evening school of my own for two years, and through this work cultivated a desire some day to become a professor in an engineering school in this country.

With this in view, I gave up further night work for money, and set to work to utilize all my spare time to further improve my the- oretical knowledge of engineering subjects.

I also contemplated leaving Sellers and going somewhere else where I could get practical experience in other lines of engineering, so that when I finally presented myself as a candidate for a professorship I might be a strong one. My desire to become a professor came from

30 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

a natural tendency to instruct everybody less informed than myself, and at Sellers' I was constantly helping the younger men along, a fact much valued by the company.

Accordingly, when the hard times came on, and the company wanted to cut everybody 20 per cent, including a countryman of mine who had worked directly under me for two years, and who had de- veloped to a point where he was worth far more than he was getting, I protested that I thought the only fair thing to do would be first to raise everybody that would have received an increase of pay in normal times, before the proposed cuts were made. When this prop- osition was turned down, my sense of justice was so provoked that I made up my mind to leave the company as soon as my contract time, which ran from year to year, was up, if in the meanwhile I could find half a decent opportunity. . . .

The opportunity to leave came through a friend in St. Louis who got me an ofi^er to go with an engine building concern there, at $2,000 a year — a big come down, particularly as I had saved but little of the $3,000 I had been getting for the past three years — but as engine building was a new field for me, it was otherwise just what I wanted.

He was with the St. Louis company until the business was liquidated two years later. " While waiting for something more suitable to turn up," he designed some special machinery for the water commissioner of St. Louis. Three months later he joined the staff of the Liternational Correspondence Schools at Scranton, Pennsylvania. He remained there about a year and a half, and then it was that he went to the Ethical Culture School in New York to teach mathematics and manual training.

W^e imagine that until advancing years steadied and sobered him, he was likely to amuse people who, as regards character and intellect, stood in relation to him as pigmies to a giant. Few were able to look beneath the surface of his foreign speech and highly individual mannerisms j but one of these evidently was Stuart E. Freeman, who, then a foreman in

CARL G. BARTH

BARTH DEVISES HIS SLIDE RULE 31

a machine shop, had been one of his pupils when, back in 1889, he was conducting in Philadelphia his evening school of me- chanical drawing. " It was my loyal, departed friend Free- man," says Barth, " who first made me realize my possibilities, and rescued me from ^ hiding my light forever under a bushel,' as he used to put it." It was this Mr. Freeman who induced Barth to leave the Sellers plant and take a position with the St. Louis company, and it was he who in March, 1899, spoke to Taylor about Barth, and so led Taylor to write to Barth that month. Arranging at this time to take over the St. Louis sales office of the Bethlehem Steel Company, Free- man had seen Barth in New York a few days before, and had learned from him that he was not entirely satisfied with his position in the Ethical Culture School.

The upshot of the talk Barth had with Taylor was that in June, 1899, he became an employee of the Bethlehem Com- pany. It was agreed that he must begin at the beginning, and thus make himself thoroughly familiar with the Taylor method of testing tools and experimenting. So for about three months he worked under Merrick as a laborer in helping to run the experimental lathe.

Even as he worked at the lathe, he took in the general situation. It was perfectly clear to him why Taylor, blazing a trail of science through an industrial wilderness of rule-of- thumb methods, and daily meeting the dull glass-eye of failure to comprehend and the cold fish-eye of suspicion, had to be so imperious. But even as he saw the need of the im- periousness, he saw that it had some unfortunate results. Taylor had ordered his subordinates to make so many experi- ments a day. These must be made. And his subordinates, fearing to fall short of the required number, were making them. Men do not work at their best under the influence of fear, and Barth was sure that many of the experiments were incorrect or misleading. He knew that if he went to Taylor

32 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

with such a report he was likely to be classed as another of those " damned kickers." If, despite this, he did go, we are not to understand that it was courage that took him. What might pass for courage with him, he says, is simply his consti- tutional inability to sit quiet when he sees something being done wrong. And if his expectation as to the manner of his reception was fully realized, it was only the first of many clashes between these two men who were about equally posi- tive and intense.

Now, Gantt had plotted some experiments made to deter- mine the relations among depth of cut, feed, and speed, while all other variables were held constant. One day while he still was helping to run the experimental lathe Barth happened to see the plot on Gantt's desk, and was told by him that he had tried in vain for about six weeks to construct a mathe- matical formula to represent its curves. Unhesitatingly and abruptly, Barth declared: " I'll eat my hat if I can't work up an acceptable formula this evening and bring it in in the morning."

He did not have to eat his hat. The fact was, he says, that he at once recognized the curves drawn for the plot as " capable of being more or less closely expressible mathe- matically by a very simple equation." Now what was Taylor's emotion? To borrow a saying of the Russian peas- ants, he was as proud as a cock with five hens. He was as proud as if the achievement had been his own. Nothing now was too good for Barth. Immediately he was taken from the lathe, and placed in charge of all the experimental work as well as all the mathematical.

However, we must be careful, he says, not to think too highly of his achievement. All along mathematical problems had been his recreation. The more difiicult, the better. His training had been good in the old country, to begin with. In working out a theorem in geometry, for example, he had been

BARTH DEVISES HIS SLIDE RULE 33

taught to disregard the demonstration in the book until he had tried it himself. If, after honest efForts many times re- peated, he could not get started, he would consult the book for the start, and if he got stuck at any other point, he would use the book to help him on the journey to the demonstration. But always he would try to work it out without any help, and so had learned to use his own brains, to seek his own light. " Here in this country," he says, " boys study mathematics with their noses buried in the book, and it makes me sick."

When he was placed in charge of all the experimental and mathematical work, he was told he must study everything that had been done before. After spending about a week skimming through the accumulated data, he became convinced that an attempt to make himself thoroughly familiar with it would only be a hindrance to him, and over this he and his chief had a battle royal. To all of Taylor's insistence that he should make that study he opposed a sturdy no. What had been done before, said he, was simply a groping in the darkness. He refused to follow other people's darkness. He would seek his own light.

It has been brought out that, among them, Taylor, Gantt, and Knox had developed what Taylor called " an especially made slide rule accompanied by diagrams, by means of which a still more rapid solution of the feed and speed problem was obtained." As described by Barth, this instrument was "a combination of a crude or embryonic logarithmic slide rule and a set of tables incorporated on a common body. These tables, in conjunction with the scales of the slide rule portion of the instrument (which scales were not true logarithmic scales, but merely scales of equidistant graduation of which each mark denoted a 10 per cent higher value of the respective variables represented than the mark denoting the next lower value of a variable) embodied all the up-to-then experimen- tally obtained knowledge of the relations between depth of

34 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

cut, feed, speed and life of tool for a certain size and shape of tool . . . together with the several power combinations of the particular lathe for which a particular instrument was specially made up."^

At this time Barth " knew no more about logarithmic slide rules than the average engineer who uses an ordinary straight Mannheim slide rule or a Sexton omnimeter." He now made an " independent study " of the Mannheim and Sexton instru- ments, and this enabled him to construct " true logarithmic scales of any size, both straight and circular." The result was an " instrument that was a real logarithmic slide rule in cir- cular form, patterned after the Sexton omnimeter." By Gantt this instrument was facetiously dubbed " Earth's merry-go- round," and Taylor himself was doubtful whether it was an improvement on the Gantt-Knox instrument. Barth was sure it was, but had to admit that " it at best furnished only a somewhat quicker and, at times, more correct cut-and-try solu- tion." The criticisms to which it was subjected spurred him on to renewed efforts, and these " soon resulted in the con- struction of a straight slide rule that gave a direct and almost instantaneous solution of the problem."

On this " final rule the scales were so constructed and arranged relatively to each other that the proper feed and speed combination was at once revealed to the eye." Each of the previous instruments was " in reality two independent slide rules incorporated on a common body, the one dealing with the power of the machine, the other with the efficiency of the tool." The new instrument " so arranged these two rules relatively to each other as to form one single rule, with a power section and a tool section on either side of a common double-edged feed scale." ^

^ This and the statements quoted in the following paragraph are from Earth's Supplement to Frederick W. Taylor's " On the Art of Cutting Metals ; " Article I, Industrial Management, September, 19 19.

^ Mr. Barth holds that these things show that the slide rule he finally de-

BARTH DEVISES HIS SLIDE RULE 35

Here, then, was the " full and direct " solution for which Taylor so long had been seeking. It was the mathematical genius of Barth that finally worked it out. But while we pay tribute to this genius, let us not forget that all along the inspiration was furnished by Taylor's own intuition that such a solution could be found, even while the motive power all along was furnished by Taylor's indefatigable purpose that such a solution must be found.

A magic instrument, that slide rule. By it the most compli- cated mathematical problems are solved in a minute. An abolisher of guess work, opinions, arguments, debates. A determiner of the law! To be sure, you here again can split hairs, if you want to. You can say that, whereas pure or abstract mathematics are inherent in the mind, a mathematical formula can express a natural law only approximately j that is, within the variations of the field where the law is applied. But the best we can hope for, in the case of any law, is that the expression be as exact as need be in the light of practical requirements, and it is such an expression as this that is in- sured by that slide rule.^

It was early in December, 1899, less than six months after Barth went to Bethlehem, that his final slide rule was put into practical use in the machine shop. However, we must for the time being turn our attention from this shop to what Taylor did at Bethlehem in the way of systemizing the yard labor j and it will be seen that here again he was admirably served

vised was not simply an improvement on its predecessor, the Gantt-Knox instrument, but was different in principle. This his present slide rule, he says, " marks a quite natural but nevertheless decided and important advance in the art of slide rule construction in general, and which as such has no con- nection with the laws of cutting metals any more than with innumerable other involved problems that may be solved by slide rules of similar construction."

^ In his later years Taylor had immense difficulty in getting himself under- stood as to what he meant by law. Most people, apparently, could not get beyond the idea that law is something which you make and usually make to suit yourself. The conception of law as something which one discovers and copies to the best of one's ability must, it would seem, remain as caviare to the general.

36 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

by Earth's mathematical genius. Knowing that the systemiz- ing of the yard labor would involve no standardization of complicated surrounding conditions, he early took up this work in the hope that in a comparatively short time it would afford an object lesson to every one at Bethlehem of the value of scientific methods in general. Because of the unforeseeable and highly special difficulties he encountered, this hope was not realized 3 nevertheless, he ultimately achieved things of more than ordinary importance and interest.

CHAPTER IV

SYSTEMIZING SCHMIDT AND HIS FELLOWS

HERE is his own statement of what he found in the yard:

Up to the spring of 1899 all of the materials in the yard of the Bethlehem Steel Company had been handled by gangs of men working by the day, and under the foremanship of men who had themselves formerly worked at similar work as laborers. Their man- agement was about as good as the average of similar work, although it was bad; all of the men being paid the ruling wages of laborers in this section of the country, namely, $1.15 per day, the only means of encouraging or disciplining them being either talking to them or discharging them; occasionally, however, a man was selected from among these men and given a better class of work with slightly higher wages in some of the company's shops, and this had the effect of slightly stimulating them. From four to six hundred men were em- ployed in this class of work throughout the year.

The work of these men consisted mainly of unloading from rail- way cars and shoveling on to piles, and from these piles again load- ing as required, the raw materials used in running three blast furnaces and seven large open-hearth furnaces, such as ore of various kinds, varying from fine, gravelly ore to that which comes in large lumps, coke, limestone, special pig, sand, etc., unloading hard and soft coal for boilers, gas-producers, etc., and also for storage, and again loading the stored coal as required for use, loading the pig-iron produced at the furnaces for shipment, for storage, and for local use, and handling billets, etc., produced by the rolling mills. The work covered a large variety as laboring work goes, and it was not usual to keep a man continuously at the same class of work.

Before undertaking the management of these men, the writer was informed that they were steady workers, but slow and phlegmatic, and that nothing would induce them to work fast.'- ■'• Skop Management, p. 47 37

38 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

The first of this yard labor which Taylor picked out to systemize was that of the pig-iron handlers. There was a special call at this time at Bethlehem for the work of these men. Prices for pig iron had been so low that 80,000 tons of it had been stored in small piles in an open field adjoining the works. With the opening of the Spanish war, however, the price of pig iron rose, and this large accumulation was sold. In the gang of pig-iron handlers were about seventy-five men. " A railroad switch was run out into the field right along the edge of the piles of pig iron. An inclined plank was placed against the side of a car, and each man picked up from his pile a pig of iron weighing about 92 pounds, walked up the inclined plank and dropped it on the end of the car." ^

Later on, in his papers and over and over again in his in- formal talks at Boxly and on the platform throughout the country, Taylor used what he accomplished with these pig- iron handlers as an illustration of the value of scientific methods. It was the lowest and cheapest form of labor. The only thing in the nature of a tool used by these men was the pair of wide leather straps that protected their hands. A man reached down, picked up a pig, carried it up to the car, and there placed or dropped it. There was not even a throw. Nothing could be more elementary. Therefore Taylor con- sidered that if he could show that pig-iron handling could be reduced to a science to the mutual profit of man and man- agement, no one could doubt the applicability of the scientific method to any form of labor. This illustration, morever, was so simple as to be well within the comprehension of the mass. However, he used this illustration so often, and it excited such interest and discussion, that many persons apparently got the idea that pig-iron handling was about all there was to Scientific Management.

The chief credit for carrying out the systemizing of all

^ The Principles of Scientific Management, p. 42.

SYSTEMIZING SCHMIDT 39

this yard labor he gave to A. B. Wadleigh, a college-educated man who had had experience in managing worl^men. After Taylor had taught Wadleigh the art of taking time observa- tions with a stop watch, two other young college men, James Gillespie and H. C. Wolle, also were employed on this work.

It was easy, of course, to divide the work of the pig- iron handlers into its elements. These were (i) picking up the pig from the ground or pile, (2) walking with it on a level, (3) walking with it up an incline to the car, (4) drop- ping the pig or laying it on a pile, (5) walking back empty to get a load. The difficulty was that the elements represented by picking up the pig and dropping it were so small in time that it was impossible to obtain accurate readings of them on the watch. You may think this was an insignificant matter. Not so Taylor. That problem had to be solved, and Barth was put to work on it. What Barth discovered was that where work consists of recurring cycles of elementary operations, or where a series of these operations is repeated over and over again, it is possible to take sets of observations on two or more of the successive elementary operations which occur in regular order, and from the times thus obtained, calculate the time of each element j that is, determine by algebraic equations the value of each.

But Taylor soon was confronted by another and far more difficult problem in connection with the work of those pig- iron handlers. If in his day it hardly was possible to over- work a man in a machine shop, there was a very serious possibility of overworking laborers handling 92-pound pigs of iron. What percentage of their time would these men need for rest?

It will be remembered that when he was at Midvale, he set out to discover " some rule, or law, which would enable a foreman to know in advance how much of any kind of heavy laboring work a man who was well suited to his job ought to

40 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

do in a day," but that while his Midvale experiments "re- sulted in obtaining valuable information," he did not there succeed in developing a law. From a stenographic report of one of the informal, rapid-fire talks he gave at Boxly, we quote this:

Finally at Bethlehem we made a very elaborate series of experi- ments, and figured it out, and reduced it there to such absolutely certain information that every doubtful question was eliminated. Then we were able to say positively and without question that there is no relation between horse power or man power and a day's work. There is no traceable relation between foot pounds of energy as measured by steam energy, or horse power, or anything else. That is an extraordinary statement, but we proved that beyond a doubt.

By that time we had spent, I suppose, altogether pretty well on to a year's work for one man, trying to find out what was at the bottom of the art of labor, so as to be able to predict ahead on any kind of a job of labor what a day's work was. It is very important to do that when the task idea is up to you. It was necessary for us to do it. When I went to Bethlehem, after making the first failure there, we spent, I suppose, three months on that work there, and proved beyond a doubt that there was nothing in it. Then all my friends wanted me to give it up. Gantt, who was working with me, Gillespie, and three or four others wanted me to give that up, but I was sure that the thing was there, that there was some law.

Here, then, was another problem that was turned over to Barth after he had begun his slide-rule work, and again he and his chief had a little clash. To Barth it was amusing that anyone should have attempted to get a horse-power measure for work done in walking under load, since his study in thermo-dynamics long since had made him acquainted with the fact that " in walking on a level with a load, one does no * external ' work, but only the * internal ' work that shows up in heat." He did not attempt to conceal his amusement j furthermore, he doubted whether anything useful could come

SYSTEMIZING SCHMIDT 41

from attempting to develop a law in this connection, and his slide-rule work then was engaging him quite profitably. But his chief insisted, and he tells us it was a suggestion that Taylor made after he, Barth, had been at work on this problem for some time that started him in the direction that brought results. Taylor's formal description of what finally was developed by Barth follows:

The law is confined to that class of work in which the limit of a man's capacity is reached because he is tired out. It is the law of heavy laboring, corresponding to the work of the cart horse, rather than that of the trotter. Practically all such work consists of a heavy pull or push on the man's arms, that is, the man's strength is exerted by either lifting or pushing something which he grasps in his hands. And the law is that for each given pull or push on the man's arms it is possible for the workmen to be under load for only a definite percentage of the day. For example, when pig iron is being handled (each pig weighing 92 pounds), a first-class workman can only be under load 43 per cent, of the day. He must be entirely free from load during 57 per cent, of the day. And as the load be- comes lighter, the percentage of the day under which the man can remain under load increases. So that, if the workman is handling a half-pig, weighing 46 pounds, he can then be under load 58 per cent, of the day, and only has to rest during 42 per cent. As the weight grows lighter the man can remain under load during a larger and larger percentage of the day, until finally a load is reached which he can carry in his hands all day long without being tired out. When that point has been arrived at this law ceases to be useful as a guide to a laborer's endurance, and some other law must be found which indicates the man's capacity for work.

When a laborer is carrying a piece of pig iron weighing 92 pounds in his hands, it tires him about as much to stand still under the load as it does to walk with it, since his arm muscles are under the same severe tension whether he is moving or not. A man, however, who stands still under a load is exerting no horse-power whatever, and this accounts for the fact that no constant relation could be traced

42 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

in various kinds of heavy laboring work between the foot-pounds of energy exerted and the tiring effect of the work on the man. It will also be clear that in all work of this kind it is necessary for the arms of the workman to be completely free from load (that is, for the workman to rest at frequent intervals). Throughout the time that a man is under a heavy load the tissues of his arm muscles are in process of degeneration, and frequent periods of rest are required in order that the blood may have a chance to restore those tissues to their normal condition.^

Before Taylor undertook to systemize the work of those pig-iron handlers, they had been loading on the cars an aver- age of about twelve and a half tons per man per day. When he had prepared all his time-study data, including that yielded by the law of heavy laboring, he was astonished to find that a first-class pig-iron handler ought to load between forty-seven and forty-eight tons a day, or just about four times the quantity. " This task," he said, " seemed to us so very large that we were obliged to go over our work several times before we were absolutely sure that we were right."

Once sure he was right, he set for the work a piece rate that would enable the pig-iron handler, when he accomplished his task, to earn 60 per cent more than he had been receiving, or would raise his pay from $1.15 a day, which was the standard rate in that locality for work of that grade, to $1.85. In fixing upon this increase, Taylor was governed by what pre- vious experience had taught him was necessary to make a man contented to do his best at that heavy kind of work and still would not afford him such a sudden increase of prosperity as would incline him to work less steadily day in and day out.

His next step was the scientific selection of men for the task of handling forty-seven tons of pig iron a day. After the old gang of seventy-five men had been watched for

^ The Princ'tfUs of Scientific Mana^e7nent, p. 57.

SYSTEMIZING SCHMIDT 43

several days, four were picked out. And now we come to the famous Mr. Schmidt (not his real name, of course):

A careful study then was made of each of these four men. We looked up their history as far back as practicable and thorough in- quiries were made as to the character, habits, and the ambition of each of them. Finally we selected one from among the four as the most likely man to start with. He was a little Pennsylvania Dutchman who had been observed to trot back home for a mile or so after his work in the evening, about as fresh as when he came trotting down to work in the morning. We found that upon wages of $1.15 a day he had succeeded in buying a small plot of ground, and that he was engaged in putting up the walls of a little house for himself in the morning before starting to work and at night after leaving. He also had the reputation of being exceedingly " close," that is, of placing a very high value on a dollar. As one man whom we talked to about him said, " A penny looks about the size of a cart-wheel to him." This man we will call Schmidt.^

In Taylor's dialogue with Schmidt we see his ability to adapt his talk to the mentality of his man:

The task before us, then, narrowed itself down to getting Schmidt to handle 47 tons of pig iron per day and making him glad to do it. This was done as follows. Schmidt was called out from among the gang of pig-iron handlers and talked to somewhat this way:

" Schmidt, are you a high-priced man ? "

"Veil, I don't know vat you mean? "

" Oh yes, you do. What I want to know is whether you are a high-priced man or not."

" Veil, I don't know vat you mean."

" Oh, come now, you answer my questions. What I want to find out is whether you are a high-priced man or one of these cheap fellows here. What I want to find out is whether you want to earn $1.85 a day or whether you are satisfied with $1.15, just the same as all those cheap fellows are getting."

^ The Princifles of Scientific Management, beginning on p. 43.

44 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

"Did I vant $1.85 a day? Vas dot a high-priced man? Veil, yes, I vas a high-priced man."

" Oh, you're aggravating me. Of course you w^ant $1.85 a day — everyone vi'ants it. You know perfectly vv^ell that has very little to do vi^ith your being a high-priced man. For goodness' sake answer my question, and don't waste any more of my time. Now come over here. You see that pile of pig iron? "

" Yes."

" You see that car? "

" Yes."

" Well, if you are a high-priced man, you will load that pig iron on that car to-morrow for $1.85. Now do wake up and answer my question. Tell me whether you are a high-priced man or not."

"Veil — did I got $1.85 for loading dot pig iron on dot car to-morrow? "

" Yes, of course you do, and you get $1.85 for loading a pile like that every day right through the year. That is what a high-priced man does, and you know it just as well as I do."

" Veil, dot's all right. I could load dot pig iron on the car to- morrow for $1.85, and I get it every day, don't I? "

" Certainly you do — certainly you do."

" Veil, den, I vas a high-priced man."

" Now, hold on, hold on. You know just as well as I do that a high-priced man has to do exactly as he's told from morning till night. You have seen this man here before, haven't you? "

" No, I never saw him."

" Well, if you are a high-priced man, you will do exactly as this man tells you to-morrow, from morning till night. When he tells you to pick up a pig and walk, you pick it up and you walk, and when he tells you to sit down and rest you sit down. You do that right straight through the day. And what's more, no back talk. Do you understand that? When this man tells you to walk, you walk; when he tells you to sit down, you sit down, and you don't talk back at him. Now you come on to work here to-morrow morning and I'll know be- fore night whether you are really a high-priced man or not."

This seems to be rather rough talk. And indeed it would be if ap- plied to an educated mechanic, or even an intelligent laborer. With

SYSTEMIZING SCHMIDT 45

a man of the mentally sluggish type of Schmidt it is appropriate and not unkind, since it is eifective in fixing his attention on the high wages which he wants and away from what, if it were called to his attention, he probably would consider impossibly hard work.

If Schmidt had been permitted to attack the pile of forty- seven tons of pig iron without any guidance, he probably would have tired himself out before noon. He had to be taught the habit of resting at the intervals needed to restore the tissues of his arm muscles to their normal condition. This was the science of his work. How could he possibly have discovered this science for himself?

I assert, without the slightest hesitation [said Taylor], that the high-class mechanic has a far smaller chance of ever thoroughly un- derstanding the science of his work than the pig-iron handler has of understanding the science of his work, and I am going to try to prove to your satisfaction, gentlemen, that the law is almost universal — not entirely so, but nearly so — that the man who is fit to work at any particular trade is unable to understand the science of that trade with- out the kindly help and cooperation of men of a totally different type of education, men whose education is not necessarily higher but a different type from his own.^

After they got Schmidt started off on piece work, difficulty was experienced in getting other pig-iron handlers to follow him. The great majority could not believe that the rate would not be cut. For this Taylor was prepared, but he hardly was prepared either for the attempts to balk him made by men who were of the management of the works or for the opposition to his methods that sprang up among some of the leading citizens of Bethlehem. " One after another of the new men who were started singly on this job were either persuaded or intimidated into giving it up. In many cases they were given other work by those interested in preventing

^ Testimony before Special House Committee.

46 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

piece work, at wages higher than the ruling wages." ^ He was amazed when he discovered what was back of this opposi- tion.

I got into a big row with the owners of the company on that labor question. They did not wish me, as they said, to depopulate South Bethlehem. They owned all the houses in South Bethlehem and the company stores, and when they saw we were cutting the labor force down to about one-fourth, they did not want it. They came to me and said so frankly. " We don't want that done," they said.

I said: "You are going to have it, whether you want it or not, as long as I am here. You employed me with the distinct understanding that that is what I was going to do. You agreed to it, and got me here for that purpose. You had a unanimous vote. I would not come here if there was a single man that did not want what I was going to do."

" Well, we did not think you could do it."

I said: " I don't care what you thought. Your remedy is at hand. Tell me any night you want me to go, and I go to-morrow morning. On the other hand, Mr. President, just countermand one of my orders and I will go to-morrow morning, but while I am here I am going to do what I came to do, whether you like it or not. If you did not want that done, it was up to you to say so when I put it in writing. You agreed to it and said you wanted it. It is going to be done.^

This would appear to be a fair specimen of the many encounters that came to pass between Taylor and Linderm^an. It is undoubtedly true that Taylor not only became disgusted and impatient with Linderman as a financier pure and simple, but, restive as he always was under tactful methods, presently abandoned much attempt to conceal it. The devil-may-care attitude in which he indulged more and more at Bethlehem also added to the feeling against him. He had an appoint- ment one day with Linderman and other of the officials j not only did he arrive half an hour late, but, as if to add insult

^ Shop Management, p. 50. ^ Informal talk at Boxly.

SYSTEMIZING SCHMIDT 47

to injury, came in swinging a golf club and proceeded to talk golf. This is one side of itj the other is that as things de- veloped between him and Linderman, nothing he could have done would have saved him from the necessity of having to choose among these three courses: first, to sacrifice his prin- ciples to the exigencies of the situation; second, to quitj third, to go ahead in defiance of all opposition. Should he have chosen one of the first two courses? The simple fact is that if he had, he would not have been Fred Taylor,

There is a story, which at least has the merit of plausibility, that such of the directors as lived in Bethlehem assembled one day determined to heckle Taylor into resigning. Their heckling ceased abruptly when Taylor told them that he was fully aware of their purpose, but they might as well under- stand first as last that in order to get rid of him they would have to fire him — and what was more, they one and all could go to blue blazes. Those Bethlehemites surely were in an unfortunate position. Behind Taylor stood that powerful man, Joseph Wharton, who was not of Bethlehem and cared little or nothing about Bethlehem's local concerns. But this, it is to be presumed, was not all. There is some power in truth and right, and some notion those directors must have had that Taylor's whole course was marked by steadfast loy- alty to the highest interests of the company and partook of the downright honesty of the sunlight. At all events, his opponents must have felt that if they dismissed him or openly thwarted him, it would be hard for them to explain their action to Wharton satisfactorily.

It must be understood that while Taylor was systemizing the yard labor, there was no hold-up in the regular work. Even while Schmidt, for example, was handling forty-seven tons a day on piece work, the other pig-iron handlers con- tinued to work in the old way under their old foreman. Gradually the suspicions of the other men were overcome.

48 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

The spectacle of Schmidt, plainly not over-worked, and yet getting $1.85 day after day while they were getting only $1.15, was too much for them. Though the first men who attempted to follow Schmidt were weaned away, all opposi- tion ceased in about two months. It proved, however, that only about one man in eight in that gang of seventy-five was physically capable of handling forty-seven tons a day.

Now the one man in eight who was able to do this work [said Taylor] was in no sense superior to the other men who were working on the gang. He merely happened to be a man of the type of the ox, — no rare specimen of humanity, difficult to find and therefore very highly prized. On the contrary, he was a man so stupid that he was unfitted to do most kinds of laboring work, even. The selection of the man, then, does not involve finding some extraordinary indi- vidual, but merely picking out from among very ordinary men the few who are especially suited to this type of work.^

However, to make up his special force of pig-iron handlers, he had to get some men from outside the works. So he scattered broadcast the information that he was looking for high-frked men. His canny purpose, of course, was to fix the minds of those laborers on what they were going to get.

With the old idea of putting it up to the workman, you would go to a workman and say: "Now, John, you are a mighty strong fellow. Don't you think you can do 47 tons of pig iron a day? " John would immediately say: " Why, hell, I have only done twelve and a half. No man can do 47 tons." Then there would be an argument between you and John, and you would compromise on about twenty or eighteen.^

The fact that he found it necessary to take the mind of the laborer ofF the task and fix it on the reward was too

^ The Principles of Scientific Management, p. 61. 2 Boxly talk.

SYSTEMIZING SCHMIDT 49

esoteric for those small-town newspaper men to comprehend- However, it worked out to his advantage.

The newspapers, even in ridicuh'ng us, did us the greatest service. They made no end of fun of me because I came into that country looking for high-priced men. They beh'eved every man in Bethlehem was a high-priced man, that we would not have the slightest trouble getting men willing to accept $1.85 a day. All the newspapers roasted us, and gave us the best advertisement all over. That went around the country for a hundred miles. The result was that every fellow who thought he was specially big and strong, and heard about this pig-iron job, and then other jobs afterward, wanted to find out whether he was a high-priced man; not whether it was a big day's work, but whether he was a high-priced man or not.^

Under his methods, the cost of handling pig iron was just about cut in half. And he was under the impression that what he had done was a good thing for everybody.

With most readers [he wrote] great sympathy will be aroused be- cause seven out of eight of those pig-iron handlers were thrown out of a job. This sympathy is entirely wasted, because almost all of them were immediately given other jobs with the Bethlehem Steel Company. And indeed it should be understood that the removal of those men from pig-iron handling, for which they were unfit, was really a kindness to themselves, because it was the first step towards finding them work for which they were peculiarly fitted, and at which, after receiving proper training, they could permanently and legitimately earn higher wages. ^

However, when his paper The Principles was published in 191 1 in The American Magazine y what he said in it about Schmidt and his fellows elicited many letters of condemna- tion. Ladies wrote to the editor to express their horror at the brutal way that poor pig-iron handler had been handled. Socialists were furious at what, in the name of science, had

1 Ibid. - The Princifles of Scientific Management, p. 64.

50 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

been " put over on " Schmidt. Friends of labor declared their indignation that Taylor should speak of any workman as stupid and ox-like. One of the more temperate of the letters came from a young Socialist named Upton Sinclair. If we here print Mr. Sinclair's letter, it is simply because Taylor considered it wise to reply to it as fairly representative. Ad- dressing the editor of TJie American Magazine under date of February 24, 191 1, Mr. Sinclair said:

I have been reading with a great deal of interest the first installment of Mr. Frederick W. Taylor's account of " Scientific Management." He tells how workingmen were loading twelve and a half tons of pig iron and he induced them to load forty-seven tons instead. They had formerly been getting $1.15; he paid them $1.85. Thus it appears that he gave about 61% increase in wages, and got 362% increase in work. I shall not soon forget the picture which he gave us of the poor old laborer who was trying to build his pitiful little home after hours, and who was induced to give 362% more work for 6 1 % more pay. I wonder how Mr. Taylor and his colleagues arrive at the latter figure. He tells us just how by scientific figuring he learned that the man could lift 47 pounds of pig iron, but he does not tell us by what scientific figures he arrived at the conclusion that he should receive $1.85 for the work, instead of, let us say, $2.85. Can it by any chance be that he figured upon this basis? — The workingmen for the steel plant are at present producing $1,000 worth of value and getting $168.00; therefore, if we can induce them to produce 362% more, they would then receive 16.8% of the additional increase. I believe that those members of the working-class who read the American Magazine would be interested to know just what proportion they get of the value they produce under the old system, and what proportion they are to get under the new " scientific " system.

Also, I want to put a few more questions in elementary political economy to Mr. Taylor. He tells us we have no need to worry because seven men out of eight are turned out of their jobs by the new system, because there are plenty of jobs for them in other parts of the plant.

SYSTEMIZING SCHMIDT 51

Is that really so? And is it so everywhere? If so, then the phenom- enon of over-production is just a delusion of our captains of industry, and there is no real reason for panics. Our scientific managers w^ill increase the total product of the country's machinery 362%; they will have 362 times as many products to market — where will they find the markets for the additional products? When they have taught one-fourth of the workingmen to do the work of all the work- ingmen, is it their plan to organize the remaining three-fourths into armies, and send them out to conquer new foreign markets? Or will they find a new world for them to build up?

I, as you may perhaps know, am one of those Utopian persons who do not believe that the working class of America will ever consent to produce $1,000 worth of value and get $168.00 in return. I believe that the time will come when they will take possession of the instruments and means of production, in order that when they pro- duce $1,000 in value they may receive $1,000 in wages.

From this point Mr. Sinclair went on " to suggest to Mr. Taylor and his other experts " that they drop the work they were doing and devote all their energies to figuring out how "to produce a standard income of, say $5,000 a year for each family." He was sure that a book containing this informa- tion, if published at fifty cents, would have a large sale.

As Taylor's reply to this young man probably represents the most careful statement of his industrial philosophy he ever made, we give it in full:

Doubtless some of those who like Mr. Upton Sinclair are espe- cially interested in workingmen will complain because under scien- tific management the workman when he is shown how to do twice as much work as he formerly did is not paid twice his former wages, while others who are more interested in the dividends than the work- men, will complain that under this system the men receive much higher wages than they did before.

It does seem grossly unjust when the bare statement is made that the competent pig-iron handler, for instance, who has been so trained

52 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

that he piles 3.6 times as much iron as the incompetent man formerly did, should receive an increase of only 60% in his wages.

It is not fair, however, to form any final judgment until all of the elements in the case have been considered. Mr. Sinclair sees but one man — the workman; he refuses to see that the great increase in output under scientific management is the result not only of the workman's effort but quite as much also of the study of pig-iron hand- ling by the management and of the cooperation of teachers who help him and the organization which plans and measures his daily task, etc., and that all of this extra work on the part of the management as well as the proper profit of the latter, must be paid for out of the increase in output. At the first glance, most of us, in fact, will see only two parties to the transaction, the workmen and their employers. We overlook the third great party, the whole people, the consumers, who buy the product of the first two and who ultimately pay both the wages of the workmen and the profits of the employers.

The rights of the people are therefore greater than those of either employer or employee. And this third great party should be given its proper share of any gain. In fact, a glance at industrial history shows that in the end the whole people receive the greater part of the benefit coming from industrial improvements. In the past hundred years, for example, the greatest factor tending toward increasing the output and thereby the prosperity of the civilized world, has been the introduction of machinery to replace hand labor. And without doubt the greatest gain through this change has come to the whole people — the consumer.

Through short periods, especially in the case of patented apparatus, the dividends of those who have introduced new machinery have been greatly increased, and in most cases, though unfortunately not uni- versally, the employees have obtained materially higher wages, shorter hours and better working conditions. But in the end the major part of the gain has gone to the whole people.

And this result will follow the introduction of scientific manage- ment just as surely as it has the introduction of machinery.

To return to the case of the pig-iron handler. We must assume, then, that the larger part of the gain which has come from his great increase in output will in the end go to the people in the form of

SYSTEMIZING SCHMIDT 53

cheaper pig iron. And before deciding upon how the balance is to be divided between the workman and the employer — as to what is just and fair compensation for the man who does the piling and what should be left for the company as profit — we must look at the matter from all sides.

First: As we have before stated, the pig-iron handler is not an extraordinary man difficult to find; he is merely a man more or less of the type of the ox, heavy both mentally and physically.

Second: The work which this man does tires him no more than any healthy normal laborer is tired by a proper day's work. (If this man is overtired by his work, then the task has been wrongly set, and this is as far as possible from the object of scientific management.)

Third: It was not due to the man's initiative or originality that he did his big day's work, but to the knowledge of pig-iron handling developed and taught him by someone else.

Fourth: It is just and fair that men of the same general grade (when their all-around capacities are considered) should be paid about the same wages when they are all working to the best of their abilities. (It would be grossly unjust to other laborers, for instance, to pay this man 3.6 as high wages as other men of his general grade receive for an honest full day's work.)

Fifth: A long series of experiments, coupled with close observation, has demonstrated the fact that when workmen of the calibre of the pig-iron handler are given a carefully-measured task, which calls for a big day's work on their part, and that when in return for this extra efirort they are paid wages up to 60 per cent, beyond the wages usually paid, that this increase in wages tends to make them not only more thrifty but better men in every way; that they live rather better, begin to save money, become more sober, and work more steadily. When, on the other hand, they receive much more than a 60 per cent, increase in wages, many of them will work irregularly and tend to become more or less shiftless, extravagant and dissipated. Our experiments showed, in other words, that for their own best interest it does not do for most men to get rich too fast.

Thus we see th?t the pig-iron handler with his 60 per cent, increase

54 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

in wages is not an object for pity but rather a subject for congratu- lation.

After all, however, facts are in many cases more convincing than opinion or theories, and it is a significant fact that those workmen who have come under this system during the past thirty years have inva- riably been satisfied with their increase in pay while their employers have been equally pleased with their increase in dividends.

The writer is one of those who believe that more and more will the third party (the whole people), as it becomes acquainted with the true facts, insist that justice shall be done to all three parties. First, it will demand the largest efl!iciency from both employers and employees. It will no longer tolerate the type of employer who has his eye on divi- dends alone, who refuses to do his full share of the work and who merely cracks his whip over the heads of his workmen and attempts to drive them into harder work for low pay. No more will it tolerate tyranny on the part of labor which demands one increase after another in pay and shorter hours, while at the same time it becomes less in- stead of more efficient.

And the means which the writer firmly believes will be adopted to bring about, first, efficiency both in employer and employee and then an equitable division of the profits of their joint eflForts, will be sci- entific management, which has for its sole aim the attainment of justice for all three parties through impartial scientific investigation of all the elements of the problem. For a time both sides will rebel against this advance. The workers will resent any interference with their old rule of thumb methods, and the management will resent being asked to take on new duties and burdens; but in the end the people through enlightened public opinion will force the new order of things upon both employer and employee.

Those who, like Mr. Sinclair, are afraid that a large increase in the productivity of each workman will throw the men out of work, should realize that the one element more than any other which dif- ferentiates civilized from uncivilized countries — prosperous from poverty-stricken peoples — is that the average man in the one is five or six times as productive as in the other. It is also a fact tha^t the chief cause for the large percentage of the unemployed in England (perhaps the most virile nation in the world) is that the workmen of

SYSTEMIZING SCHMIDT 5$

England, more than in any other civilized country, are deliberately restricting their output because they are possessed by the fallacy that it is against their best interest for each man to work as hard as he can.

Later on in 191 1 a report was circulated by opponents of Scientific Management that Schmidt had naturally succumbed to the task laid upon him by Fred Taylor — that Schmidt, in fact, was quite dead. From his home in Chestnut Hill Taylor made a special trip to Bethlehem, and there saw one of the officials of the steel works who, being friendly to him personally, promised to look up Schmidt. A few day later this official wrote: "Our records show that he [Schmidt] left our employ in June, 1908, since which time we have lost track of him, although I understand that he is still living and is somewhere in this vicinity." This was all the information that anyone connected with the company would vouchsafe, since as this official wrote, it was the company's policy " to avoid any controversy."

Again in 19 13, in connection with the legislation in Con- gress designed to frustrate General Crozier's attempt to in- troduce Scientific Management into the Ordnance Department, the report was current among labor politicians that Schmidt had been killed by his task of handling forty-seven tons of pig iron a day. Now was Taylor determined to lay the serio- comic ghost of Schmidt forever, and this time he succeeded. Through the inspector of the Ordnance Department stationed at the Bethlehem works, Schmidt was found in that town, and in January, 19 14, A. B. Wadleigh was commissioned by Taylor to employ a physician and report on Schmidt. All we need say about the report is that in it the physician, Dr. C. L. Johnstonbaugh, of Bethlehem, certified as follows: " I find him [Schmidt] to be forty-four years old and is now

employed by handling graphite. Works from ten

to twelve hours per day and is in good physical condition."

CHAPTER V

A TALE OF SHOVELING

IT makes three thick volumes, the testimony that was taken in 1 9 1 1 and 1 9 1 2 by that Special Committee of the House of Representatives which was formed to investigate " the Taylor and other systems of shop management." For- midable-looking tomes. Terribly suggestive of dry-as-dust, documentary officialdom. Who would imagine that buried in them was anything in the way of real literature, much less anything in the nature of poetry?

When in 191 2 Taylor testified before this committee, he had come to realize the need of dropping the illustration of the pig-iron handlers. So, as a substitute illustration, he described his work with the shovelers in the Bethlehem yard. What he said in this connection we shall print in full. No better example could be given of the sweep and surge of a Fred Taylor talk. Shoveling coal, ore, and sand in the yards of a steel works — what could be more dreary? Yet it was this, we think, that led to the creation of a piece of real litera- ture. Certainly it would seem as if an expert in that sort of thing could take these words of Taylor's and readily make them into vers litres. At all events, here they arej and let it be understood that the tempo generally is presto and fre- quently prestissimo:

I dare say most of you gentlemen are familiar with pig-iron hand- ling and with the illustration I have used in connection with it, so I won't take up any of your time with that. But I want to show you how these principles may be applied to some one of the lower classes of work. You may think I am a little highfalutin when I speak

S6

A TALE OF SHOVELING 57

about what may be called the atmosphere of scientific management, the relations that should exist between both sides, the intimate and friendly relations that should exist between employee and employer. I want, however, to emphasize this as one of the most important features of scientific management, and I can hardly do so without go- ing into detail, without explaining minutely the duties of both sides, and for this reason I want to take some of your time in explaining the application of these four principles of scientific management to one of the cheaper kinds of work, for instance, to shoveling. This is one of the simplest kinds of work, and I want to give you an illustration of the application of these principles to it.

Now, gentlemen, shoveling is a great science compared with pig- iron handling. I dare say that most of you gentlemen know that a good many pig-iron handlers can never learn to shovel right; the ordi- nary pig-iron handler is not the type of man well suited to shoveling. He is too stupid; there is too much mental strain, too much knack re- quired of a shoveler for the pig-iron handler to take kindly to shoveling.

You gentlemen may laugh, but that is true, all right; it sounds ridic- ulous, I know, but it is a fact. Now, if the problem were put up to any of you men to develop the science of shoveling as it was put up to us — that is, to a group of men who had deliberately set out to develop the science of doing all kinds of laboring work — where do you think you would begin? When you started to study the science of shoveling I make the assertion that you would be within two days — just as we were within two days — well on the way toward the development of the science of shoveling. At least you would have outlined in your minds those elements which required careful, scientific study in order to understand the science of shoveling. I do not want to go into all the details, but I will give you some of the elements, one or two of the most important elements of the science of shoveling; that is, the elements that reach further and have more serious consequences than any other. Probably the most important element in the science of shoveling is this: There must be some shovel load at which a first- class shoveler will do his biggest day's work. What is the load? To illustrate: When we went to the Bethlehem Steel Works and observed the shovelers in the yard of that company, we found that each of the good shovelers in that yard owned his own shovel; they preferred to

58 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

buy their own shovels rather than to have the company furnish them. There vi^as a larger tonnage of ore shoveled in that vs^orks than of any other material, and rice coal came next in tonnage. We vi^ould see a first-class shoveler go from shoveling rice coal with a load of 3"^ pounds to the shovel to handling ore from the Messaba Range, with 38 pounds to the shovel. Now, is 2 2 pounds the proper shovel load or is 38 pounds the proper shovel load? They cannot both be right. Under scientific management the answer to this question is not a matter of anyone's opinion; it is a question for accurate, careful, scientific investigation.

Under the old system you would call in a first-rate shoveler and say, " See here, Pat, how much ought you to take on at one shovel load? " And if a couple of fellows agreed, you would say that's about the right load and let it go at that. But under scientific management absolutely every element in the work of every man in your establish- ment, sooner or later, becomes the subject of exact, precise, scientific investigation and knowledge to replace the old " I believe so," and " I guess so." Every motion, every small fact becomes the subject of careful, scientific investigation.

What we did was to call in a number of men to pick from, and from these we selected two first-class shovelers. Gentlemen, the words I used were " first-class shovelers." I want to emphasize that. Not poor shovelers. Not men unsuited to their work, but first-class shovelers. These men were then talked to in about this way: "See here, Pat and Mike, you fellows understand your job all right; both of you fellows are first-class men; you know what we think of you; you are all right now; but we want to pay you fellows double wages. We are going to ask you both to do a lot of damn fool things, and when you are doing them there is going to be some one out alongside of you all the time, a young chap with a piece of paper and a stop watch and pencil, and all day long he will tell you to do these fool things, and he will be writing down what you are doing and snapping the watch on you and all that sort of business. Now, we just want to know whether you fellows want to go into that bargain or not? If you want double wages while that is going on, all right, we will pay you double; if you don't, all right, you needn't take the job unless you want to; we just called you in to see whether you want to work this way or not.

A TALE OF SHOVELING 59

" Let me tell you fellows just one thing: if you go into this bargain, if you go at it, just remember that on your side we want no monkey business of any kind; you fellows will have to play square; you fel- lows will have to do just what you are supposed to be doing: not a damn bit of soldiering on your part; you must do a fair day's work; we don't want any rushing, only a fair day's work and you know what that is as well as we do. Now, don't take this job unless you agree to these conditions, because if you start to try to fool this same young chap with the pencil and paper he will be on to you in 15' minutes from the time you try to fool him, and just as surely as he reports you fellows as soldiering you will go out of this works and you will never get in again. Now, don't take this job unless you want to accept these conditions; you need not do it unless you want to; but if you do, play fair."

Well, these fellows agreed to it, and, as I have found almost uni- versally to be the case, they kept their word absolutely and faithfully. My experience with workmen has been that their word is just as good as the word of any other set of men that I know of, and all you have to do is to have a clear, straight, square understanding with them and you will get just as straight and fair a deal from them as from any other set of men. In this way the shoveling experiment was started. My remembrance is that we first started them on work that was very heavy, work requiring a very heavy shovel load. What we did was to give them certain kinds of heavy material — ore, I think, — to handle with a certain size of shovel. We sent these two men into different parts of the yard, with two different men to time and study them, both sets of men being engaged on the same class of work. We made all the conditions the same for both pairs of men, so as to be sure that there was no error in judgment on the part of either of the observers and that they were normal, first-class men.

The number of shovel loads which each man handled in the course of the day was counted and written down. At the end of the day the total tonnage of the material handled by each man was weighed and this weight was divided by the number of shovel loads handled, and in that way, my remembrance is, our first experiment showed that the average shovel load handled was 38 pounds, and that with this load on the shovel the man handled, say about 25 tons per day. We

6o FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

then cut the shovel off, making it somewhat shorter, so that instead of shoveling a load of 38 pounds it held a load of approximately 34 pounds. The average, then, with the 34 pound load, of each man went up, and instead of handling 25 he had handled 30 tons per day. These figures are merely relative, used to illustrate the general prin- ciple, and I do not mean that they were the exact figures. The shovel was again cut off, and the load made approximately 30 pounds, and again the tonnage ran up, and again the shovel load was reduced, and the tonnage handled per day increased, until at about 21 or 22 pounds per shovel we found that these men were doing their largest day's work. If you cut the shovel load off still imore, say until it averages 18 pounds instead of 21^, the tonnage handled per day will begin to fall off, and at 16 pounds it will be still lower, and so on right down. Very well; we now have developed the scientific fact that a workman well suited to his job, what we call a first-class shoveler, will do his largest day's work when he has a shovel load of 21^ pounds.

Now, what does that fact amount to? At first it may not look to be a fact of much importance, but let us see what it amounted to right there in the yard of the Bethlehem Steel Co. Under the old system, as I have said before, the workmen owned their shovels, and the shovel was the same size whatever the kind of work. Now, as a matter of common sense, we saw at once that it was necessary to furnish each workman each day with a shovel which would hold just 21^ pounds of the particular material which he was called upon to shovel. A small shovel for the heavy material, such as ore, and a large scoop for light material, such as ashes. That meant, also, the building of a large shovel room, where all kinds of laborers' imple- ments were stored. It meant having an ample supply of each type of shovel, so that all the men who might be called upon to use a cer- tain type in any one day could be supplied with a shovel of the size desired that would hold just 2i-| pounds. It meant, further, that each day each laborer should be given a particular kind of work to which he was suited, and that he must be provided with a particular shovel suited to that kind of work, whereas in the past all the laborers in the yard of the Bethelehem Steel Co. had been handled in masses, or in great groups of men, by the old-fashioned foreman, who had from 25 to 100 men under him and walked them from one part of the yard

A TALE OF SHOVELING 6i

to another. You must realize that the yard of the Bethlehem Steel Co. at that time was a very large yard. I should say that it was at least i^ or 2 miles long and, we will say, a quarter to a half mile wide, so it was a good large yard; and in that yard at all times an immense variety of shoveling was going on.

There was comparatively little standard shoveling which went on uniformly from day to day. Each man was likely to be moved from place to place about the yard several times in the course of the day. All of this involved keeping in the shovel room lo or 15 kinds of shovels, ranging from a very small flat shovel for handling ore up to immense scoops for handling rice coal, and forks with which to handle coke, which, as you know, is very light. It meant the study and development of the implement best suited to each type of material to be shoveled, and assigning, with the minimum of trouble, the proper shovel to each one of the four to six hundred laborers at work in that yard. Now, that meant mechanism, human mechanism. It meant organizing and planning work at least a day in advance. And, gentle- men, here is an important fact, that the greatest difficulty which we met with in this planning did not come from the workmen. It came from the management's side. Our greatest difficulty was to get the heads of the various departments each day to inform the men in the labor office what kind of work and how much of it was to be done on the following day.

This planning the work one day ahead involved the building of a labor office where before there was no such thing. It also involved the equipping of that office with large maps showing the layout of the yards so that the movements of the men from one part of the yard to another could be laid out in advance, so that we could assign to this little spot in the yard a certain number of men and to another part of the yard another set of men, each group to do a certain kind of work. It was practically like playing a game of chess in which the four to six hundred men were moved about so as to be in the right place at the right time. And all this, gentlemen, follows from the one idea of developing the science of shoveling; the idea that you must give each workman each day a job to which he is well suited and provide him with just that implement which will enable him to do his biggest day's work. All this, as I have tried to make clear to

62 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

you, is the result that followed from the one act of developing the science of shoveling.

In order that our workmen should get their share of the good that came from the development of the science of shoveling and that we should do what we set out to do with our laborers — namely, pay them 60 per cent higher wages than were paid to any similar work- men around that whole district. Before we could pay them these extra high wages it was necessary for us to be sure that we had first- class men and that each laborer was well suited to his job, because the only way in which you can pay wages 60 per cent higher than other people pay and not overwork your men is by having each man properly suited and well trained to his job. Therefore, it became necessary to carefully select these yard laborers; and in order that the men should join with us heartily and help us in their selection it became necessary for us to make it possible for each man to know each morning as he came in to work that on the previous day he had earned his 60 per cent premium, or that he had failed to do so. So here again comes in a lot of work to be done by the management that had not been done before. The first thing each workman did when he came into the yard in the morning — and I may say that a good many of them could not read and write — was to take two pieces of paper out of his pigeonhole; if they were both white slips of paper, the workman knew he was all right. One of those slips of paper informed the man in charge of the tool room what imple- ment the workman was to use on his first job and also in what part of the yard he was to work. It was in this way that each one of the 600 men in that yard received his orders for the kind of work he was to do and the implement with which he was to do it, and he was also sent right to the part of the yard where he was to work, without any delay whatever. The old-fashioned way was for the workmen to wait until the foreman got good and ready and had found out by asking some of the heads of departments what work he was to do, and then he would lead the gang off to some part of the yard and go to work. Under the new method each man gets his orders almost automatically; he goes right to the tool room, gets the proper implement for the work he is to do, and goes right to the spot where he is to work with- out any delay.

A TALE OF SHOVELING 63

The second piece of paper, if it was a white piece of paper, showed this man that he had earned his 60 per cent higher wages; if it was a yellow piece of paper the workman knew that he had not earned enough to be a first-class man, and that within two or three days some- thing would happen and he was absolutely certain what this something would be. Every one of them knew that after he had received three or four yellow slips a teacher would be sent down to him from the labor office. Now, gentlemen, this teacher was no college professor. He was a teacher of shoveling; he understood the science of shoveling; he was a good shoveler himself, and he knew how to teach other men to be good shovelers. This is the sort of man who was sent out of the labor office. I want to emphasize the following point, gentlemen: The workman, instead of hating the teacher who came to him — in- stead of looking askance at him and saying to himself, " Here comes one of those damn nigger drivers to drive me to work " — looked upon him as one of the best friends he had around there. He knew that he came out there to help him, not to nigger drive him. Now, let me show you what happens. The teacher comes, in every case, not to bulldoze the man, not to drive him to harder work than he can do, but to try in a friendly, brotherly way to help him, so he says, " Now, Pat, something has gone wrong with you. You know no workman who is not a high-priced workman can stay on this gang, and you will have to get off of it if we can't find out what is the matter with you. I believe you have forgotten how to shovel right. I think that's all there is the matter with you. Go ahead and let me watch you a while. I want to see if you know how to do the damn thing, anyway."

Now, gentlemen, I know you will laugh when I talk again about the science of shoveling. I dare say some of you have done some shoveling. Whether you have or not, I am going to try to show you something about the science of shoveling, and if any of you have done much shoveling you will understand that there is a good deal of sci- ence about it.

There is a good deal of refractory stuff to shovel around a steel works; take ore, or ordinary bituminous coal, for instance. It takes a good deal of effort to force the shovel down into either of these materials from the top of the pile, as you have to when you are un-

64 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

loading a car. There is one right way of forcing the shovel into materials of this sort, and many wrong ways. Now, the way to shovel refractory stuff is to press the forearm hard against the upper part of the right leg just below the thigh, like this [indicating], take the end of the shovel in your right hand and when you push the shovel into the pile, instead of using the muscular effort of the arms, which is tiresome, throw the weight of your body on the shovel like this [indicating] ; that pushes your shovel in the pile with hardly any ex- ertion and without tiring the arms in the least. Nine out of ten workmen who try to push a shovel in a pile of that sort will use the strength of their arms, which involves more than twice the necessary exertion. Any of you men who don't know this fact just try it. This is one illustration of what I mean when I speak of the science of shov- eling, and there are many similar elements of this science. Now, this teacher would find, time and time again, that the shoveler had simply forgotten how to shovel; that he had drifted back into his old wrong and inefficient way of shoveling, which prevented him from earning his 60 per cent higher wages. So he would say to him, " I see all that is the matter with you is that you have just forgotten how to shovel; you have forgotten what I showed you about shoveling some time ago. Now, watch me," he says, " this is the way to do the thing." And the teacher will stay by him two, three, four, or five days, if necessary, until he got the man back again into the habit of shoveling right.

Now, gentlemen, I want you to see clearly that, because that is one of the characteristic features of scientific management; this is not nigger driving; this is kindness; this is teaching; this is doing what I would like mighty well to have done to me if I were a boy trying to learn how to do something. This is not a case of cracking a whip over a man and saying, " Damn you, get there." The old way of treating with workmen, on the other hand, even with a good foreman, would have been something like this: " See here, Pat, I have sent for you to come up here to the office to see me; four or five times now you have not earned your 60 per cent increase in wages; you know every workman in this place has got to earn 60 per cent more wages than they pay in any other place around here, but you're no good and that's all there is to it; now get out of this." That's the old way. " You are no good; we have given you a fair chance; get out of this,"

A TALE OF SHOVELING 6s

and the workman is pretty lucky if it isn't " get to hell out of this," instead of " get out of this."

The new way is to teach and help your men as you would a brother; to try to teach him the best way and show him the easiest way to do his work. This is the new mental attitude of the management toward the men, and that is the reason I have taken so much of your time in describing this cheap work of shoveling. It may seem to you a matter of very little consequence, but I want you to see, if I can, that this new mental attitude is the very essence of scientific management; that the mechanism is nothing if you have not got the right sentiment, the right attitude in the minds of the men, both on the management's side and on the workman's side. Because this helps to explain the fact that until this summer there has never been a strike under scientific manage- ment.

The men who developed the science of shoveling spent, I should say, four or five months studying the subject, and during that time they in- vestigated not only the best and most efficient movements that the men should make when they are shoveling right, but they also studied the proper time for doing each of the elements of the science of shoveling. There are many other elements which go to make up this science, but I will not take up your time in describing them.

Now, all of this costs money. To pay the salaries of men who are studying the science of shoveling is an expensive thing. As I remem- ber it there were two college men who studied this science of shoveling and also the science of doing many other kinds of laboring work dur- ing a period of about three years; then there were a lot of men in the labor office whose wages had to be paid, men who were planning the work which each laborer was to do at least a day in advance; clerks who worked all night so that each workman might know the next morning when he went to work just what he had accomplished and what he had earned the day before; men who wrote out the proper instructions for the day's work for each workman. All of this costs money; it costs money to measure or weigh up the materials handled by each man each day. Under the old methods the work of 50 to 60 men was weighed up together; the work done by the whole gang was measured together. But under scientific management we are deal- ing with individual men and not with gangs of men. And in order

66 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

to study and develop each man you must measure accurately each man's work. At first we were told that this would be impossible. The former managers of this work told me: "You cannot possibly measure up the work of each individual laborer in this yard; you might be able to do it in a small yard, but our work is of such an intricate nature that it is impossible to do it here."

I want to say that we had almost no trouble in finding some cheap way of measuring up each man's work, not only in that yard but throughout the entire plant.

But all of that costs money, and it is a very proper question to ask whether it pays or whether it doesn't pay, because, let me tell you, gentlemen, at once, and I want to be emphatic about it, scientific man- agement has nothing in it that is philanthropic; I am not objecting to philanthropy, but any scheme of management which has philanthropy as one of its elements ought to fail; philanthropy has no part in any scheme of management. No self-respecting workman wants to be given things, every man wants to earn things, and scientific manage- ment is no scheme for giving people something they do not earn. So, if the principles of scientific management do not pay, then this is a miserable system. The final test of any system is, does it pay?

At the end of some three and a half years we had the opportunity of proving whether or not scientific management did pay in its ap- plication to yard labor. When we went to the Bethlehem Steel Co. we found from 400 to 600 men at work in that yard, and when we got through 140 men were doing the work of the 400 to 600, and these men handled several million tons of material a year.

We were very fortunate to be able to get accurate statistics as to the cost of handling a ton of materials in that yard under the old system and under the new. Under the old system the cost of handling a ton of materials had been running between 7 and 8 cents, and all you gentlemen familiar with railroad work know that this a low figure for handling materials. Now, after paying for all the clerical work which was necessary under the new system for the time study and the teachers, for building and running the labor office and the im- plement room, for constructing a telephone system for moving men about the yard, for a great variety of duties not performed under the old system, after paying for all these things incident to the develop-

A TALE OF SHOVELING 67

ment of the science of shoveling and managing the men the new way, and including the wages of the workmen, the cost of handling a ton was brought down from between 7 and 8 cents to between 3 and 4 cents, and the actual saving, during the last six months of the three and one-half years I was there, was at the rate of $78,000 a year. That is what the Company got out of itj while the men who were on the labor gang received an average of sixty per cent more wages than their brothers got or could get anywhere around that part of the coun- try. And none of them were overworked, for it is not a part of scientific management ever to overwork any man; certainly over- working these men could not have been done with the knowledge of anyone connected with scientific management, because one of the first requirements of scientific management is that no man shall ever be given a job which he cannot do and thrive under through a long term of years. It is no part of scientific management to drive anyone. At the end of three years we had men talk to and investigate all of these yard laborers and we found that they were almost universally satisfied with their jobs.

Of course certain men are permanent grouches and when we run across that kind we all know what to expect. But, in the main, they were the most satisfied and contented set of laborers I have ever seen anywhere; they lived better than they did before, and most of them were saving a little money; their families lived better, and as to having any grouch against their employers, those fellows, every one, looked upon them as the best friends they ever had, because they taught them how to earn 60 per cent more wages than they had ever earned before. This is the round up of both sides of this question. If the use of the system does not make both sides happier, then it is no good.

CHAPTER VI

TAYLOR AND HIS ASSISTANTS

IT was not easy for Frederick Taylor to follow the example of William Sellers and keep his mind open to criticism. He was sensitive to criticism, and when the conclusions he had arrived at after much labor were challenged, he was likely to give way to irritation. While carefully avoiding other people's ruts, he could fall into ruts of his own. With his positiveness and his force, his self-confidence and his care- less disregard of what people might think, he always was in danger of becoming headstrong and domineering. Certainly others were likely to find his influence overpowering.

For his own sake as well as their own, it behooves the asso- ciates of such a man to arouse themselves and oifer him all proper and seasonable resistance. And what made it possible for eminently independent and combative citizens like Barth and Gantt to get along with Taylor was that when this was done in his case, he never failed to conquer himself, to act reciprocally, to play the game. It might require some heroic fighting to make him see he was wrong j but when he did see it, his acknowledgment was free, open, humble, and hand- some. Prove to him that your way was better, and he could not do enough for you. So struck were you by the victories he gained over his self-will that you could not help but love him. He was an uncommon man, not because he did not have impulses common to all men, but because of the way he got the better of them.

Incidentally it may be said that, for his part, he had some- thing to put up with in two such assistants as Barth and

68

TAYLOR AND HIS ASSISTANTS 69

Gantt. If, when he thought his chief was wrong, Barth usually took no particular pains to break the news to him tactfully, but just up and out with it, he thereby may have paid his chief a compliment, but it was one not always easy to appreciate. And it would be a great mistake to think that because Gantt was a good manager, he was not a good fighter. Maryland, where he came from, raises not only oysters and celery-fed ducks but hotspurs. Taylor's two principal assist- ants clashed with each other as well as with him. 'Tis said that whenever Barth and Gantt became juxtapositional in space, the air was likely to spit sparks. Years after their association in Bethlehem, Barth used to enliven engineering meetings by hurling at his old confrere the challenge, " The trouble with you, Gantt, is that you left Mr. Taylor too damn soon."

There was that in Taylor, of course, which enabled him to get a lot of joy out of these combats. However irritated he might be for the moment, he ultimately was refreshed when men stood on their manhood and went back at him. So long as clashes between or among men were open and above board, so long as they were entirely free from malice and pertained merely to the healthy self-assertion of high-spirited men, they undoubtedly appealed to Taylor's love of sport and of mis- chief as well as to his democratic instincts.

There came a time at Bethlehem when Taylor was prepar- ing to take a short trip to Europe. Wadleigh, who was in charge of the yard labor, wanted him to approve some piece rates which had been worked out for this labor j it being gen- erally felt among Taylor's assistants that the rates should be put into effect at once to allay the dissatisfaction felt in high quarters because of the large expense connected with the systemizing of this labor. Taylor, however, then had no time to go over the rates, and said the whole thing could wait upon his return. In all likelihood his idea was that if those

70 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

high up did not like it, they could lump itj he now (in 1900) having became thoroughly disgusted with their attitude. Davenport then appealed to him in vain, and finally the matter was put up to Barth as one who, previously having battled with Taylor to some purpose, might be expected to bring him around again. Realizing that unless a showing were made with the yard labor, all that had been done in this connection might be thrown out, and satisfying himself that the rates were approximately correct, Barth moved in force upon the recalcitrant one. The lions clinched and rolled each other over in the dustj and then, all other measures failing, Barth resolved to give his chief some of his own medicine. It was Taylor's habit, in dealing with the people over him, to threaten to withdraw when the things he wanted done were not done. So now Barth up and said: " Mr. Taylor, unless you approve these rates before you go away, you are not likely to find me here when you get back." That brought the desired action j Taylor approved the rates on Barth's say soj and afterwards he said: " Barth is the kind of a fellow who will not take no for an answer," thereby paying him a compliment that in Taylor philosophy was of the highest.

Doses of his own medicine, even stifFer than the foregoing, Taylor took from Barth.

One day Captain Ruggles, an army officer stationed as an inspector at Bethlehem, brought in to see Taylor a Colonel Wheeler who was traveling that way. Colonel Wheeler, like Captain Ruggles and Mr. Taylor, was a golf "fiend," and all three stood talking golf. In the meantime Barth, having something of importance to bring to Taylor's attention, was restlessly cruising about in the offing, as the saying is. Others having business with Taylor came along and stood in linej and when Colonel Wheeler departed and Captain Ruggles and Mr. Taylor went right on with their " fanning bee,"

TAYLOR AND HIS ASSISTANTS 71

Barth could stand it no longer. Approaching those two, he let fall this bomb:

" Goddam your golf talk! I am here for business, and I want attention! "

An officer of discretion as well as of valor. Captain Ruggles quietly removed himself from the scene. But Taylor said not a word. With teeth on lip, he took his seat at his desk, while Barth drew up a chair alongside.

Barth now began to feel that he had been a little too rude. " I am sorry I spoke as I did," he started to say; but Taylor reached around and placed a hand on his shoulder. " It's all right, Barth," he saidj "there are times when it is a sub- ordinate's duty to call his superior's attention to his duty, and that is all you did."

The musketeer-like nature of Earth's opening remark needs a word of explanation. It came to be charged by Taylor's opponents that he told Barth at Bethlehem that he did not " cuss out " the men enough. The fact is that Taylor did tell Barth that he did not swear enough to be successful in a steel works, but the remark had nothing at all to do with Barth's relations with any workmen; it had reference solely to Barth's ability to get action from foremen and department chiefs.

When Taylor offered his criticism, Barth replied mildly: " I used to be able to swear pretty well; but, you see, I had to break myself of the habit when I was teaching at the Ethical Culture School."

" Well," said Taylor, grimly, " an Ethical Culture school doubtless is a good place to stop swearing in, but you couldn't find a better place to begin again than here at Bethlehem."

There was one particular in connection with which Taylor could not be budged by any man high or low, and this had to do with his rule of quitting work at 4 o'clock. No matter how important your business was with him, if it was a minute

72 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

past four, that business must waitj and all of the swearing that troopers ever did in Flanders would not now help you one iota.

In his Boxly talk, Taylor told how he and Gantt had it out when it came time to set those tasks for the handling of rice coal. It had been determined, as we have seen, that the best shovel was one that would hold a load of 21^ pounds. But Gantt, who proved up all these tasks, endorsed a report calling for a shovel that would hold 14^ pounds.

This sheet [said Taylor] came in for fixing a day's work for hand- h'ng rice coal, signed by Gantt. Gantt is a very hot-tempered fellow. I endorsed under his name: " Don't bring any more damn fool reports to me." I knew that would fetch its result.

He came back to my desk about three or four days afterward and sat opposite me. He said: " I came about that damn fool report."

I said: " Gantt, I suppose you know why I wrote that on your report."

"You mean that I fixed a 14^ pound shovel."

" That is it."

He said: " I want you to know that the damn fool is sitting on the other side of the desk."

" Why? "

" Perhaps you don't know you can't buy a shovel, that there is no shovel catalogued, that will handle over 14^ pounds of rice coal."

I said: " Yes? You would be damn fool enough, would you, to fix a task that would last perhaps for twenty years at 14^ pounds, when you know 21^ pounds can be done, rather than pay $i,ooo for fifty shovels to be made? You could afford to pay any price for shovels so as to get one that will hold 21 pounds. Isn't that perfectly clear? "

He said: " You can't get them."

I said: " Maybe you can or cannot, but we are going to get them all right. We are going to have this price fixed on the basis of 21 pounds. Furthermore, I will bet you can get them in Philadelphia." And we went right down to Philadelphia where we had no difficulty in finding them in stock.

TAYLOR AND HIS ASSISTANTS 73

It was Taylor's object in telling these stories in his later years to illustrate the " enormous difference " between the task idea in management and the " idea of initiative plus in- centive." No matter what incentive were given for their initiative, how could any of those shovelers have discovered what was the proper-size shovel or, knowing it, could have obtained it?

With the task idea, men no longer are submerged in gangs, but are individualized. To illustrate how this works out, Tay- lor told at Boxly of what happened when an agent for a Pittsburgh steel works took from him some of his specially- trained ore shovelers. And here is a particularly fine example of his gift for the dramatic and incidentally of the workings of his shrewd- Yankee mind.

Each of the ore shovelers at Bethlehem had a separate car to unload each day, and his wages depended upon his own personal exertion. Much of the ore they handled came from the Lake Superior region, and the same ore was delivered in Pittsburgh and in Bethlehem in exactly similar cars. There was a shortage of ore handlers in Pittsburgh, and the reputa- tion of the Bethlehem men had spread.

So [said Taylor] the Pittsburgh fellows thought they did a very smart thing when they sent an agent down to employ our men at a higher rate. I was away at the time. The man who was at the head of our laboring men was a college fellow and had two assistants under him.

This fellow came to me and said: " We are up against this thing. A Pittsburgh man is here, and for exactly the same job we are paying our men 3.2 cents a ton he offers 4.9 cents a ton. What am I going to say to them? I have merely told them to wait until you got back. We will have to raise prices surely."

I said: " No; we will let every one of them go. Don't wait for the Pittsburgh fellow to get our men. Go to every good man in your gang and tell him: 'There is a fellow here from Pittsburgh. He

74 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

offers you men a price we cannot give, 4.9 cents. Don't you think you had better go and see him? We don't want to lose you. We think the world of you, but here is this fellow. We believe in high- priced men. If you can get more money in Pittsburgh than here, you want to think it over. You had better go and see that fellow.' "

" We will lose all our men," I was told.

I said: " I don't care if we lose them all. We will not pay more than that a ton."

By going to the men and telling them individually that they had better see the Pittsburgh fellow, we kept their confidence and showed them we were not fools. We knew the Pittsburgh fellow would see them anyway. We might as well get the credit of letting them know we were looking after their interest.

In six weeks those men came back from Pittsburgh where they had 4.9 cents a ton to do the same job again on which we offered them 3.2 cents. Why? I asked one of them into my office. Very few could talk English. There were a few from Ireland and other places.

I said: " Mike, what did you fellows come back here for? "

He said: " Mr. Taylor, we went out there and they put me and Jim in a car with ten other fellows, twelve of us in the car. Did you ever hear of such a thing? "

I said: " Yes, Mike, I have heard of it."

He said: " This is what they did. They put us in a car with ten other fellows. Me and Jim started to shovel ore to beat the band. A little bugger was alongside of me. After I had been going half an hour I said to him: ' If you don't shovel ore out of this car faster than that, we will get no money out of it.' He said: ' Who in hell are you? ' I said: ' We've got to earn money. If you don't shovel faster than that we will get no money.' He said: ' Keep your damned mouth shut or I'll throw you off the car.' I could have spit on the bugger and drowned him, but there was ten of them there to two of us. I looked around. Jim and me watched that bugger. Every time he throwed a shovel off we would throw one off, and we never throwed a shovel that that fellow would not throw one. At the end of two weeks we got less money than we got here."

I said: " What did you do then? "

TAYLOR AND HIS ASSISTANTS 75

" Well, we got together then, us Bethlehem fellows, and me and Jim went in to see the boss and said : ' We've come in to see you. We are those fellows from Bethlehem. We want a car to ourselves.' He said: ' Who in hell are you? ' I said: * We are the fellows that came here from Bethlehem. We can't shovel ore here and make money. We want a car to ourselves.' He said: ' Get to hell out of this. Don't come here minding my business.' We went back to the car and the next two weeks got no more money than we did the first. Then Jim writes pretty well, and he wrote a letter to know whether we could come back. Mr. Wadleigh says, ' Come along,' and the whole lot of us are here."

What is the meaning of that? Men will not do anything like one- half the work if they are herded together as they will when working in pairs or singly. If at Pittsburgh they had put the same Bethlehem men, twelve of them, on a car, every one of them would have fallen down. If one man stops to spit on his hands, another begins to look at him and think, " That bugger is loafing. I will keep my eye on him. He is not doing as much as I do." He slows down to him. Pretty soon it is a match to see who goes slowest.

In Shof Management ^ he said that the larger part of the transfer of the Bethlehem yard labor from day work to piece work was made during the last six months of his stay with this company. " The study of unit times for the yard labor took practically the time of two trained men for two years." However, " this time study was greatly delayed by having successively the two leading men who had been trained to the work leave because they were offered much larger salaries elsewhere." Repeatedly but mostly in vain Taylor appealed to the company to pay his men salaries that would keep pace with their development. Also in Shof Management ^ he said:

When the writer left the steel works, the Bethlehem piece workers were the finest body of picked laborers that he has ever seen together. They were practically all first-class men, because in each case the task

1 p. SI. ^ p. 54-

76 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

which they were called upon to perform was such that only a first- class man could do it. The tasks were all purposely so severe that not more than one out of five laborers (perhaps even a smaller per- centage than this) could keep up.

This paragraph was made extensive use of by his opponents. When he had a chance to explain it, while testifying before the Special House Committee, he said:

I have found that an illustration often furnishes the most con- vincing form of definition. I want therefore to define what I mean by the words " first-class " through an illustration. To do so I am going to again use " horses " as an illustration, because every one of us knows a good deal about the capacity of horses, while there are very few people who have made a sufficient study of men to have the same kind of knowledge about men that we all have about horses. Now, if you have a stable, say, in the city of Washington, containing 300 or 400 horses, you will have in that stable a certain number of horses which are intended especially for hauling coal wagons. You will have a certain number of other horses intended especially to haul grocery wagons; you will have a certain number of trotting horses; a certain number of saddle horses — of pleasure horses, and of ponies in that stable.

Now, what I mean by a " first-class " horse to haul a coal wagon is something very simple and plain. We will all agree that a good, big dray horse is a " first-class " horse to haul a coal wagon (a horse, for instance, of the type of a Percheron). If, however, you live in a small town and have a small stable of horses, in many cases you may not have enough dray horses in your stable to haul your coal wagons, and you will have to use grocery-wagon horses and grocery wagons to haul your coal in; and yet we all know that a grocery- wagon horse is not a " first-class " horse for hauling coal, and we all know that a grocery wagon is not a first-class wagon to carry coal in; but times come when we have to use a second-class horse and wagon, although we know that there is something better. It may be necessary even at times to haul coal with a trotting horse, and you may have to put your coal in a buggy under certain circumstances.

TAYLOR AND HIS ASSISTANTS 77

But we all know that a trotting horse or a grocery horse is not a " first-class " horse for hauling coal. In the same way we know that a big dray horse is not a " first-class " horse for hauling a grocery wagon, nor is a grocery-wagon horse first class for hauling a buggy, and so on right down the line.

Now, what I mean by " first-class " men is set before you by what I mean by " first-class " horses. I mean that there are big, powerful men suited to heavy work, just as dray horses are suited to the coal wagon, and I would not use a man who would be " first class " for this heavy work to do light work for which he would be second class, and which could be done just as well by a boy who is first class for this work, and vice versa.

What I want to make clear is that each type of man is " first class " at some kind of work, and if you will hunt far enough you will find some kind of work that is suited to him. But if you insist, as some people in this community are insisting (to use the illustration of horses again), that a task — say, a load of coal — shall be made so light that a pony can haul it, then you are doing a fool thing, for you are substituting a second-class animal (or man) to do work which mani- festly should be done by a " first-class " animal (or man). And that is what I mean by the term " first-class man."

It would appear that the main result of the foregoing ex- planation by Taylor was to cause people to denounce him for the indignity he had put upon workingmen in " comparing them to horses." Perhaps the present reader will be able to see that the comparison was not to but with. This aside, Taylor's statement about purposely making the tasks of the yard laborers so severe that " not more than one out of five could keep up " continued for years to be thrust at the men who appeared at public hearings to testify on behalf of science in management. It was thrust at Henry R. Towne when, in 1 9 1 6, a year after Taylor's death, he was testifying before the Labor Committee of the House of Representatives. Getting permission to "translate" it, Mr. Towne said:

78 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

Mr. Taylor was a great friend of mine, and I regard him as having done more as an American engineer in a generation to leave an impress, which will last for all time, in founding a new system than any other man; but he had his faults like the rest of us, and one of them was a very intense temperament, and as a result of that, a habit of overstatement. He exaggerates, unconsciously but un- avoidably, because he is so full of his subject and so intense.

Now what was done there was undoubtedly to select the men most fit for this heavy labor work, lifting*, and to shift the unfit ones to something they were better fitted for.

Intensely proud of his " finest body of picked laborers," Taylor boasted of them much as the manager of a football or baseball team might boast that the men he had selected and trained could " lick all creation." It is certain that, though what he did with the Bethlehem yard labor was designed to save the company almost $8o,000 a year, his pride in his teams of pig-iron handlers and coal and ore shovelers was not shared by any of the chiefs of that company. Even when he, in collaboration with Maunsel White, made the discovery which was the sensation of the industrial world here and abroad and saved the company a prospective expenditure of at least a million dollars, none of the men high up in that company had sufficient pride in it to offer him a word of congratulation.

CHAPTER VII

THE DISCOVERY THAT LED TO HIGH-SPEED STEEL

WHILE the yard was being systemized under his general direction, he was giving most of his per- sonal attention to the large machine shop. And as we have said, he was there " at once confronted with that question which, to a large extent, he had been compelled to leave unsettled at Cramp's — the question as to which make of self -hardening steel then on the market was the. best to adopt as a shop standard." The experiments at Bethlehem planned to settle this question were started by him in the latter part of the summer of 1898. On October 23, Maunsel White joined him in this work. Just eight days later came the dis- covery that led to the development of high-speed steel. And of all the episodes of Taylor's flaming career, this is the most strange and curious.

It has been authoritatively said of high-speed steel that it has " more than doubled the capacity of every machine shop in the world, not only cutting in half the capital to be invested in tools to accomplish a given volume of work, but also doubling the efficiency of every workman employed in the cutting of metals." So much as a matter of course is high-speed steel now taken in machine shops everywhere that its absence would be almost inconceivable. Yet if you should ask the most intelligent and experienced mechanic of your acquaintance just what the discovery was that brought in high-speed steel, or what this steel essentially is, the chances

79

8o FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

all are that he would be entirely stumped. Even the average engineer might find it difficult to answer such questions.

Should we turn to the Encyclopedia Brltannica^ held in English-speaking countries to be a first-rate authority on things in general, we should not get much light on these questions either. In the Eleventh Edition of this work (published in 191 1, and the latest at this writing), we find tool steels treated in an article on the Tool by Joseph G. Horner, an English mechanical engineer. The author first speaks of the old car- bon steel which had been in use since time immemorial, and then refers to Mushet steel, or the original self-hardening steel which came into use in consequence of the discovery made in the i86o's by the Englishman, Robert Mushet, of the value of adding tungsten to the chemical ingredients.^

The third kind of steel [he continues] is termed high-sfeedj be- cause much higher cutting speeds are practical with these than with other steels. Tools made of them are hardened in a blast of cold air. The controlhng elements are numerous and vary in the practice of different manufacturers, to render the tools adaptable to cutting various classes of metals and alloys. Tungsten is the principal con- trolling element, but chromium is essential and molybdenum and vanadium are often found of value. The steels are forged at a yellow tint, equal to about 1,850 degrees Fahr. They are raised to a white heat for hardening, and cooled in an air blast to a bright red. They are then often quenched in a bath of oil.

The first public demonstration of the capacities of high speed steel was made at the Paris Exposition of 1900.

Here is not a word as to how, when, or where high-speed steel first came into use, and no mention of any man or men to whom credit should be given for any discovery or inven- tion in this connection. We shall presently see, however,

^ Anyone interested in checking them up will find that the statements of this Britannica writer as to the heat treatment of carbon steel and Mushet steel are far from being in accord with what was found to be the case by Taylor and White as will hereinafter be brought out.

DISCOVERY OF HIGH-SPEED STEEL 8i

that in view of the fact that the author was an English engineer and that he wrote for an English publication, it was something for him to admit even that high-speed steel first was demonstrated at the Paris Exposition of 1 900, this demon- stration having been the exhibit of none other than the Bethle- hem Steel Company of the U. S. A.

For himself Taylor never did anything to exploit his achievement in bringing about high-speed steel. In his mind this discovery ultimately took rank simply as an incident in his general metal-cutting investigation and one of far less importance than the development of the slide rule. Further- more, he regarded his whole metal-cutting investigation much as he regarded all of his work in the accounting field j that is, as subservient to the task he imposed on himself of demon- strating that management could be reduced to an art based on scientific principles. Undoubtedly his sense of relative values here was eminently just 5 nevertheless, we must feel that the high-speed steel discovery, taken by itself, is of suf- ficient importance to warrant our setting forth all the facts concerning it that now are available.

The first thing, of course, is to make clear the exact nature of high-speed steel and of the discovery that led to it and this we can arrive at best through Taylor's own words.

There exists in the minds of most users of these [high-speed] tools a serious misapprehension both as to the nature of the invention and also as to that property in high speed tools which chiefly gives them their value. Perhaps at least four out of five writers upon the subject of high speed tools speaks of the " discovery " or " introduc- tion of high speed tools," as though our invention consisted in the discovery of a tool steel new in its chemical composition. The fact is, however, that tool steel of excellent quality for making high speed tools existed and was in common use several years before our dis- covery was made.^

^ On the Art of Cutting Metals y p. 222.

82 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

Just previous to this in his paper Taylor wrote: "Be- tween 1885 and 1895, a few manufacturers of tool steel started to imitate the Mushet steel, and in the latter part of this period it was discovered that by substituting chromium for manganese in combination with tungsten a good self-harden- ing or air-hardening tool could be made." This is the steel — that of the chromium-tungsten family — to which Taylor referred as being " of excellent quality for making high speed tools." '

Now, when metal cuts metal, the metal that does the cut- ting must, of course, be many times harder than the metal which is cut. And the fact is that, regardless of its chemical com- position, the steel that comes from the forge is too soft for tools. The hardness needed to make it do work as a cutting tool is put into it by heating it up and then cooling it. The old carbon steel was cooled by plunging it in water, whereas we have seen that steel of the tungsten type becomes hard when left to cool in the air, and this also is true of chromium- tungsten steel. Incidentally it may be mentioned that all steel that thus is hardened is too brittle for use as tools, and so the tools are subjected to a second heating of a lesser degree for the purpose of softening and at the same time toughening them, this latter process being that called tempering.

" The two operations of hardening and temperihg imple- ments made from tool steel," said Taylor, " are by no means simple. They have been the subject of a vast amount of experimenting and investigation for many years and in them- selves constitute whole trades." In the case of the old car- bon steel, one of the chief difficulties in hardening is due to the fact that each piece of steel, depending on its chemical composition (regardless of its general type, one piece of steel will vary somewhat from another), " has a particular tempera-

^ Mushet steel was manufactured solely by the English firm of Osborne & Company, whereas chromium-tungsten steels were made by various American firms, notably Midvale.

DISCOVERY OF HIGH-SPEED STEEL 83

ture at which a radical change takes place in the condition of the carbon which is contained in it." This temperature is known as the " refining point," " critical point," or " point of recalescence." And, "in order to obtain the best results in hardening, the steel should be uniformly heated to slightly above this critical point. If heated below the critical point, it fails to harden when plunged into water. On the other hand, the higher the temperature to which it is heated above the critical point, the coarser will be the grain and the weaker and the more brittle it will become after being plunged into water. This overheating of carbon steel tools to tempera- tures too high above the critical point has been in the past perhaps the most frequent cause of their failure."^

Now, what was the critical temperature of the old carbon steel? Taylor's statement on this very important point is that the hardening of tools made of carbon steel " is done by heating them to temperatures in accordance with their carbon contents, varying between a dark and a bright cherry red, say, from 1,350 degrees Fahr. (735 degrees Cent.) up to 1,550 degrees Fahr. (845 degrees Cent.)."^

In this connection let us recall that the old carbon tools continued in general use until Taylor made his discovery about Mushet steel while experimenting at Cramp's in 1894. This discovery was not only that tools made of Mushet steel could be run at a much higher speed when water was poured on them, but also that this steel was much more adapted for cutting soft metal than for cutting hard, and that therefore, instead of being reserved, as then was the custom, for extra hard pieces of metal only, it " should be used daily through- out the shop on all ordinary work in place of carbon steel tools." ^ Thus Taylor said that "up to 1894 may be called the era of carbon tools."* And immediately he added:

^ On the Art of Cutting Metals, pp. 218, and 214.

2 Ib'td., p, 218.

^ On the Art of Cutting Metals, p. 221. * Ibii., p. 222.

84 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

"From 1894 to 1900, when high-speed cutting tools, treated by the Taylor-White process, were exhibited at the Paris Ex- position, may be called the era of Mushet or self-hardening tools."

As the Mushet or tungsten steel came into general use, and incidentally, in this country, the steels of the chromium- tungsten family, it was generally assumed, not unnaturally, that the critical temperature of carbon steel (from 1,350 to 1,500 degrees Fahr.) applied to the newer steels also. Nor was this the limit of the assumption. In the case of the old carbon steel it universally had been found that, once a tool had been " burnt " or broken down by heating it beyond 1,500 degrees, there was no subsequent heat treatment that would restore it to usable condition, and, again not unnatu- rally, it was assumed that this, too, applied to the newer steels.

And this brings us to the essence of the discovery Taylor made in collaboration with White at Bethlehem in 1898: these experimenters found that while it was true that tools made of the chromium-tungsten type which then prevailed were ruined when subjected to a temperature greater than about 1,500 degrees Fahr. and that they continued to be ruined when subjected to a heat up to about 1,725 degrees, their cutting efficiency was progressively increased when they were sub- jected to a heat greater than 1,725 degrees; the improvement being marked above the temperature of 1,850 degrees, and the greatest improvement taking -place just before the m^elting pointy or at the ^naximum temperature to which it was possible to bring the steel without destroying it.

Again we quote Taylor:

A second misapprehension exists on the part of most people as to the nature of that property which enables the " high speed " tools to be run at their high speeds. Heating these tools (in a revolutionary manner) up close to their melting point is quite commonly referred to by writers on this subject as " hardening " the tools. In point of

DISCOVERY OF HIGH-SPEED STEEL 85

fact the high speed tools at their very hardest are little, if any, harder than the carbon tools, or the old-fashioned self-hardening tools, and the quality of hardness is not that which enables them to run at very high speed.

Heating chromium-tungsten tools close to the melting point does not give them a degree of hardness vi^hich is unusual in tools, but it does give them the entirely new and extraordinary property of retaining what hardness they have, even after the tool has been heated up in use through the pressure and friction of the chip, until it is almost, or quite, red hot. This new property in high speed tools has been very appropriately named " red hardness," because the tool maintains its cutting edge sufficiently sharp and hard to cut steel even after its nose is red hoty and because in many cases it heats up the chip or shaving which it is cutting until the portions of the chip which are exposed to the friction of the tool become red hot.^

It is true that if it had not been for the discoveries about the values of tungsten and chromium, there could have been no such thing as high-speed steel. It is true also that, follow- ing their heat-treatment discovery in 1898, Taylor and White made extensive experiments in the chemical composition of tool steel, and that these resulted in chemical discoveries, such as the value of increasing the percentage of tungsten and reducing the percentage of carbon, that materially increased the efficiency of the high-speed tools. And it is true, further- more, that after the experiments of Taylor and White, the efficiency of high-speed tools again was increased by other changes in the chemical composition of tool steel. At the same time, the fact remains that the " red hardness " which is the essential property of high-speed steel is due to these changes in chemical composition only in the sense that they fermit of its being put into the steel. The red hardness is directly due, not to the chemistry of the steel, but to the heat treatment. And the rationale of his heat treatment will

^ 0« the Art of Cutting Metals, p. 223.

86 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

be apparent when it is stated that the tool must be treated at a temperature at least as high as that which will be gener- ated by the speed at which the tool is run.

And now comes a very curious feature of this case.

When Taylor and White, after extensive experimenting, had perfected their revolutionary process of hardening tool steel, they obtained two patents covering it. These patents they sold in 1900 to the Bethlehem Steel Company. Three years later this company brought suit for infringement of the patents against the Niles-Bement-Pond Company, a New Jersey concern manufacturing machine-tools. To the assist- ance of the Niles-Bement-Pond Company came many other of the manufacturers who, if the patents were sustained, would be compelled to pay royalties to the Bethlehem Com- pany, or else operate under the severe handicap of being un- able to participate in the use of high-speed steel. Not only this, but, seeing their big business in the United States threatened, all the tool-steel manufacturers of Sheffield, England, combined to raise a large fund to help defend the suit, and they sent over here a formidable array of experts or reputed experts, including members of the faculty of the University of Sheffield. It practically was the Bethlehem Steel Company against the rest of the world of tool-steel users and tool-steel manufacturers. For five years the case dragged out a weary length j the testimony taken coming to fill more than 2,000 printed pages.

It would appear that the opponents of the Bethlehem Com- pany made about every allegation they could think of as being likely to influence the court in their favor. In part the defense was that high-speed steel was produced not so much by any heat treatment as by the chemical composition of the steel, and that if any special heat treatment was needed, the facts about it were concealed in the Taylor-White patents. Attacks also were made on the personal honor of the men,

DISCOVERY OF HIGH-SPEED STEEL 87

including Taylor, who testified for the Bethlehem Company. In the main, however, the defense was that there was no novelty in the Taylor-White heat treatment j men, principally Englishmen, taking the stand almost in serried ranks to testify that tool steel often had been hardened and tempered in this way before. And this defense being sustained by the court, the Taylor- White patents were knocked out.

With the technicalities of patent law and of court pro- cedure we here have no concern. All we are concerned with are such facts as these : that the results produced by the Taylor- White heat treatment of tool steel immediately became the sensation of the industrial world, and incidentally the scien- tific, throughout North and South America, Europe, Aus- tralia, and South Africa, with Japan following a little laterj that there is no evidence that any technical journal, here or abroad, important or unimportant, ever attempted to deny that Taylor and White had made a real discovery and had developed a highly novel heat treatment j that at the Paris Exposition where their discovery was exhibited they received personal gold medals for itj and that in this same year of 1900 the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, after due in- vestigation of this discovery by a committee of experts, awarded Taylor the Elliot Cresson gold medal.

Before closing this chapter it should be brought out, for the light it will throw on this curious case in general, and es- pecially on things connected with it still to appear, that a difficulty is involved in the statements here made to the general effect that, previous to the Taylor-White experiments, ! a temperature of about 1,500 degrees was universally accepted as the one beyond which tools could not be heated without ruin- ing them. This difficulty arises from the fact that up to 1898 pyrometers such as invented by Professor Henri Le Chatelier, by means of which forging temperatures are accurately measured, were not in general use in the machine shops of

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the world. What the situation then was in this respect is well described in the brief prepared by counsel for the Bethle- hem Company in the patent litigation, this description being based on the testimony of Taylor:

Practically the way in which information was communicated from man to man with regard to the heating of tool steels in making and treating tools prior to the Taylor-White invention, was by a visual demonstration. One smith taught another, and all of the tool steel makers, especially those introducing new steels, employed sales- men whose chief occupation was to go from shop to shop and show the smiths how to treat their steels to obtain what they considered to be their maximum efficiency in metal cutting tools. This is a fairly practical mode of instruction, because tool steels when heated hot enough to be forged or hardened in the old sense, are luminous, and the appearance of the light they give off varies with the tempera- ture. The difference between the luminosity at one temperature and another is not only in intensity but also, to a certain extent, in a visual impression resembling that produced by color; the first luminous appearance being distinctly of a dull red color and then, as the temperature increases, the red partakes more and more of a yellow until it finally disappears and the yellow merges into white or a pure colorless luminosity, at the melting point. Now in every shop the particular temperatures considered critical were recognized by the smith by the luminous appearance of the steel at these tempera- tures, and these luminous appearances received particular color names which were well understood and had a very definite meaning to the smiths employed in the same shops, but those names might and did differ very much in different shops.

As tool smiths went from shop to shop there was doubtless a tendency toward uniformity in the color nomenclature relating to the heats in most common usage and, no doubt, the missionary efforts of the salesmen tool-smiths employed by the tool steel makers must have had a tendency toward unifying the color nomenclature at the shops which they visited, so that there was bound to be some approxi- mation to uniformity in the American, the British, the German, and the French shops, but as the missionary smiths practically confined

DISCOVERY OF HIGH-SPEED STEEL 89

their efforts to their own countries, there was no particular reason why there should be an approximation to uniformity in the nomen- clature of the different countries. . . . The facts developed in this record show clearly, we think, that the divergence in color nomen- clature was, and is, and probably always will be, so great that any effort to tabulate and make a scale of such colors which will have real value will be futile. . . . The hopelessness of the task arises from the fact that the color names in use are purely conventional and have a very remote relationship to the visual appearance which they attempt to describe.

No argument is needed to prove the advantage which this uncertain and unreliable color nomenclature for temperatures gave to anyone whose interests it would serve to mix up the issue when it came to determining what was the common prac- tice as regards the heating of tools previous to the Taylor- White experiments. We take it, however, that these are the facts:

(i) The first appearance of color in heated steel is un- mistakable. (2) The color which first appears impresses everyone as a kind of red. (3) This first appearance of color in the form of red is shown by accurate tests with a pyrometer to indicate a temperature approaching that of 1,500 degrees Fahr. (4) That what was commonly called, at least in the north Atlantic industrial district of this country, a bright cherry red indicated a temperature of from 1,500 to 1,550 degrees. (5) That, previous to the Taylor- White experiments beginning in 1898, every maker of tool steel here and abroad without exception, and regardless of the chemical composition of his steel, issued warnings to the users of his steel not to overheat itj these warnings either being in writing, as on the label attached to the steel, or being given by word of mouth through the salesman, usually both. (6) That overheating invariably was considered the adding of heat after the first appearance of color in the steel had begun to assume bright-

90 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

ness or brilliance. (7) That there was a good reason why such warnings had been issued, inasmuch as the Taylor-White experiments demonstrated that tool steel of the various chem- ical compositions then on the market began to lose its cutting efficiency as it was heated beyond about 1,520 degrees.

From all this it should clearly appear that the essence of the situation was frankly stated in an article published in the American journal. The Industrial World, and written by E. T. Clarage, formerly a salesman for the Crescent Steel Com- pany, and then the president of the Columbia Tool Steel Com- pany. Speaking of the Taylor- White invention and its effect on the trade, he said:

You see, we steel men had gone around for the last twenty years or so telling people to use low heats on all their steels, and this shows how little the steel makers themselves knew. We did not know that the rules governing the use of straight carbon steels might be directly contrary to what these tungsten steels required, but such seems to be the case.

In fine, it was another and exceptionally striking example of the soporific power of tradition, or of the way customs have of persisting after changed conditions have made them untenable.

CHAPTER VIII

HOW THE DISCOVERY WAS MADE

IT OF course was a bitter pill for the manufacturers and salesmen of tool steel to have to acknowledge that their innumerable warnings against overheating were all a mis- take. It was especially bitter for the English manufacturers, and more particularly for the men of Sheffield, where iron had been smelted as far back as the Norman conquest, and where a town had grown up that became famous for its steel a full century before Christopher Columbus adventured across the Atlantic. They have to follow after an American! Some big men in England, as in the case of Sir Robert Hadfield, the metallurgical engineer, were open and generous in their acknowledgment; but the way that English makers and also users of tool steel took it as a group must be regarded as a melancholy exhibition of the sportsmanship so characteristic of their race. For the chorus that arose from them was that the Taylor- White discovery, made at the plant of the Bethle- hem Steel Company in the U. S. A., was all due to a lucky chance happening, a mere accident. Originating in England, this statement became bandied about here also, while the be- lief persists to this day.

In the sense that Taylor most certainly did not design or plan to make the discovery that led to high-speed steel, his most ardent champions can cheerfully admit that this dis- covery was accidental indeed. But it is to be observed that there are accidents and accidents. First, those that befall a person purely through chance. Second, those that he has put himself in the way of, that are a direct result of some course

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he has been Intentionally and steadfastly pursuing. When they dubbed Taylor's high-speed steel discovery a piece of luck, we indeed have a striking example of the principle that the seemingly lucky often really is a reward for the virtue of persistence. And in this connection the reader is referred back to the quotation from Emerson at the beginning of this book. These are words that could not bear more directly on the case of Taylor had they been written with him in mind.

Fortunately for the record, the principal facts as to how the high-speed steel discovery was made were brought out In the testimony given by Taylor when, in 1908, he appeared as a witness In that patent suit. And here again, entombed in an official tome, we find a story of lively Interest.

In beginning his testimony, Taylor said:

I came to the Bethlehem Steel Company for the purpose of re- organizing their system of management and the practical administra- tion of their various departments and shops during the spring of 1898.

In the organization of a machine shop one of the very most important elements is the selection of the two or three types of tool steel required for economically doing the work of the shop. Having in the year 1895 [^^ Cramp's] narrowed down the choice of the then existing brands of air-hardened tool steel to three or four specially good brands, I wished, before establishing the stand- ards for tool steel for the Bethlehem Machine Shops, to investigate the other makes of self -hardening tool steel which might have been developed between the years 1895 and 1898. In order to test tools made from these steels, a large and powerful lathe . . . [elec- trically-driven] was fitted up in the largest machine shop of the Bethlehem Company. This lathe was started during the latter part of the summer of 1898, and after quite a number of experiments I recommended for adoption, as a standard for the air-hardening or self-hardening tools of the Bethlehem Steel Company, the air-hard- ening tool steel which was furnished us at that time by the Midvale Steel Company. . . .

In order to prove to the various superintendents, foremen and

HOW DISCOVERY WAS MADE 93

managers of the different shops and departments of the Bethlehem Steel Company that the Midvale tool steel, above referred to, was the most satisfactory of all the brands tried, a formal exhibition or test was planned to which all of the important men of the type referred to were invited to be present. For the purposes of this test four tools were ordered to be made in the smith shop from a fresh bar of Midvale Steel and ground to the proper shapes. These tools were then run in competition, as it were, in the presence of these men with all of the other brands which had proved themselves in our experiments worthy of consideration, and much to my humiliation the four Midvale tools carefully prepared for this exhibition proved to be the very worst of all those that were tried.

I, of course, was of the opinion that being a newcomer in the Bethlehem Steel Company the blacksmiths who made these tools had overheated or burnt them for the purpose either of playing a joke on me, or, possibly even, of discrediting me in my work.

After a careful investigation, however, the evidence indicated that these tools had been forged by the smiths at night and that they had taken very special care not to overheat them. I was told that for the reason that I had personally worked with these smiths, and had not put on lugs, that the smiths had taken very special care to forge these tools without the danger of overheating, and, in fact, that they had taken about twenty-two heats at a very low forging tempera- ture in making each of the tools.

This investigation left me in very considerable doubt as to how the tools had been ruined.

There was no question that they had been ruined.

In my experiments with this same brand of tool steel, in 1894 and 1895, while with the Cramp Shipbuilding Company, I had found that they gave a very high efficiency and high cutting speeds if heated during the making and dressing and as a final heat treatment to a bright cherry red. I had found to my cost, as was well known to all users of this steel, that if heated slightly beyond a bright cherry red these tools were burned, and thereby ruined, and that no subsequent heat treatment, which was at that time known to anyone, could be found which would restore these tools to their original good condition.

94 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

Later on in their experiments at Bethlehem, Taylor and White discovered that the disappointment Taylor had ex- perienced with the four Midvale tools was only what might have been expected of tools made of any of the chromium- tungsten steels then being manufactured and sold. In con- nection with his testimony, Taylor produced a diagram show- ing in detail the experiments he and White had made with three tools representing three different brands of chromium- tungsten steel. And in explaining this diagram, he testified to facts that not only serve to explain his failure with the Midvale tools, but have much historical interest:

Reviewing again briefly the facts connected with all three of these typical tools [those representing three different brands of chro- mium-tungsten steel], they all have, under the old system of heating in common use prior to our discovery, a comparatively narrow range of highest efficiency, somewhere about, or a little beyond, the bright cherry red heat. This range of highest efficiency is narrow, the tools running at slower cutting speeds when heated less hot than this range, and also running at slower cutting speeds when heated even slightly beyond this range of temperatures.

There is, however, one most important fact which is not shown on this diagram, namely, that tools which once have been heated beyond this range of highest efficiency and which belong to the chromium-tungsten group could never again be restored to their highest efficiency by any heat treatment that was then known. This overheating of the tools was called by the various names of over- heating, burning, ruining in the fire, and breaking down, and was the subject of more warnings and recommendations on the part of those who sold tool steels of this class, and who were sent to the various smith shops in the country by the makers of these steels, than any other element.

On the other hand, tools that were treated at a lower heat than this narrow range of maximum efficiency were in no way permanently injured by such heating. Tools which had been heated too low could

HOW DISCOVERY WAS MADE 95

be given their highest efficiency merely by re-heating to the bright cherry red range.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that a study of the diagram shows the marked increase in the efficiency of all these tools when heated according to the recommendation in our patents to tempera- tures close to the melting point.

In this connection it is proper to state that the steels belonging to the chromium-tungsten group, when properly heated to this narrow bright cherry red range, prior to our invention, gave higher cutting speeds than the tools of the Mushet type of chemical composition; yet, in spite of this fact, I am safe in saying that up to the time of our invention more than half of the self-hardening tools to be found in machine shops of this country were of the Mushet make.

There are two fundamental reasons for this extraordinary fact, namely, that an English tool steel maker should even in this country be able to sell more steel than all of the American or other foreign makers combined. First: The Mushet tools, when heated in the smith shop, had nearly the same efficiency when they were heated anywhere along the line between 1, 200 degrees Fahr. and their best forging temperature of a bright cherry red, or about 1,500 degrees, so that underheating would not diminish their efficiency. On the other hand, these Mushet tools, if overheated, were burned and ruined in such a manner that the ruined nose of the tool never got out of the smith shop. I will show through later experiments that it was impossible to forge a Mushet tool at a heat as high as 1,667 degrees Fahr. At this temperature, and even considerably below it, Mushet tools when struck with a sledge in the smith shop broke right off, and, in most cases, crumbled up into pieces whose grain had a black, coarse, sandy appearance.

Now the significance of these two facts, taken together is that neither through overheating or underheating of Mushet steel were tools likely to get into the machine shop with any great lack of uni- formity, and, as I have before said, uniformity in the cutting proper- ties of tools is perhaps the very first requisite. At any rate, this uniformity in the Mushet tools, even although their cutting speeds were materially lower than those of the chromium-tungsten tools, when treated at their very best, was a factor of sufficient moment to

96 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

give Osborne & Company of England, the makers of the Mushet steel, at least half of the air-hardening tool steel trade of this country.

The fact that the narrow range of highest efficiency of chro- mium-tungsten tools was so close to the disastrous breaking down or burning temperature also makes it clear why blacksmiths, after overheating their chromium-tungsten tools, and in this way ruining them a few times, were careful to avoid those burning or breaking down temperatures, and in doing so they heated the tools to tem- peratures below their small range of maximum efficiency. This treatment filled the shop with tools on the whole considerably less efficient even than the Mushet tools. Now, it will be recalled by all those who have worked practically in machine shops in which tools were made of chromium-tungsten steels that before the year 1898 almost every old experienced machinist had succeeded in select- ing from the tools that were in the shop one particular tool which he kept practically as his individual personal property. He either locked it up in his closet or hid it in a hole in the floor, or some- where else, and when he had a particularly difficult job to do pro- duced this choice tool, and did the trick.

Now, these few choice tools were those that had been heated by the blacksmith to within the narrow range of temperatures of maxi- mum efficiency of this particular class of tools, and it was largely due to the maker's mark on these special tools that the makers of chromium-tungsten steels were able to obtain any foothold to speak of in the shops, as against the Mushet steel. The machinist who possessed this rara avis in the tool family swore by that particular brand of tool steel, and induced his foreman to place orders for more of the stuff, only, in most cases, to be disappointed at what they called the lack of uniformity in that tool steel. Neither they nor the blacksmith in most cases ever realized the existence of this very narrow range of temperatures of maximum efficiency.

It appears from this that the failure with the four Midvale chromium-tungsten tools might have been due to their hav- ing been underheated by the smiths in their desire to avoid overheating them. But Taylor, although he at this time —

HOW DISCOVERY WAS MADE 97

that is, in October, 1898 — did not have the familiarity with the erratic qualities of the old chromium-tungsten steel which he gained later, evidently satisfied himself that the tools had been " ruined " through their having somehow been heated to a temperature a little beyond a bright cherry redj and on this basis we may attribute the failure of their " ruined " nature to appear on the surface when they were sent into the shop for testing to the fact that, unlike Mushet steel, chro- mium-tungsten steel could be heated beyond the bright cherry red temperature and still be forged.

Writing in 1908, to C. Codron, a French engineer of Lille, Taylor said:

For some reason, the report has been spread abroad that the dis- covery by Mr. Maunsel White and myself of modern high speed tools was a mere accident. This, however, is far from the fact. This discovery was (as explained 'in paragraphs 99 to no of the original copy of the paper " On the Art of Cutting Metals " which was forwarded to you) the result of a careful series of experiments to find out whether tools of the chemical composition of those given in paragraph 103 (7.7 tungsten, 1.8 chromium, etc.) which had been overheated and thereby almost ruined, could be restored by any heat treatment, so that they could cut metal as rapidly as they originally could before overheating.

Here, then, was that which directly led to the high-speed steel discovery. On the witness stand Taylor put it this way:

In view of my humiliating failure in the experiments above re- ferred to at the Bethlehem Steel Works, which ended about October 20, 1898, I determined to try to discover a method of restoring those four injured tools so that they could have the fine cutting properties which my previous experiments [at Cramp's] indicated that they should have.

While there was no heat treatment then known which would restore tools that had been injured in the way those four

98 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

Midvale tools had been, he determined to find whether, in jacty there was not such a treatment. " Question everything j question the simplest, most self-evident, most universally- accepted facts" — that, as we have seen, was his principle j and all that here follows shows what may come from its practice.

And now enters Mr. White.

With this end in view [said Taylor in continuing his testimony] an experimental order was issued by my request by the Superintend- ent of Manufacture of the Bethlehem Steel Company to undertake this investigation. This experiment was put in direct charge of Mr. Maunsel White. I produce herewith the original copy of the experimental order, which was transmitted to Mr. Maunsel White, it being the custom in the Bethlehem Steel Company to send a large number of duplicate copies of all experiments undertaken to various heads of departments, foremen, etc., in the works, who were likely to have anything to do with the carrying out of the experiment.

Dated October 23, 1898, and signed by R. W. Davenport, as " Superintendent of Manufacture," the order set forth the following " scheme of experiment " as " proposed by Mr. F. W. Taylor":

" To determine the effect on Midvale Self-hardening Steel of heating to different temperatures with a view to ascertaining the temperature for procuring the best condition of grain for cutting pur- poses, as shown by lathe tools.

" Select the four lathe tools which from their poor showing in cutting qualities would appear to have been damaged in heating or forging, or both, and attempt to restore the grain to a good condi- tion by heating one tool to a barely visible red, one to a full blood heat, one to a low cherry and one to a bright cherry; allowing to cool in air from these respective heats.

" The tools to be then tested in Experimental Lathe, according to instructions to be given by Mr. F. W. Taylor.

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" Mr. White," Taylor added on the stand, " was chosen for this test because he was and had been for many years the metallurgical engineer and expert of the Bethlehem Steel Com- pany." That here again Taylor was the instigator, the in- spirer, the driving force, there of course can be no doubt. But to what extent did he have to rely on White as a pro- fessional metallurgist? When he was cross-examined in the patent suit, there occurred this colloquy:

Q. Did you have anything to do with determining the mix or composition of the steel manufactured by that company [the reference here being to Taylor's work at Midvale]?

yf . I did, although I was not technically the head of the melting department.

Q. Are you a metallurgist or chemist?

J. I am something of a metallurgist and something of a chem- ist. When it comes to calling one's self a metallurgist or a chemist in the full sense of the term, I believe there are very few men in this world entitled to call themselves by these names as profound specialists.

Q. You think that you are as good as the average, but that you are not a profound specialist in metallurgy and chemistry? Is that correct?

A. I do not think that I am as good as the average analytical chemist. I think that I am probably as good as the average steel metallurgist.

It is possible that some part of the knowledge of metal- lurgy to which he was able to profess when he testified in 1898 he had absorbed from White, but it would appear on the face of it that White was drawn into these experiments mainly because of his position. That in view of the peculiar situation at Bethlehem Taylor deemed it expedient to have as many old employees of the company as possible connected with these experiments, is shown by this extract from his testimony:

100 FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

... in starting to make this whole series of experiments . . . there were assigned to me two of the prominent employees of the Bethlehem Steel Company to actually make the experiments on the lathe. One of these was Mr. James Kellogg, previously and up to this time foreman of the gun finishing department. . . . This man was an exceptionally fine mechanic. The other assistant was a Mr. Weldon, who had worked in the shop, was also an excellent clerk, and quite an engineer. Mr. Weldon was assigned to this job principally because he had married a niece or some relation of the Vice President of the Company, and was supposed to have the entire confidence of the higher officers of the company. Two men of prominence of this sort were at my request given me for these experiments for the purpose of educating them to the necessity of higher speeds in the shop and the proper use of tools, and second for the purpose of letting the higher officers of the company know that these experiments were thoroughly and carefully conducted.

Returning now to his direct narrative, we read:

Mr. White and I, having consulted together, decided to make a comprehensive series of experiments to determine the effect upon the cutting speed of the tool produced by heating tools of this make or chemical composition [the Midvale] at heats varying all the way from a black red up to the melting point. It was our original plan to heat these tools to temperatures varying about fifty degrees one from an- other throughout this range and in order to carry out this series of tests properly, we decided to order a Le Chatelier Pyrometer, or, more properly speaking, new wires for the Le Chatelier Pyrometer, for they had one at the works at that time.

Before the pyrometer was returned, they hit upon their great and sensational discovery, and here is Taylor's descrip- tion of it:

It took quite a number of days for this pyrometer to arrive at the works, and in the meantime we decided to take what may be called a preliminary canter through this field by heating tools to

HOW DISCOVERY WAS MADE loi

successive temperatures throughout this range, and judging these heats merely with our eye, without the use of the pyrometer.

All of this make of tools, namely, those of the chemical composi- tion referred to above [the Midvale], had been marked with the letter " L " to distinguished them from other makes. Four of these " L " tools were freshly forged in the blacksmith shop and then stamped successively as follows: Li, L2, L3, and L4.

These tools were then successively heated at heats between a bright cherry red and a bright yellow heat; Li being heated at a cherry red, L4 at a bright yellow heat, and the intermediate tools to heats inter- mediate between these two points. These tools gave, when used in the experimental lathe, successively higher cutting speeds; Li giving the lowest cutting speed, and L4 the highest.

On October 31, 1898, tools treated as above described were run for tlie first time, and the final results obtained, more particularly with L3 and L4, were so remarkable in their nature as to represent the first discovery of the new property in cutting tools which con- stitutes the subject of our patents.

These results were so extraordinary in their novelty that during the last few experimental runs, lasting twenty minutes each, of these tools, the machinists and foremen in the shop flocked around the ex- perimental lathe until, finally, we were obliged to appoint one man to drive them away from the lathe and make them attend to their work.

During these runs the tools were producing continuously dark blue chips, and at the same time, were leaving a fine finish on the work and a smooth polish on the under side of the chip.

Before night of the first day of these phenomenal speeds it was known to hundreds of mechanics all over Bethlehem that this remark- able occurrence had taken place. I had never before seen anything of this nature, nor do I believe anyone else had.

In the midst of the last run which was taken by it, the tool marked L4 cracked a large piece out of the front of its nose. This tool had been fire cracked through heating it with the upper surface of the tool continually pointing upward in the fire, while the fire was burning with an intensely hot heat. As a matter of interest, since