THE BEST POSSIBLE MAN - CHAPTER III
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
Before we discuss some cases of such
experimental investigations, we may glance at that
other American movement, the well-known systematic
effort toward scientific management which has often
been interpreted in an expansive literature. Enthusiastic
followers have declared it to be the greatest advance
in industry since the introduction of the mill system
and of machinery. Opponents have hastily denounced
it as a mistake, and have insisted that it proved
a failure in the factories in which it has been introduced.
A sober examination of the facts soon demonstrates
that the truth lies in the middle. Those followers
of Frederick W. Taylor who have made almost a religion
out of his ideas have certainly often exaggerated
the practical applicability of the new theories, and
their actual reforms in the mills have not seldom
shown that the system is still too topheavy; that is,
there are too many higher employees necessary in order
to keep the works running on principles of scientific
management. On the other hand, the opposition
which comes from certain quarters,-for instance,
from some trade-unions,-may be disregarded,
as it is not directed against the claim that the efficiency
can be heightened, but only against some social features
of the scheme, such as the resulting temporary reduction
of the number of workmen. But nobody can deny
that this revolutionary movement has introduced most
valuable suggestions which the industrial world cannot
afford to ignore, and that as soon as exaggerations
are avoided and experience has created a broader foundation,
the principles of the new theory will prove of lasting
value. We shall have to discuss, at a later point,
various special features of the system, especially
the highly interesting motion study. Here we
have to deal only with those tendencies of the movement
and with those interests which point toward our present
problem, the mental analysis of the individual employees
in order to avoid misfits.
The approach to this problem, indeed,
seems unavoidable for the students of scientific management,
as its goal is an organization of economic work by
which the waste of energy will be avoided and the
greatest increase in the efficiency of the industrial
enterprise will be reached. The recognition that
this can never be effected by a mere excessive driving
of the workingmen belongs to its very presuppositions.
The illusory means of prolongation of the working-time
and similar devices by which the situation of the
individual deteriorates would be out of the question;
on the contrary, the heightening of the individual’s
joy in the work and of the personal satisfaction in
one’s total life development belongs among the
most important, indirect agencies of the new scheme.
This end is reached by many characteristic changes
in the division of labor; also by a new division between
supervisors and workers, by transformations of the
work itself and of the tools and vehicles. But
as a by-product of these efforts the demand necessarily
arose for means by which the fit individuals could
be found for special kinds of labor. The more
scientific management introduced changes, by which
the individual achievement often had to become rather
complicated and difficult, the more it became necessary
to study the skill and the endurance and the intelligence
of the individual laborers in order to entrust these
new difficult tasks only to the most appropriate men
in the factories and mills. The problem of individual
selection accordingly forced itself on the new efficiency
engineers, and they naturally recognized that the
really essential traits and dispositions were the mental
ones. In the most progressive books of the new
movement, this need of emphasizing the selection of
workers with reference to their mental equipment comes
to clear expression.
Yet this is very far from a real application
of scientific psychology to the problem at hand.
Wherever the question of the selection of the fit
men after psychological principles is mentioned in
the literature of this movement, the language becomes
vague, and the same men, who use the newest scientific
knowledge whenever physics or mathematics or physiology
or chemistry are involved, make hardly any attempts
to introduce the results of science when psychology
is in question. The clearest insight into the
general situation may be found in the most recent
books by Emerson. He says frankly: “It
is psychology, not soil or climate, that enables man
to raise five times as many potatoes per acre as the
average in his own state"; or: “In selecting
human assistants such superficialities as education,
as physical strength, even antecedent morality, are
not as important as the inner attitudes, proclivities,
character, which after all determine the man or woman."
He also fully recognizes the necessity of securing
as early as possible the psychological essentials.
He says: “The type for the great newspaper
is set up by linotype operators. Apprenticeship
is rigorously limited. Some operators can never
get beyond the 2500-em class, others with no more
personal effort can set 5000 ems. Do the employers
test out applicants for apprenticeship so as to be
sure to secure boys who will develop into the 5000-em
class? They do not: they select applicants
for any near reason except the fundamental important
one of innate fitness." But all this points only
to the existence of the problem, and in reality gives
not even a hint for its solution. The theorists
of scientific management seem to think that the most
subtle methods are indispensable for physical measurements,
but for psychological inquiry nothing but a kind of
intuition is necessary. Emerson tells how, for
instance, “The competent specialist who has
supplemented natural gifts and good judgment by analysis
and synthesis can perceive attitudes and proclivities
even in the very young, much more readily in those
semi-matured, and can with almost infallible certainty
point out, not only what work can be undertaken with
fair hope of success, but also what slight modification
or addition and diminution will more than double the
personal power." The true psychological specialists
surely ought to decline this flattering confidence.
Far from the “almost infallible certainty,”
they can hardly expect even a moderate amount of success
in such directions so long as specific methods have
not been elaborated, and so long as no way has been
shown to make experimental measurements by which such
mere guesswork can be replaced by scientific investigation.
The only modest effort to try a step
in this direction toward the psychological laboratory
is recorded by Taylor, who tells of Mr. S.E.
Thompson’s work in a bicycle ball factory, where
a hundred and twenty girls were inspecting the balls.
They had to place a row of small polished steel balls
on the back of the left hand and while they were rolled
over and over in the crease between two of the fingers
placed together, they were minutely examined in a strong
light and the defective balls were picked out with
the aid of a magnet held in the right hand. The
work required the closest attention and concentration.
The girls were working ten and a half hours a day.
Mr. Thompson soon recognized that the quality most
needed, beside endurance and industry, was a quick
power of perception accompanied by quick responsive
action. He knew that the psychological laboratory
has developed methods for a very exact measurement
of the time needed to react on an impression with
the quickest possible movement; it is called the reaction
time, and is usually measured in thousandths of a
second. He therefore considered it advisable to
measure the reaction-time of the girls, and to eliminate
from service all those who showed a relatively long
time between the stimulus and reaction. This
involved laying off many of the most intelligent, hardest-working,
and most trustworthy girls. Yet the effect was
the possibility of shortening the hours and of reducing
more and more the number of workers, with the final
outcome that thirty-five girls did the work formerly
done by a hundred and twenty, and that the accuracy
of the work at the higher speed was two thirds greater
than at the former slow speed. This allowed almost
a doubling of the wages of the girls in spite of their
shorter working-day, and at the same time a considerable
reduction in the cost of the work for the factory.
This excursion of an efficiency engineer into the
psychological laboratory remained, however; an entirely
exceptional case. Moreover, such a reaction-time
measurement did not demand any special development
of new methods or any particular mental analysis,
and this exception thus confirms the rule that the
followers of scientific management principles have
recognized the need of psychological inquiries, but
have not done anything worth mentioning to apply the
results of really scientific psychology. Hence
the situation is the same as in the field of vocational
guidance. In both cases a vague longing for psychological
analysis and psychological measurement, but in both
cases so far everything has remained on the level of
helpless psychological dilettantism. It stands
in striking contrast with the scientific seriousness
with which the economic questions are taken up in
the field of vocational guidance and the physical questions
in the field of scientific management. It is,
therefore, evidently the duty of the experimental
psychologists themselves to examine the ground from
the point of view of the psychological laboratory.