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Concerning the health and conservation of the strength of the women workers in the mill under Scientific Management, the task of the speeders and of the women at cloth inspection tired the girls no more than it had before. In the spool tending and the winding, as the two most exhausting operations in each process, the stooping and the stamping of the pedals, had been increased by the heightened task, the exhaustion of the workers was heightened. But the work of the excitable little spool tender mentioned was finally so arranged as to leave her in better health than in the days when she was employed on piece-work, and the management was now endeavoring to eliminate the stooping at the bobbins. At spinning almost all the spinners found the work easier than before, probably because Scientific Management demands that machine supervision and assistance shall be the best possible. It must be remembered that the adjustment of conditions in the mill here is comparatively new. Almost all the girls said: "They don't drive you at the mill. They make it as easy for you as they can." It was of special value to observe the operation of Scientific Management in an establishment where all the industrial conditions are difficult for women. As in the white goods sewing for the Cloth Finishing establishment, these industrial conditions are unfortunately controlled to a great extent by competition and by custom for both the employer and the employees. The best omen for the conservation of the health of the women workers under Scientific Management in the cotton mill was the entire equity and candor shown by the management in facing situations unfavorable for the women workers' health and their sincere intention of the best practicable readjustments.
V
The application of Scientific Management to women's work in the Delaware Bleachery was very limited, extending only to about 12 girls, all employed in folding and wrapping cloth.[60] The factory, on the outskirts of a charming old city in Delaware, is an enormous, picturesque cement pile, reaching like a bastion along the Brandywine River, with its windows overlooking the wooded bank of the stream.
The girls stand in a large room, before tables piled with great bolts of material, and stamp tickets and style cards, fasten them to the roll, fold over the raw edges of the material in a lap, tie two pieces of ribbon around the bolt, wrap it in paper, stamp and attach other tickets, and tie it up with cord to be shipped. Here, after a time-study was made of the quicker girls in all the operations, different tasks were set for different weights of material; and if the task was accomplished, a bonus was paid, amounting, roughly speaking, to a quarter of the worker's hourly wage. The arrangement of the different processes was so different for each worker, after and before the system was installed, that none of the girls could compare the different amounts of work she completed at the different times. But the whole output, partly through a better routing of the work to the tables, and by paying the boys who brought it a bonus of 5 cents for each worker who made her bonus, was increased from twenty-five to fifty per cent.
The girls' hours were decreased from 10-1/4 a day with frequent overtime up to nine at night to 9-1/4 a day with no overtime, the Saturday half-holiday remaining unchanged. Here is a list of the changes in the week wages. The work at the time of the inquiry was slack. Sometimes there were only a few hours in the day of wrapping of a kind on which the task and bonus was applied. Besides, these workers were in the midst of an establishment managed by another system. The bonus was given on the basis of the former wage. And this remained lower in the case of workers employed fewer years by the firm, though sometimes their task was the same as that of workers employed longer. Where the girls wrapped both the heavier and the lighter materials, the allotment of these was in the hands of a sub-foreman, who, instead of being in the new position of a teacher rewarded for helping each worker to make her bonus, was in the old position of a distributor of favors. The slackness of the work had led the management, in a good-willed attempt to provide as well as possible for the employees, to place several girls from other departments under this sub-foreman. One of these less strong and experienced girls, at the time of the inquiry, was receiving such an amount of heavy work that she could wrap only enough of the task to enable her to earn from $3 to $5 a week. The firm's policy was paternalistic, and while in many ways it had a genuine kindness, it was not in general sympathy with Scientific Management, though the superintendent is a thorough and consistent supporter of the new system. But he had not been able, single handed, to achieve all the necessary adjustments, in spite of the decided increase of output the new methods had already obtained for the company.
PER WEEK FORMERLY - - Folding and ticketing on light material $5 to 6 $4.84 Folding and ticketing on light material 5 to 6 4.84 Wrapping light material 6 to 7 4.56 Wrapping light material 7 to 8 4.84 Wrapping light and heavy material 6 to 6.50 4.56 Wrapping light and heavy material combined with napkin tying 6 to 7 4.84 Folding and ticketing both light and heavy material 5 to 6 4.84 Folding and ticketing both light and heavy material (unaccustomed to the 4.59 4.56 work) (once 6.69) Folding and ticketing both light and heavy material (unaccustomed to the work) 5 4.56 Folding and ticketing both light and heavy material (unaccustomed to the work) 3 to 5 7 (in another department) - -
Even considering slackness, these increases per week for first-rate speed and work, though in many cases the work was light, cannot but seem small. All the girls lived in attractive houses and pleasant places. All but one were with their families. The city has an open market. People of all grades of income go to market properly with market-baskets, choose food of excellent quality, and have fresh vegetables through the winter. The ladies of the house, the girls' mothers, preserve fruit from June strawberries to autumn apple-butter, and exhibit it proudly in row after row of glass jars. But the girls' wages could not pay for such living conditions. The girl who was boarding, and whose wages were sometimes $5 a week, could not always pay her board bill and had almost nothing left for other expenses.[61]
In regard to health and fatigue the main difficulty here, as at the Cloth Finishing factory, was in the lifting of heavier pieces of cloth. Two of the girls had suffered, since the introduction of the bonus and task, by straining themselves in this way. One of them was at home ill for a week, and is now quite well again. The other girl was away for two months, and though she is now at work, had not fully regained her health. The company had at once obtained employment less straining for the first of these girls, and the second said that the firm had always been fair with her in arranging the work. It was said that it had been Mr. Gantt's intention to have the heavier lifting done by men and boys, instead of combining it with the larger tasks the girls now accomplished under the new system. But the department had never fully carried out its intention, and unfortunately since Mr. Gantt's departure rather more of the heavy material had been ordered from the house than before.
The general good will of the firm, the picturesque factory site, the pleasant work-rooms, and the attractive living conditions of the Delaware workers gave them an extraordinary opportunity to pursue their labor healthfully. But because of its incomplete adoption, Scientific Management, though it had shortened hours, and in most cases had raised wages, had proven of less potential value to the workers than to those in the more difficult industrial situation obtaining in the cotton mill.
VI
In general, then, Scientific Management for women workers in this country may be said as far as it has been applied to have increased wages, to have shortened hours, and to have resulted fortunately for the health of women workers in some instances and unfortunately in others.
Wherever a process presented a difficulty which remained unremedied, if the task were multiplied, the difficulty, of course, was multiplied. No matter how greatly the weight of a wagon is lightened, if there is a hole in the road of its passage, and the road is now to be travelled sixty times a day, instead of twenty times, as before, the physical difficulty from this hole is not only trebled, but while it may be endured with patience twenty times, is not only a muscular, but a nervous strain at the sixtieth. This was the situation in regard to all unrelieved heavy lifting wherever cloth was manipulated, the situation in regard to the stooping for the spool tenders, the stamping at the winding machine, and the stooping and breakages at the sewing-machine. But these points, instead of being ignored by the management, were seriously regarded by the employers as inimical to their own best interests in combination with those of their employees, and in all the establishments were in process of adjustment.
In the present writer's judgment this adjustment would have been inaugurated earlier in several processes and would have been more rapid and effective for both the employer's interest and that of the women workers if the women workers' difficulties had been fairly and clearly specified through trade organization. Such an organization would also be of value in preventing danger of injury for workers whose attention under Scientific Management should be concentrated on their tasks, and of value in supporting the tendency of Scientific Management to pay work absolutely according to the amount accomplished by the worker, and not under a certain specified rate for this amount.
Scientific Management as applied to women's work in this country is, of course, very recent. This synthesis of its short history is collected from the statements made by about eighty of the women workers, by Mr. Gantt, and by the owner, superintendent, and head of the planning department of the cotton mill, by the superintendent and one of the owners of the Cloth Finishing factory, and the superintendent and one of the owners of the Bleachery. The account should be supplemented by several general observations.
The first is that it is difficult to determine where the health of a worker has been strained by industry and where by other causes. Quite outside any of the narratives mentioned were those of two young women employed under Scientific Management whose health was hopelessly broken. Both of these poor girls were subject to wrong and oppressive maltreatment at home. Indeed, from oppression at home, one of the girls had repeatedly found refuge and protection in the consideration shown to her by the establishment where she worked. It was not she who blamed the new way of management for her breakdown, but people whose impression of her situation was vague and lacked knowledge.
The whole tendency of Scientific Management toward truth about industry, toward justice, toward a clear personal record of work, established without fear or favor, had inspired something really new and revolutionary in the minds of both the managers and the women workers where the system had been inaugurated. Nearly all of them wished to tell and to obtain, as far as they could, the actual truth about the experiment everywhere. Almost no one wished to "make out a case." This expressed sense of candor and cooeperation on both sides seemed to the present writer more stirring and vital than the gains in wages and hours, far more serious even than the occasional strain on health which the imperfect installation of Scientific Management had sometimes caused.
These strains on women's health in industry in America—stooping and monotony in all the needle trades, jumping on pedals in machine tending, dampness and heat in cotton production, the standing without pause for many hours a day throughout the month, the lifting of heavy weights in packing and in distribution—all these industrial strains for women constitute grave public questions affecting the good fortune of the whole nation and not to be answered in four years, nor by one firm. It is undoubtedly the tendency of Scientific Management to relieve all these strains.
No one can see even in part the complications of contemporary factory work, the hundred operations of human hands and muscles required for placing a single yard of cotton cloth on the market, the thousand threads spinning and twisting, the thousand shuttles flying, the manifold folding and refolding and wrapping and tying, the innumerable girls working, standing, walking by these whirring wheels and twisting threads and high piled folding tables, without feeling strongly that ours is indeed an industrial civilization, and that the conditions of industry not only completely control the lives of uncounted multitudes, but affect in some measure every life in this country to-day.
No finer dream was ever dreamed than that the industry by which the nation lives should be so managed as to secure for the men and women engaged in it their real prosperity, their best use of their highest powers. By and large, the great task of common daily work our country does to-day is surely not so managed, either by intent or by result, either for the workers or for the most "successful" owners of dividends. How far Scientific Management will go toward realizing its magnificent dream in the future will be determined by the greatness of spirit and the executive genius with which its principles are sustained by all the people interested in its inauguration, the employers, the workers, and the engineers.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 43: Brief on behalf of Traffic Committee of Commercial Organizations of Atlantic Seaboard, p. 70. Louis D. Brandeis.]
[Footnote 44: Fourteen years ago Scientific Management was applied to women's work in a Rolling Machine Company in Massachusetts. Here the women's hours were reduced from 10-1/2 day to 8-1/2; their wages were increased about 100 per cent; and their output about 300 per cent. All the women had two days' rest a month with pay. The work consisted in inspecting ball-bearings for bicycles. Their department of the business, however, closed twelve years ago. Accurate facts other than those listed concerning the workers' experience as to hours, wages, and general health under Scientific Management are at this date too few to be valuable.]
[Footnote 45: "Academic and Industrial Efficiency," by F.W. Taylor and Morris Llewellyn Cook.]
[Footnote 46: The specialistic and detailed care necessary for practical and exact time-study may be indicated by the reproduction below of a method of record used by Mr. Sanford E. Thompson in timing wheelbarrow excavations. (Explanation. The letters a, b, c, etc., indicate elementary units of the operation: "Filling barrow" = (a); "starting" = (b); "wheeling full" = (c), etc.)]
[Footnote 47: "Efficiency." Harrington Emerson.]
[Footnote 48: "Work, Wages and Profits," pp. 110 to 111. H.L. Gantt.]
[Footnote 49: While the bonus system as a means of compensation has been used very often in connection with the Scientific Management, it must not, however, be supposed that this method of compensation is alone and in itself Scientific Management. In fact, as employed without Scientific Management, it is to be regarded with some apprehension.]
[Footnote 50: The work in this department was, besides, rather slack at the time of year when I visited the factory, and wages for some of these workers were $6 a week, as low as they had been before the bonus was introduced.]
[Footnote 51: The girl who directs them and issues the orders receives a bonus for every stamper earning a bonus and earns on full time from $12 to $15.]
[Footnote 52: These girls are not employed under the bonus and task system. But it is interesting to observe that they may either sit or stand to iron, as they prefer.]
[Footnote 53: The men folders at the heaviest work here now receive with the bonus from $14 to $17 a week.]
[Footnote 54: A worker does not lose her regular wage if she is stopped by a breakage. Her time-card is altered. And she has credit on a time basis for the period while the machine is not running. A breakage in the first machine of a tandem pair stops both sewers. But a breakage in the second means that work piles up for the second sewer, and unless she makes it up, she will prevent her companion from earning a bonus, though not a time wage.]
[Footnote 55: The management, on learning of this, said the practice would be stopped at once.]
[Footnote 56: "The cotton as it grows in the field becomes more or less filled with blown dust.... Lint is given off in all processes up to and including spinning.... The only practical way to keep down the dust in all of these operations is by frequent sweeping and mopping the floor and wiping off the machinery." Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-earners in the United States. Vol. I, p. 365.
"What degree of moisture is safely permissible from the standpoint of the operatives' health is an unsettled question.... When the operative after a day's work in a humid and relaxing atmosphere goes into one relatively drier, the assault on the delicate membrane of the air-passages is sharp. The effect of these changes is greatly to lower the vital resistance and make the worker especially susceptible to pulmonary, bronchial, or catarrhal affections. It is very possible that the dust and lint present in the mill have been credited with effects which are due in part to these atmospheric conditions." Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-earners in the United States. Vol. I, p. 362.]
[Footnote 57: Besides, work had lately been slack, and this had further decreased the wages.]
[Footnote 58: Since visiting the New Jersey cotton mill, the present writer has seen spool tenders at work at a machine requiring no stooping, and provided with a board below the bobbins, placed at such a height, that the worker can relieve her position while standing by resting her weight against the board, above one knee and then above the other.]
[Footnote 59: At the same time work was slack so that week wages had dropped to $3 and $4.]
[Footnote 60: One of the girls issues batches of tickets. Another girl unfolds one end of certain of the packages, and inserts a ticket and stamps an outside label, to accord with the invoice system of some of the purchasers. These girls had received before $5.40 and $4.84 a week, respectively, and now receive, the one $5.73, and the other between $5 and $6.]
[Footnote 61: All the firms have rest rooms for the girls. The Delaware firm and the New Jersey cotton mill have pleasant lunch-rooms, where an excellent lunch is provided at cost.]
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