Shop Management | Page 3

as antagonistic.
What the workmen want from their employers beyond anything else is
high wages, and what employers want from their workmen most of all
is a low labor cost of manufacture.
These two conditions are not diametrically opposed to one another as
would appear at first glance. On the contrary, they can be made to go
together in all classes of work, without exception, and in the writer's
judgment the existence or absence of these two elements forms the best
index to either good or bad management.
This book is written mainly with the object of advocating high wages
and low labor cost as the foundation of the best management, of

pointing out the general principles which render it possible to maintain
these conditions even under the most trying circumstances, and of
indicating the various steps which the writer thinks should be taken in
changing from a poor system to a better type of management.
The condition of high wages and low labor cost is far from being
accepted either by the average manager or the average workman as a
practical working basis. It is safe to say that the majority of employers
have a feeling of satisfaction when their workmen are receiving lower
wages than those of their competitors. On the other hand very many
workmen feel contented if they find themselves doing the same amount
of work per day as other similar workmen do and yet are getting more
pay for it. Employers and workmen alike should look upon both of
these conditions with apprehension, as either of them are sure, in the
long run, to lead to trouble and loss for both parties.
Through unusual personal influence and energy, or more frequently
through especial conditions which are but temporary, such as dull times
when there is a surplus of labor, a superintendent may succeed in
getting men to work extra hard for ordinary wages. After the men,
however, realize that this is the case and an opportunity comes for them
to change these conditions, in their reaction against what they believe
unjust treatment they are almost sure to lean so far in the other
direction as to do an equally great injustice to their employer.
On the other hand, the men who use the opportunity offered by a
scarcity of labor to exact wages higher than the average of their class,
without doing more than the average work in return, are merely laying
up trouble for themselves in the long run. They grow accustomed to a
high rate of living and expenditure, and when the inevitable turn comes
and they are either thrown out of employment or forced to accept low
wages, they are the losers by the whole transaction.
The only condition which contains the elements of stability and
permanent satisfaction is that in which both employer and employees
are doing as well or better than their competitors are likely to do, and
this in nine cases out of ten means high wages and low labor cost, and
both parties should be equally anxious for these conditions to prevail.
With them the employer can hold his own with his competitors at all
times and secure sufficient work to keep his men busy even in dull
times. Without them both parties may do well enough in busy times,

but both parties are likely to suffer when work becomes scarce.
The possibility of coupling high wages with a low labor cost rests
mainly upon the enormous difference between the amount of work
which a first-class man can do under favorable circumstances and the
work which is actually done by the average man.
That there is a difference between the average and the first-class man is
known to all employers, but that the first-class man can do in most
cases from two to four times as much as is done by an average man is
known to but few, and is fully realized only by those who have made a
thorough and scientific study of the possibilities of men.
The writer has found this enormous difference between the first-class
and average man to exist in all of the trades and branches of labor
which he has investigated, and these cover a large field, as he, together
with several of his friends, has been engaged with more than usual
opportunities for thirty years past in carefully and systematically
studying this subject.
The difference in the output of first-class and average men is as little
realized by the workmen as by their employers. The first-class men
know that they can do more work than the average, but they have rarely
made any careful study of the matter. And the writer has over and over
again found them utterly incredulous when he informed them, after
close observation and study, how much they were