If it be accompanied by a shortening of the hours of labour, the damage inflicted by the rigour of mechanical discipline may be compensated by a larger leisure.This compensation, of course, is reduced or even nullified, if the greater intensity of labour in the shorter day takes more out of the man, as often happens, than was taken out before.But, assuming that this is not the case, and that for a longer dull routine work-day is substituted a shorter but even more mechanical day, a net gain for labour is still possible.I am disposed to hold that a good case might be made out for Scientific Management as regards those orders of routine labour which, as ordinarily carried on, contain very little interest or humanity.Even then, however, there is a danger that deserves attention.If this regimentation can reduce the cost per unit of dull, heavy muscular toil, as is likely, it may prevent the discovery and application of wholly mechanical substitutes for this work.
But the human economy is far more doubtful in the case of labour which, though subdivided and mainly of a routine character, still contains a margin for the display of skill, initiative and judgment.To remove these qualities altogether from such work and to vest them, as is proposed, not even in the overseers, but in a little clique of scientific experts, would mean the conversion of large bodies of skilled, intelligent workers into automatic drudges.The life and character of these men would suffer as an inevitable reaction of this drudgery, and it is doubtful whether a somewhat shortened work-day and somewhat higher wages would compensate such damage.While we may recognise the general desirability of division and specialisation of labour, some detailed liberty and flexibility should be left to the worker.
§9.Indeed, were the full rigour of Scientific Management to be applied throughout the staple industries, not only would the human costs of labour appear to be enhanced, but progress in the industrial arts itself would probably be damaged.For the whole strain of progress would be thrown upon the Scientific Management and the consulting psychologist.The large assistance given to technical invention by the observation and experiments of intelligent workmen, the constant flow of suggestion for detailed improvements, would cease.The elements of creative work still surviving in most routine labour would disappear.On the one hand, there would be small bodies of efficient taskmasters carefully administering the orders of expert managers, on the other, large masses of physically efficient but mentally inert executive machines.Though the productivity of existing industrial processes might be greatly increased by this economy, the future of industrial progress might be imperilled.For not only would the arts of invention and improvement be confined to the few, but the mechanisation of the great mass of workmen would render them less capable of adapting their labour to any other method than that to which they had been drilled.Again, such automatism in the workers would react injuriously upon their character as consumers, damaging their capacity to get full human gain out of any higher remuneration that they might obtain.It would also injure them as citizens, disabling them from taking an intelligent part in the arts of political self-government.
For industrial servitude is inimical to political liberty.It would become even more difficult than now for a majority of men, accustomed in their work-day to mechanical obedience, to stand up in their capacity of citizens against their industrial rulers when, as often happens upon critical occasions, political interests correspond with economic cleavages.
I would not dogmatise upon the necessity of these human disadvantages of Scientific Management.The more rigorous routine of the work-day might be adequately compensated by shorter hours, higher wages, increased opportunities for education, recreation, and home life.But there can be no security for adequate compensations of these orders under a scientific management directed primarily by private profit-making motives.For there is no guarantee that the larger profits to a business firm do not entail a damage to its employees, not offset by the bonus which they may obtain.Nor have we the required security that any social gain in the way of increased product and lower prices may not be cancelled by the human injury inflicted upon large bodies of workers and citizens by the more mechanical and servile conditions of their labour.
§10.A little reflection will make it clear that the complete success of such a business economy would involve a corresponding 'science'
on the side of consumption.The standardised worker ought also to be a standardised consumer.For the regular reliable conformity of work must involve a similar conformity in diet and in other habits of life.If the 'scientific manager' were the full owner of his workmen, it would evidently be a function of his science to work out experimentally, with the assistance of the bio-psychologist, the cheapest and best way of living for each particular trade and type of worker.He would discover and prescribe the precise combination of foods, the most hygienic clothing and housing, the most appropriate recreations and the 'best books' for each class, with a view to the productive efficiency of its members.He would encourage by bonuses eugenic, and discourage by fines dysgenesic marriages among his employees.So far as intelligent employers are in a position to determine or to influence the expenditure of the wages they pay and the general conduct of the lives of their employees outside the working hours, they are disposed to practice this policy.Where they are the owners of the town or village in which the workers find it most convenient to live, they can often do so with considerable effect.
