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temperament make them more suitable. The requirements of the new 

 job being known makes it much easier to teach the transferred man. 

 This sorting out of the square pegs to the square holes clearly makes 

 better use of the powers of all. The feature of the specialisation of 

 management functions, which has the most easily recognised effect 

 on productivity, is probably the control of the flow of work. Under 

 other systems, where the foreman is expected to exercise all the func- 

 tions of management, he is generally more efficient from a technical 

 point of view than as a planner and arranger of his work, and a good 

 deal of waiting about between jobs is the result. This waiting is very 

 much reduced, and a greater proportion of the man's time is spent on 

 productive work, under a system where the flow of work is planned 

 and routed by an authority specialising on this duty. There is therefore 

 no doubt in my mind, and I think this will probably be accepted by 

 you also, that Scientific Management satisfies the first of the three 

 tests proposed and may be expected really to increase the productivity 

 of industry. 



The second test, namely, the effect on the standard of living of the 

 workers, must be considered from two points of view. First, as to the 

 proportion between remuneration and effort ; and secondly, the effect 

 on the status of the workman. The question of schemes of remunera- 

 tion I propose to leave till later. 



With regard to the second point, there is a very general fear that 

 the skilled workman will be rendered unnecessary, and will be either 

 eliminated or degraded by being restricted to a narrow range of work, 

 carried out on prescribed methods. It is alleged that the splitting up 

 of jobs, likely to result from study and investigation, enables much 

 work, previously done by skilled men, to be carried out by unskilled. 

 These are undoubtedly real objections, and must be met if at all possible; 

 but here I would point out that subdivision of work was not introduced 

 by Scientific Management. It is a part of the change from handicraft 

 to machine production, and has been a more or less acute problem ever 

 since the Industrial Revolution. While probably we all agree that the 

 ideal of individual craftsmanship is more attractive than that of 

 machine-tending, there is no possibility in sight of realising it on any 

 general scale. We cannot go back to industry by handicraft all we 

 can do is to make the conditions of machine production as consistent 

 as possible with the development of good citizenship. 



Now as to whether Scientific Management exaggerates the danger of 

 degradation of the skilled man, is not clear. My own opinion is that 

 it does not, and I offer the following arguments in support. 



1st It is not by any means all work which, when studied, can be 

 carried out by less skilled men than previously. The methods laid 

 down as the result of study are often more intricate and require more 

 skill for carrying out than before. The speed of working may be so 

 increased that the workman's skill is still required, not to lay down 

 the method itself, but to make the adjustments to the tools and the 

 machines to enable the speed to be maintained. 



