34 



As regards the degradation of the skilled worker and the absorption 

 of surplus skilled labour : one speaker cited Hoxie as tending 

 to show that the workman was degraded. I think there is a 

 misconception of the whole contention. The immediate point is, will 

 skilled workers of the present generation have jobs in the next 

 few years ? I think they will, and I think we must leave it 

 there. Our experience bears out my argument. Our firm certainly 

 has been growing, but it is the firms who take the most progressive line 

 who do grow. It does not apply to everything that increased pro- 

 duction will mean an increased demand ; but to most things, if you 

 can make them cheaper. My impression of the Hoxie investigation 

 is that Scientific Management was not really practised in any of the 

 places investigated : the employers merely tried to put into effect various 

 dodges, but anything like a real scientific study of conditions was not 

 made anywhere. I have visited a number of these supposed scientific- 

 ally managed firms, but my impression was that, far from their teaching 

 us, we could teach them something about a really scientific basis. 

 I think Hoxie shows that. The result of such methods is to increase 

 antagonism. A speed boss would have to have special training, but 

 I don't think the speed-boss system would work in an engineering shop. 

 We certainly found, when we tried to control the flow of work separately, 

 that it broke down, and we came back to a system of management in 

 which the foreman, as local manager, is supreme over all the functions 

 of management, supported by expert assistants, and that arrangement 

 was easily worked. The foreman of a large department has a technical 

 assistant who is a specialist on the process, an " order-of-work " 

 assistant, an inspection assistant, and a store-keeping assistant. It is 

 easier to pick out people from the ranks able to fill these specialist 

 jobs than it would be to fill each post by a foreman who would have 

 to be a good hand at all of them. The foreman under our arrangement 

 has to be, primarily, a manager of these specialists, and the best 

 specialists get promoted to the foremen's positions. 



Another criticism was that it is no use tinkering at the present 

 system Scientific Management may be more productive, but as far as 

 labour is concerned the whole of the present system must go and the 

 capitalist must be abolished, the worker taking over control. We 

 are not here to discuss that, and, as an employer, I hardly like 

 to offer an opinion, but under such a system conditions will not 

 be altered so much as you appear to think. There must be 

 management, and the mere fact that Trade Union affairs do not 

 always go smoothly should be taken as a lesson that in the very 

 much more complicated communities, with which industry will be 

 concerned, there will be just the same cleavage between management 

 and worker, and the same difficulty of the workman in understanding 

 all the conditions and considerations which affect the management. 

 I do not think that criticism goes far ; if you run industry you have 

 to know the technique of management, and this is quite a distinct 

 profession. One of the greatest difficulties of payment by results (no 



