13 



are obsessed with the idea of a pre-ordained standard of Living for the 

 workers which it is almost immoral for them to exceed. 



A second objection to all these systems, in so far as they claim to be 

 scientific, is that they all rest at some point upon a rate fixed by purely 

 arbitrary methods. Mr. Taylor may claim that his system makes 

 collective bargaining unnecessary by determining wage-rates on a basis 

 of economic law ; but the piece-rates upon which his system is based 

 are fixed in a purely arbitrary manner. All the time-study in the world 

 cannot show how much ought to be paid for a job ; it can only show 

 the length of time a job ought to take. Whether the hourly rate 

 should be 10d., or 10s., or 10, no amount of time-study can decide. 

 An hourly rate or a piece-price must be fixed or assumed before the 

 ' scientific manager ' can set his system of payment to work ; and as 

 there can be no scientific method employed in fixing such a rate, the 

 rate is essentially a matter for bargaining on a collective basis. 



Some scientific managers may object to this statement on the ground 

 that, by a combination of time and motion-study, they can determine 

 the varying degrees of skill, attention, etc., required for various jobs, 

 and thereby arrive at a justly graduated scale of wage-rates. This 

 adjustment, however, is purely relative, and assumes a standard rate 

 or rates as already in existence. We may know that A's skill is twice 

 as great as B's, and we may conclude that we ought to pay A twice as 

 much as B ; but this will not hel p us to determine how much we ought 

 to pay either of them. 



This, most advocates of the system would now admit ; but it is 

 important to make the point because it destroys, once and for all, 

 Taylor's claim that Scientific Management does away with the need 

 for bargaining about wages, and substitutes law for force in the deter- 

 mination of wage rates. It does, and can do, nothing of the sort ; 

 for it does not, and cannot, . touch the question of the proper division 

 of the product between Labour and Capital, or of the impropriety of 

 any such division. Scientific Management does nothing to remove 

 the need for collective bargaining and Trade Union organisation, 

 and it is therefore of the greatest importance to look carefully at its 

 effect upon them. 



This brings us to the greatest of all the objections to ' scientific * 

 methods of payment that they are unintelligible to the ordinary 

 worker. We have described above only the simplest forms of the 

 systems advocated : and these in themselves would be enough to baffle 

 many workers. But in practice every disciple of the masters of the 

 movement has his own system, so that methods vary from shop to 

 shop, from department to department, and from job to job. The 

 result is that, in the majority of cases, the workers do not try to under- 

 stand the system on which they are being paid, but simply judge it 

 by the amount of money they receive at the end of the week. The 

 objection to this state of affairs will be obvious to anyone who has 

 even the smallest belief in the value of self-government. It concentrates 

 knowledge in the hands of the expert, and leaves the governed with 



