EFFICIENCY THE KEY TO SUCCESS 417 



bly 75 per cent of the useless motions and steps. I 

 heard a college woman say, afterward, that her house- 

 work would be revolutionized from that day forth because 

 of this fifteen-minute talk. Another said that one house 

 in which she lived had at least 25 feet of distance between 

 the flour bin and the molding table, and another had 

 the width of three rooms between the kitchen stove and 

 the molding board built in at the farther end of the long 

 pantry. Nothing could more clearly show the need for 

 women as kitchen architects or the mission of the kitchen 

 cabinet. The Expert who gave the address urged that 

 women apply the principles of the work which his firm was 

 doing to the details of their daily work, for themselves. 



Whether the underlying principles are few or many, 

 depends somewhat on how they are stated. The firm 

 of which I speak names twelve, and states, in addition, 

 that some would condense them all into the single word, 

 " common sense." The three which I wish to bring es- 

 pecially to your notice are the necessity for records of 

 what is actually being done, the necessity of " a fair deal," 

 and the necessity of what is called an " efficiency reward." 

 The records, it is demanded, must be " reliable, immedi- 

 ate, and accurate " ; the fair deal applies to the under 

 workers chiefly ; the efficiency rewards are a premium 

 paid to the employee for doing " Standardized work." 

 The form is not so essential as the fact, since without 

 hope of reward "even the best weary in well-doing." 



Employers here and there have had visions of effi- 

 ciency, before the rise of modern firms of efficiency ex- 

 perts, and have managed their own business by these 

 principles, perhaps before they were ever tabulated. 

 We may well wonder whether the successful five per cent 



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