THE EFFICIENCY MOVEMENT AND THE FARM PROBLEM. 



I 



By J. Russell Smith, 

 Professor of Industry, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Did any of you ever see a Dane? 

 Well, I have, and I want to tell you something about him, and perhaps 

 you will agree with me in it. It is this: A Dane is no smarter than the 

 people of Pennsylvania. Now I have to admit right away that I cannot 

 prove that by looking at our agriculture and at his, for the agriculture of 

 the Dane is far and away ahead of ours. Still, I believe we are as smart 

 as he is, but he has got ahead of us agriculturally in that he has applied 

 the efficiency movement to crop production and selling. Dr. Carver told 

 us yesterday morning how wonderfully they had succeeded in putting up 

 uniform standardized packages of farm products that the world can trust 

 and gladly pays for. 



We hear a great deal these days about the efficiency movement, 

 but it thus far has come almost entirely from manufacturers and the fac- 

 tory. It has four great fields, however, in which it must be applied. One 

 is the factory, the second is the farm, the third is purchasing and selling, 

 and the fourth may be called community activity. 



What is this efficiency movement? Efficiency shows how. There is 

 a right way and a wrong way, often a great many wrong ways, to do 

 practically everything. The efficiency expert studies, and out of the many 

 ways selects the best way. That is all. Mr. Frederick W. Taylor, of this 

 city, well and widely known as one of the fathers of the new efficiency 

 movement, tells us the story of the cleaning of an engine boiler. He 

 found it took a lot of time as ordinarily done. He examined into the proc- 

 esses and found th-at men were lying on their backs, in cramped and 

 awkward positions, with their tools disarranged and out of reach, getting 

 dirt in their eyes, and generally making a hand-to-hand struggle with a 

 bruising job. After carefully figuring out the way it should be done, he 

 printed long and elaborate instructions for the workmen to follow. He 

 made mattresses to lie on, so that they could put their energies into work 

 rather than misery. The tools were arranged in orderly kits and the opera- 

 tions were systematized and definitely arranged in series, with the result 

 that a saving of over two-thirds of the time resulted. This is typical of 

 thousands of cases that might be mentioned. Factory production is rapidly 

 being organized by the efficiency movement, which not only deals with the 

 best way to do particular jobs, but copes with the much greater problem 

 of organizing the various units into a harmonious whole. 



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