SECTION 17. INDUCTION. 141 



Overhauling and cleaning a boiler may seem a matter in which 

 science has no suggestions to offer. The founder of the effi- 

 ciency movement manifestly thought otherwise. "Time study 

 showed that a great part of the time was lost owing to the 

 strained position of the workman. Thick pads were made to 

 fasten to the elbows, knees, and hips ; special tools and applian- 

 ces were made for the various details of the work; a com- 

 plete list of the tools and implements was entered on the 

 instruction card, each tool being stamped with its own number 

 for identification, and all were issued from the tool room in a 

 tool box so as to keep them together and save time. A separate 

 piece work price was fixed for each of the elements of the job, 

 and a thorough inspection of each part of the work secured 

 as it was completed. The instruction card for this work filled 

 several typewritten pages, and described in detail the order in 

 which the operations should be done and the exact details of 

 each man's work, with the number of each tool required, piece 

 work prices, etc. The whole scheme was much laughed at 

 when it first went into use, but the trouble taken was fully 

 justified, for the work was better done than ever before, and 

 it cost only eleven dollars to completely overhaul a set of 

 300 h. p. boilers by this method, while the average cost of 

 doing the same work on day work without an instruction card 

 was sixty-two dollars." (F. W. Taylor, Shop Management, 1919, 

 pp. 181-182.) 



It is no wonder, then, that those conversant with the scien- 

 tific movement in industry hail it as the great liberator from 

 witless routine. '"I cannot prophesy the end, there is no end. 

 I am learning my trades all over again', testified a prominent 

 contractor in regard to the system, before the Interstate Com- 

 merce Commission. Scientific management is said to differ 

 from the ordinary systems of production 'much as production 

 by machinery differs from production by hand; and the re- 

 volution which must result from the introduction of scientific 

 management, is comparable only to that involved in the transi- 

 tion from hand to machine production'." (Josephine Goldmark, 

 Fatigue and Efficiency, 1912, pp. 192-193.) Untutored common 

 sense is thus being expelled from its last stronghold. 



Macaulay was right in denying to Bacon the claim for com- 

 plete originality; but this claim the great Elizabethan methodo- 

 logist never advanced. What Bacon resolutely combated 1 , was 

 the common practice of reasoning from propositions to pro- 

 positions heedless of examining the data and verifying the 

 results. He would have expressed, for instance, nothing but 

 condemnation, we fear, for so brilliant a thinker as Herbert 

 Spencer who first issued an elaborate Syllabus, and then spent 

 forty years in filling in its outlines. It would be hard to refute 

 Bacon's reasoning in favour of a methodology: "If in things 

 mechanical men had set to work with their naked hands, 



