December 20, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



845 



product and of possible methods of reduc- 

 ing that cost. In the factory the solution of 

 these questions is one of great difficulty 

 and complexity. It includes the items of 

 location, building's, machinery, system of 

 organization, functional foremanship, sta- 

 tistics, accounting, planning of work, rout- 

 ing it throiigh the shop, methods of pay- 

 ment of wages, keeping high-priced men 

 only on high-priced work and finally time 

 study resolved into its elements, that is, mo- 

 tion-study. I quote from Frank B. Gil- 

 breth's new book on Motion Study: 



There is no waste of any kind in the world that 

 equals the waste from needless, ill-directed and 

 ineffective motions. . . . Tremendous savings are 

 possible in the work of everybody — they are not 

 for one class, they are not for the trades only; 

 they are for the ofSces, the schools, the colleges, 

 the stores, the household and the farms. ... It is 

 obvious that these improvements must and will 

 come in time. But there is inestimable loss in 

 every hour of delay. The waste of energy of the 

 workers in the industries to-day is pitiful. . . . 

 In the meantime, while we are waiting for the 

 politicians and educators to realize the importance 

 of this subject and to create the bureaus and 

 societies to undertake and complete the work, we 

 need not be idle. There is work in abundance to 

 be done. Motion study must be applied to all the 

 industries. Our trade schools and engineering 

 colleges can: 



1. Observe the best work of the best workers. 



2. Photograph the methods used. 



3. Eeeord the methods used. 



4. Eeeord outputs. 



5. Record costs. 



6. Deduce laws. 



7. Establish laboratories ' ' for trying out laws. ' ' 

 S. Embody laws in instructions. 



9. Publish bulletins. 

 .10. Cooperate to spread results and to train the 

 rising generation. 



Mr. Gilbreth refers to motion study of 

 the industries that are producing material 

 wealth, but his words may be applied to 

 the industry of educating men and women, 

 that is, to the schools and colleges. 



The methods of reducing the cost per 



unit of product in industrial concerns have 

 now been reduced to a science by the man- 

 agement experts, Taylor, Gantt, Emerson, 

 Parkhurst and others. In educational cir- 

 cles only the merest beginning has been 

 made. Bulletin No. 5 of the Carnegie 

 Foundation for the Advancement of Teach- 

 ing, a quarto pamphlet of 134 pages, en- 

 titled "Academic and Industrial Effi- 

 ciency," contains a report by Morris 

 Llewellyn Cooke of the investigation of the 

 department of physics of eight different 

 colleges or universities. Mr. Cooke has had 

 several years' experience as expert on man- 

 agement of industrial works, and is now 

 Director of Public "Works of the city of 

 Philadelphia. His report is only a prelim- 

 inary one, and covers little more than a 

 statistical investigation of the cost of in- 

 struction in physics per student-hour, and 

 some observations on methods of adminis- 

 tration, and on the economical use of build- 

 ings and of the time of the professors and 

 instructors, in all of which he found great 

 differences. The total cost of physics per 

 student-hour at Harvard was $1.08 and at 

 Wisconsin $0.60. Of these totals the in- 

 terest on plant and equipment and adminis- 

 trative expense account is $0.53 at Har- 

 vard, and $0.18 at "Wisconsin. There are 

 differences in the colleges which are far 

 more important, however, than those that 

 can be expressed in dollars and cents. For 

 example, Mr. Cooke found one in which the 

 professors showed the heartiest interest in 

 the progress of each individual student, 

 and another in which "every time the stu- 

 dents were mentioned, there were evidences 

 that the teachers had in mind the students' 

 scholarly inferiority and waywardness." 



The cost per student-hour for any sub- 

 ject may be obtained as in Mr. Cooke's in- 

 vestigation. It will be a far larger task to 

 determine the efficiency of the student-hour 

 — that is, what return in valuable education 



