MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
147 
tion to the requisites, in the judgment of the speaker, for a successful 
form of efficiency engineering or of scientific management. 
All careful and disinterested students of efficiency engineering will 
doubtless admit that such systems are advocated by the employer, tliat 
the employer instituting them expects to direct their operation, and 
that the systems are adopted primarily for (lie benefit of the employer. 
The problems connected with the various systems are viewed from the 
standpoint of the employer and capitalist. Benefit to the wage earner 
is perhaps considered to be an incidental advantage; but it is a second- 
ary matter. The bright and shining goal— the attractive lure — is low- 
ered costs and increased profits rather than better workmen and citi- 
zens, or more leisure and culture and enjoyment for the toiling mass 
and their families. Is it reasonable to expect that the wage earners, 
organized or unorganized, will grow enthusiastic over a lop-sided system 
of scientific management? If, as Mr. Taylor declares, “close, intimate, 
personal cooperation” is required to “energize” a plant, efficiency en- 
gineering cannot reach a high degree of success while the workers dis- 
trust the motives of the employer, or as long as the workers in the 
plant are convinced that the employer is trying to get more work out 
of them without proportionally increasing their pay. 
The average American citizen looks askance upon an arbitrary govern- 
ment — a government which is in no way under the control of the mass 
of governed. The despot whether enlightened and benevolent or not, 
would be regarded with suspicion and would not be tolerated. Men 
have repeatedly and vigorously objected to arbitrary action on the part 
of government. And for centuries the western world has been moving 
toward democracy. The Louis XIV view of government is obsolete; 
but absolutism iu industry is still characteristic of the business world. 
Will not, therefore, the average wage earner granted political privileges 
but shut out of the councils of industry, distrust the management of the 
business in which he earns his daily bread? He will certainly see in 
the plans of the employer schemes for quietly and effectively squeezing 
the laboring man. The workers in our shops, factories and mines can 
no more be expected to look with favor upon arbitrary changes concern- 
ing which they have not been consulted, than can the average citizen 
of today be expected smiling to abide by the rulings of an arbitrary 
monarch. 
The day of the individual entrepreneur is of the past not of the 
present or of the future. We may regret his going, we may vociferously 
assert that he was superior to the giant corporation with its collection 
of mutually interdependent units, and we may argue that the rivalry be- 
tween entrepreneur and entrepreneur is essential to business progress 
and industrial efficiency; but the corporation is here and here to stay. 
Likewise the day of individual bargaining with the isolated worker is 
passing. Employers may strive to delay its going; but in vain will be 
the effort. Professor Commons lias pointed out that unorganized as 
well as organized workers are willing to strike for the right to bargain 
collectively. “It is their desperate recognition that (he day of indi- 
vidual bargains is gone for them.” It is safe to assert that efficiency 
engineering will not be successfully introduced and maintained b} r union- 
smashing corporations demanding individual bargaining with workers, 
— because “close, intimate, personal cooperation between the manage- 
