Produced by Charles E. Nichols
The Principles of Scientific Management
by
FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR, M.E., Sc.D.
1911
President Roosevelt in his address to the Governors at the White House,prophetically remarked that "The conservation of our national resourcesis only preliminary to the larger question of national efficiency."
The whole country at once recognized the importance of conserving ourmaterial resources and a large movement has been started which will beeffective in accomplishing this object. As yet, however, we have butvaguely appreciated the importance of "the larger question of increasingour national efficiency."
We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste, oursoil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal andour iron is in sight. But our larger wastes of human effort, which go onevery day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, orinefficient, and which Mr. Roosevelt refers to as a, lack of "nationalefficiency," are less visible, less tangible, and are but vaguelyappreciated.
We can see and feel the waste of material things. Awkward, inefficient,or ill-directed movements of men, however, leave nothing visible ortangible behind them. Their appreciation calls for an act of memory, aneffort of the imagination. And for this reason, even though our dailyloss from this source is greater than from our waste of material things,the one has stirred us deeply, while the other has moved us but little.
As yet there has been no public agitation for "greater nationalefficiency," no meetings have been called to consider how this is to bebrought about. And still there are signs that the need for greaterefficiency is widely felt.
The search for better, for more competent men, from the presidents ofour great companies down to our household servants, was never morevigorous than it is now. And more than ever before is the demand forcompetent men in excess of the supply.
What we are all looking for, however, is the readymade, competent man;the man whom some one else has trained. It is only when we fully realizethat our duty, as well as our opportunity, lies in systematicallycooperating to train and to make this competent man, instead of inhunting for a man whom some one else has trained, that we shall be onthe road to national efficiency.
In the past the prevailing idea has been well expressed in the sayingthat "Captains of industry are born, not made"; and the theory has beenthat if one could get the right man, methods could be safely left tohim. In the future it will be appreciated that our leaders must betrained right as well as born right, and that no great man can (with theold system of personal management) hope to compete with a number ofordinary men who have been properly organized so as efficiently tocooperate.
In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must befirst. This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed.On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that ofdeveloping first-class men; and under systematic management the best manrises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before.
This paper has been written:
First. To point out, through a series of simple illustrations, the greatloss which the whole country is suffering through inefficiency in almostall of our daily acts.
Second. To try to convince the reader that the remedy for thisinefficiency lies in s