Creative Impulse in Industry: A Proposition for Educators

technology, giving little thought to the perfection of labor. It was confidently assumed that labor, out of its own nece

ent business in America decided that the responsibility for realizing labor's adaptation or "labor's co?peration" as they c

the reaction of the workers. A scientific manager, or engineer as he is often called, bears the same relation to the labor force in a factory that an electrical engineer bears to the electrical equipment. If his attention to the emotional reaction of the workers is less detached than scientific standards require, it must be remembered that he is trying to make adjustments which must first of all meet definite business conditions. Where the reactions of the work

he power of machinery is subject to laws. He demonstrated that it was possible in specific operations to discover how the highest degree of energy could be attained and the largest output result, without loss through fatigue. He showed how efficiency could be enhanced by transferring the responsibility of standards of work from the workers to the managers. He formulated, as a business and industry doctrine, that a definite relation between the expenditure of labor energy and the labor reward could be established; that the wage incentive, if applied to labor in relation to energy expended, would yield, or might be expected to yield increased returns. These incentives, rewards

standard, scientific management has made intensive experiments in the scheduling of the various operations to be performed, which are divided among the working force, so that no one operation is held up awaiting the completion of another. It has shown in this connection that work can be "routed" so that the time of workers is not lost. The most successfully managed factories also plan their annual product so that employment will be continuous. They have discovered that the periods of unemployment seriously affect the personnel of a labor force and they estimate that the turnover of the labor force which requires the constant breaking in of new men is an item of serious financial loss. The Ford Automobile Works at one time hired 50,000 men in one year while not employing at any one time more than 14,000. They estimated that the cost of breaking in a new man averaged

tive as well as quantitative standards of machine work. The tendency to establish standards should have educational significance for workers. It would have, if the responsibility for setting standards as well as maintaining them rested in any measure with the workers; it would have, that is, if the workers had the interest in workmanship, which as things now stand they have not. The point in scientific management is that efficiency depends, wholly depends they b

ng of the Taylor Society in March, 1917. In describing the process of

time lost between pressing operations, also the number of minutes the low pressure was kept on. It took us something over a year to perfect this machine, but after it was finally perfected and a record of the operations made, we found that the men actually were operating at an average efficiency of 42 per cent, and our moisture test was running about 54 per cent. Our next step was to post a daily record of the relative standing of the men in the machine room, putting the men who had the best record at the top of the list, in the order of their weekly average efficiencies. (The efficiency of low pressure, which proved to be the most important factor, was computed by calling three minutes of low pressure 100 per cent and two minutes either way 0 per cent.) As a result of simply posting this record our efficiencies rose to over 60 per cent and our moisture test increased a litt

in of the Taylor So

y the day throughout the entire plant. Mr. Wolf accomplished the result by giving meaning to a meaningless task, by letting the men see for themselves

responsibility from the workshop to the manager's office or laboratory. Because of this practice the educational value of establishing standards of workmanship is lost so far as the workers are concern

ined by stimulating a man's reasoning power, and through this means his creative faculty, if the management relieves the man of the responsibility for each individual operation. The opportunity for self expression, which is synonymous with joy in work, is something that the workman is entitled to, and we em

sufficient instructions to get uniform results, but we try to leave as much as possible to the judgment of the individual operator, making our instructions take more the form of constant teaching of principles i

it must have some philosophical conception of the reason for man's existence. It is beginning to be understood that wh

discover first-hand what the processes of fabrication are, the processes in which they are involved; they must adopt ready-made methods of doing their work, they must accept them out of hand withou

o being told that some one way is right without having had the chance to know why, or whether indeed it is the right way. This resistance to being taught, it seems, is nothing more nor less than a wayward desire of a worker to do his own way because it is his way, and of course from the managers' point of view, that is stupid. It is stupid, but the stupidity is in the situation. What does this waywardness of the worker to do his own way suggest? Not that he has a way worth bothering about but that he wants to exercise the quality which all industrial managers agree he does not possess-his initiative. Now a man who

peration, for we believe that the men who are actually doing the work have generally as much to contribute as the foremen and department heads in deciding standard practices; and because we give the workman the chance to have the most to say about the matter, he is willing to conform to the standard, because it really represents a concensus of opinion of the men in his particular group." It is significant in this connection to remember th

not produce men with sufficient initiative to fill these positions. Their estimates of the number of men found in industry who have initiative varies from one to five per cent. The rest they believe are born, routine workers. They speak of their limitations as native. Managers do not stop to consider that their judgments are based wholly on the reaction of the mass of wage workers to the special stimuli which they offer. They say also that high school and college boys show up very little if any better

e by the artificial stimulus of rewards for work done, now depends upon the content of the subject matter and the children's experiments with it, to develop their desire to do the work. The practice of depending on school rewards instead of interest in subject matter is largely responsible for superficial knowledge and lack of ability to th

trained in routine, and to do each task as it is given. This is not education, it is training to do tricks. The worker does not take over what can be called experience from one task to another. He forms certain motor habits, called skill. But under the efficient methods of scientific management the acquirement of this skill is robbed even of the educational value that it had under the unscientific method of factory work, which within its limited

is that the wage as an incentive has no limitations, except the physical limitation of a human being in response to stimulus. And surely it is true that the chance to "make money" is to-day the most powerful stimulus in use. But thoughtful managers of industrial enterprise tell you, incredible as it may seem, that the worker's objection to applying h

in the spending of it; they visit the mother and persuade her to let the girl keep a proportion of her wage and point out to the mother that she is limiting the girl's ambition. They also find girls who have entire control over the spending of their wages, who are without ambition to earn over and above a certain sum because that sum will meet their own recognized needs. The case of these girls the management tries to cover by encouraging them to save for vacations and other purposes which they offer by way of suggestion. In both of these instances the management undertakes to create new wants or ways o

s separate items the worker's proficiency, reliability, continuity in service, indirect charges, increased cost of living, and periods of lay-off; they rate him according to the number of technical processes he is proficient in, whether or not he is engaged on more than one; they rate him if he attends the night school connected with the factory and shows in this way a disposition to learn other operations than, those he already knows. Why, they wonder, does only ten per cent of the force

d that there was weakness in the system of paying bonuses, and the weakness was not overcome until he devised a method of paying the workman for the time allowed plus a percentage of that time according to what he did. This method he declares constantly induced further effort and overcame what they discovered was the weakness in a flat bonus. As fair or as superior as this bonu

, but they are rewards of general merit and bids for continuity of service; they have no direct relation to the wo

ortunity to promote the workers decreases; it falls in proportion to the length of their term of service. That is, chances for promotion are the lowest in factories where conditions otherwise are favorable to the worker. In the factory where the turnover is only 18 per cent the management says that

e general scheme that managers of factories are interested in finding more

ppreciation of its creative content. All that was left for scientific management to gather together for its direction were bits of experience which workers gained by their own experimental efforts at how best to handle tools. Their efforts

not under the delusion that they are acting on their own initiative. They are being managed and they know it and all things being equal (which they are not) they do not like it. The responsibility they may clearly see and feel rests with them to find a better scheme for ca

provisions for social activity, the clubs, while not having an acknowledged relation to the scientific management of the factory and while repudiated by some managers, are a common feature of plants which claim to be scientifically managed. There are scientifically managed plants which object to the recreational and other features which have to do with matters outside the province of the factory, on the ground that it is a meddling with the personal side of people's lives. "A baseball game connected with the factory," said the educational manag

policy of leaving the workers free, it was clear in the instance just cited, had been adopted out of a personal preference for freedom in relationships. The introduction of clinics, rest rooms, restaurants, sanitary provisions, a

them as one of the managers said, as soldiers follow them. It wants this army to be endowed as well with the impulse to produce. It may by its methods realize one of its wants, that is, an army of workers to follow directions; but as it su

ements to satisfy the world's demand for goods, either in time of war or peace. It was never more apparent than it is now, that an increase in a wage rate is a temporary expedient and that wage rewards are not efficient media for securing sustained interest in productive enterprise. It is becoming obvious that the wage system has not the qualifications for the co?rdination of industrial life. As the needs of the nations under th

ilities which had been carried in normal times by business. Because business administration had been dependent for its existence on a scheme of profiteering it is not in the position where it can appeal to labor to con

g importance, as under the present business arrangement that is the position capital occupies. In other

ring from the failure of those decisions and participating in their successful eventuation. As the governments in the present case have made their appeals to labor they have carried the suggestion of partnership in responsibility because the government is presumably the people's voice and its needs also presumably are the common needs and not the special interests of individuals. It is hardly necessary to point out that it was not the intention of government officials who made the appeal to excite a literal interpretation; they did not expect to be tak

it serves the promotion of creative life and the needs of an expanding civilization. As the appeals of the governments at this time bear the stamp of a nation's will, its valuation and respect for common labor, there is the chance, it seems, that they may carry to the workers the energizing thought that all the members of the industrial group must assume, actually assume, responsibility for production, if production is to advance. Equally important in the interest of creative work is the power of these appeals to shift th

g and an unproductive element in industrial life; I mean the need the workers have had for the cultivation of class isolation. As the workers become in the estimation of a community and in their own estimation, responsible members of a society, their more rather than less abortive effort to develop class feeling in America, will disappear. Under those con

*

ing to wage conditions. The Manifesto which was issued was first of all a political document, written and compiled for campaign purposes. But the significance of the party's action is the new interpretation which it is beginning to give industrial democracy. It is evident where state ownership is contemplated that the old idea that industry would pass under the administrative direction of government officials, is replaced by the growing intention and desire of labor to assume responsibility for a

*

onstruction after the war, a responsibility which they have heretofore under all circumstances delegated to representatives not connected directly with the work in the shops. As these representatives were isolated from actual problems of workshop production and alien therefore to the problems in their tec

prise. Instead they emphasized, as did the political socialists and the trade unionists, the importance of protecting the workers' share in the possession of wealth. They made the world understand that business administration of industry exploited labor, but they di

Workers of the World. On an average it takes ten years for these harvesters to become skilled workers and these men, members of this condemned organization, are the most highly skilled harvesters in the country. On account of their revolutionary doctrines and their combined determination to reap rewards as well as crops, they are considered and treated like outlaws, and outlaws of the established order they are in spirit. When the owners of the farms of North Dakota realized that their own returns on the harvests were diverted in the marke

r we should keep in mind in any plans for democratic industrial reconstruction. It is inevitable that an effort to open up and cultivate this desire of labor will be regarded by the present governing forces with apprehension. The movement of labor in this direction is now looked upon with suspicion even by people who are not in a position of control. The general run of people in fact outside of those who recognize labor as a fundamental force in industrial reconstruction, conceive of the labor people as an irresponsible mass of men and view their movements as expressions of an irresponsible desire to seize responsibility. They are the men who are not experienced in business affairs and therefore cannot, it is believe

are of significance to education; for democracy and education are processes concerned with, the people's ability to solve their problems through their experience in solving them. If America is ever to realize its concept of political demo