Cost keeping, in the sense that we use the term, has for its main object the determination of the efficiency of men. A proper system of cost keeping tells you daily what each workman or each gang of workmen has accomplished. It is better than a foreman, for it cannot "stand in" with the men. It is better than a foreman, for it costs you less and it tells you more. A cost─keeping system tells you who are your good men, and who are your lazy men. It shows you whom to discharge, and whom to promote. It tells you whose wages are too high, and whose are not high enough. And, finally, it leads to that ideal condition of industrial organization known as _profit─sharing_. How often have we read in novels of Utopia, where all men share in the profits of all business; and how often have we smiled with incredulity at the prospect? Yet Utopia is right here in America, in spots; and it is a Utopia far more rational than that of the dreamers. There are many firms that pay their men on a unit─price or bonus system. This is profit─sharing, and it is a profit─sharing begotten by the use of cost─keeping systems; for, when a manager has learned by cost keeping that certain men or groups of men produce more than others, he soon perceives the advantage of stimulating them to further use of brain and muscle by paying them either a bonus for each unit produced in excess of a prescribed minimum, or a unit─price for each piece of work performed. The men invariably respond to this stimulus, and often in a remarkable degree. It is nothing unusual for a man to increase his output 50 per cent upon the introduction of a bonus system of payment; and there are many instances of increase amounting to 200 per cent. Each man then becomes a contractor, and works with the zeal of a contractor, for his earnings increase as his energy and ability increase. This is practical profit─sharing that any workman can understand. It is not something vague and intangible, like 5 per cent per annum. It is something very real and immediate, for a man can feel it in the pay envelope at the end of every week. Cost keeping, then, leads to better management, although dispensing largely with submanagers. It substitutes the record card for the "big stick," yet the record card itself is the biggest stick ever devised. =The Science of Management.= The managing of industrial enterprises is still more or less of an art; but the art is fast passing through the period of evolution that produces a science. There are, unquestionably, certain underlying principles of management which can be summarized into rules or laws. These rules or laws constitute the science of management, and it is our purpose to present certain of the more important laws of management.