In breaking in new recruits they should
be set to imitate expert workmen in all the
details possible.
Gang foremen and superintendents should
always be capable of ``showing how'' for the
sake of the men under them.
The better workmen should, where possible,
be located so that they will be observed
by the other employees.
Inefficient help should be avoided since the
example of the less efficient should become the
model for the larger group.
Educational trips or tours of inspection
should be regularly encouraged for both
workmen and superintendents.
The deeds of successful houses should be
brought to the attention of employees.
Where conditions admit, pacemakers should
be retained in various groups to key up the
other men.
<p 47>
Favorable conditions should be provided
for conscious and instinctive imitation for all
the members of the plant.
Persons who are sociable and much liked
are imitated more than others, and if efficient,
are particularly valuable; but if inefficient,
are especially detrimental to others.
At the formal and informal meetings of the
men of a house or a department, demonstrations
of how to do certain definite things are
very interesting and helpful to all concerned.
Demonstrations should be more common.
CHAPTER III
COMPETITION
AS A MEANS OF INCREASING HUMAN
EFFICIENCY
THIRTY years ago American steel
makers were astonishing the world
with new production records. What
English ironmasters, intrenched in their
supremacy for centuries, had regarded as a
standard week's output for Bessemer converters,
their young rivals in mills about the
Great Lakes were doubling, trebling, and even
further increasing. Hardly a month passed
without a new high mark and a shift in possession
of the leadership.
To this remarkable increase in efficiency
William R. Jones--``Captain Bill'' Jones as
he was familiarly known--contributed more
than any other operating man. He was a
genius among executives as well as an inventor
<p 48>
<p 49>
of resource and initiative--a natural leader
and handler of men. When he was asked by
the British Iron and Steel Institute in 1881,
to explain the reasons for the amazing development
in the United States, he attributed it to
organization spirit of the workmen and the
rivalry among the various mills.
``So long as the record made by a mill
stands first,'' he wrote, ``its workmen are
content to labor at a moderate rate. But let
it be known that some other establishment
has beaten that record and there is no content
until the rival's record is eclipsed.''
_It was on this idea of competition for
efficiency--of production as a game and achievement
as a goal--that the wonderful growth of
the steel industry was based_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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