WORK AND WORKERS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 230, 22 June 1908, Page 8

WORK AND WORKERS.

THE PROBLEM OF " EFFICIENCY." HOW AMERICA LEADS. . Considerable interest was arousod in Christchurcli ■ some time ago by some addresses, in which Mr. Georgo Booth, of. Messrs. Booth, Macdonald and Co., who had then returned from a visit to America, discussed tho relative efficiency of Now Zealand and American workmen. As tho efficiency of the; worker is a subject involved in the now wages schcmo outlined by Dr. Findlay, the othor-night, it may bo interesting to recall certain passages from an. open letter which Mr. Booth addressed to his employees in March last. "

" I have said," Mr. Booth remarked, "that according to my personal observation, the average American workman turns out two or three times as much work in a given time as the Colonial workman does —work of . the same kind, and done, more or less, under similar conditions. This has since been confirmed by Dr. Victor Clark, an expert investigator in tho service of tho United States Department of Labour. He states, in print, that tho American mechanic turns out about three times as much work as the Australasian mechanic. If the quantity of goods produced could bo compared, instead of-the money value, the difference would probably appear much greater. Anyhow, thero is tho fact, and thore does not seem to bo much room for doubt, despite tho contradictions of some who profess to know a whole lot about it.

; "Now it is no use saying that Dr. Clark is wrong; and that I am wrong. I can givo you oho or two specific instances if you like, though I would rather not do so, as it might look like singling out a particular shop or trade. You may take my word for it that I have .seen workmen, doing work such as we do, and .using, similar appliances, turning out four times as much as we should consider a fair day's work.. That may be an extreme case, though' I do not believe it is. " Now it is to your interest, as much as it is to. mine, to inquiro into this thing and find out if possible, where tho secret is, if thoro is any. wo have to face ■ this competition.' l The Americans are copying our goods, and if.they can produce them S ? raui s moro cheaply ,-thero is a real danger that they may steal our business away from us. No, I;should hot say 'steal,' because if they can beat us thfey are fully entitled to do so. And, moreover, we want to beat them. There are lots of goods coming into New Zealand from abroad which we could quite well make here.' But in order to do so we must be able'to produce them at a cost lower than tho imported cost. If wo cannot do so,' .well, .we are up against it. We must just be content to let foreigners do. our work for us while we'stand idle or jog along in a little shop, doing repairs and odd work, such as it is not Worth the foreigner's while to go, after. I confess I do not like the idea." v

The success of the Americans, lie said, was duo to specialisation, both in machinery, and labour. /They used special machines, to supply their huge: market; to an extent impos-, sible here. Tho samo applied to labour. But specialisation, did nipt tell the whole story,' for many , comparatively small shops '.in' America, which could not afford to specialise to such a tremendous extent, were able to hold their own \ against tho big, highlyspecialised shops/ Accordingly, Mr. Booth thought " method " counted for as much as specialisation: "J don't mean shop method exactly, though that is very important. I mean individual , method, the kind of thing that deponds on the individual workman himself.: You know that you will .hardly find two men do/any job just alike. Ono man will do a job in the slowest and worst way, and another will do it in . the quickest and. best way, and tho fair-to-middling fellows, like you and I, .come in between somewhere. . .

In a workshop a man is worth just so much as he can produce of good work. It is not a matter of wages. One may bo a .dead loss ,to the shop at ss. a day, and another man may draw 10s., and show a good profit. The man who can turn out the most' and - the best work is the valuable man." . . ' 'Nino times out of ten tho quickest man does the 'best work, and that is so simply because he uses his wits to find out tho quickest and best way. That's method, and that's about all there is in it."

Another thing that struck Mr. Booth was tho jntentness of the American workman, on his job" In tho Superior Drill Factory I watched a boy drilling lioles in castings one day, and he seemed just as intent upon that job as though his life depended on breaking a record and drilling more holes than he or' any other boy had over dono before. And there was no pacemaker standing over him with a stop-watch either. Ho had got a simple little rig of his own fixed np to feed tho castings along a rod, and he certainly was putting them through at a great rate. It was the same way all through that shop, and nearly every other, shop I was in. Every man seemed to havo a sort of enthusiasm in his work, as though he was ambitious to mako good, to beat his own record, or to go one bcitter than any other follow. Let mo repeat, again, they dq not spend any moro physical strength than wo do. They don't work harder in that, sonso. But they make every movement tell, never wasto an ounce of strength or a second, of time."

Mr. Booth .concluded with some observations on. tho "Premium Plan":—"I believe in'it, becauso I think it is a fair deal. Assuming that a fair rato is fijjed to start with,and a man can, by using his wits, beat the rate, then he i 3 ontitled to Romething extra, and he gets it. I do not-disguise the fact that tho business gets something too. It is right that it should; otherwise it would not be a fair deal. Don't make any mistake about it. I don't want to see any man. wear himself out in the physical effort to turn out more work. I do want to see you finding quicker and easier ways of doing the work, so that for a given amount of exertion you can turn out moro product. You need mt bo afraid that tho rate, will be changed on that account. It- won't be changed unless we make some, radical alteration in tho method.- If you introduce now methods of your own you ..will get tho benefit. Some better plan than tho Premium Plaii may be discovered some day, but at present it is the best and fairest plan I know of."