EFFICIENCY AND CHARACTER.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3994, 26 July 1913, Page 7

EFFICIENCY AND CHARACTER.

MUNSTERBERG’S NEW WORK

There is a lively criticism of Prof. Munster berg’s new book on “Psychology and Industrial Efficiency,” in the “New Statesman.” “The whole of this movement in the United States,” says the writer, “from its inception in the Harvard psychological laboratories to its application by the great capitalist trusts, seems a shocking instance of shortsighted materialism. What is the good of increasing our knowledge of processes if that knowledge is not to be inspired and directed by a noble purpose? And when we find this knowledge associated with complete callousness as the results on human character and human intelligence of the processes advocated, with a complete ignoring of the result on employment, not to mention a complete indifference to a right distribution of wealth, the use of the scientific method becomes not only unmoral, but positively immoral.

INDUSTRIAL DEGENERATION

“What are we to think' of this scienco if it is to bo directed by the pecuniary self-interest, of the employer for the purpose of increasng profits ? This new scheme of maximising output and decreasing labor cost is likely to become not merely the occasion of constant friction between employers and employed, but also a potent cause of industrial degeneration. “Throughout the numerous works on Scientific Management, which are Being issued in the United States by the highly-paid experts of particular industries, there is a complete absence of any consideration if not for the health, at any rate for the character or the intelligence of the workers concerned. But this is not all. Mr Taylor, perhaps the ablest and most successful exponent of the system, calmly asserts that the old-fashioned endeavor to increase ‘the skill, the ingenuity, the wood-will, and the initiative’ of every workman is to be discarded as an altogether obsolete principle of management. Laborers are to he selected and trained for employment for quite other qualities. Mental sluggislmess, a liking for monotonous work, and indifference to anything but an immediate rise in individual earnings are the characteristics which are to be selected and developed by this new industrial organisation. The man is always to be made to fit the job, however may be. “From these new principles we pass naturally to very old practices. Mr. Gilbreth, in his “Bricklaying System,” revives the immemorial trick of the sweating contractor in the use of the ‘bell-horse.’ ‘Pick out a good man for leader, and pay him 10 per cent, more thax the rest .... give the roar leader 5 per cent, more . . a gang of bricklayers organised in this fashion will do from 50 per cent, to 200 per cent, more work than an untrained gang.’ This plan of extracting by the bribery of two ‘pacers,’ a greater intensity of work, for the old pay, from all the rest of the gang, is an ancient form of fraud.

HOT INDIGNATION.

“Now, it is all very well for Professor Munsterberg to tell us, with admirable logic, that the scientific man is not concerned with the process The ordinary citizen will bo apt to judge the science by the purposes for which it is, in fact, elaborated. If medical science had been used, in the main, by professional poisoners, and surgical science chiefly by professional executioners, it would bo difficult to arouse any* enthusiasm for these departments of knowledge in the persons who were likely to be. poisoned or executed. This analogy may seem exaggerated; but the middle-class mail fails to realise the hot indignation on the part of the workman, or the workman’s representative when he reads these books on ‘Scientific Management,’ They seem to him an attempt to exploit the scientific method for the profit of those who already monopolise the wealth of every country, at the cost of the intelligence and ckarac■ter of tho great bulk of the people.”