Now, the machine shop of the Midvale Steel Works was a piecework shop. All the work practically was done on piecework, and it ran night and day—five nights in the week and six days. Two sets of men came on, one to run the machines at night and the other to run them in the daytime.
We who were the workmen of that shop had the quantity output carefully agreed upon for everything that was turned out in the shop. We limited the output to about, I should think, one-third of what we could very well have done. We felt justified in doing this, owing to the piecework system—that is, owing to the necessity for soldiering under the piecework systemwhich I pointed out yesterday.
As soon as I became gang boss the men who were working under me and who, of course, knew that I was onto the whole game of soldiering or deliberately restricting output, came to me at once and said, "Now, Fred, you are not going to be a damn piecework hog, are you?"
I said, "If you fellows mean you are afraid I am going to try to get a larger output from these lathes," I said, “Yes; I do propose to get more work out." I said, “You must remember I have been square with you fellows up to now and worked with you. I have not broken a single rate. I have been on your side of the fence. But now I have accepted a job under the management of this company and I am on the other side of the fence, and I will tell you perfectly frankly that I am going to try to get a bigger output from those lathes." They answered, "Then, you are going to be a damned hog."
I said, "Well, if you fellows put it that way, all right." They said, "We warn you, Fred, if you try to bust any of these rates, we will have you over the fence in six weeks." I said, "That is all right; I will tell you fellows again frankly that I propose to try to get a bigger output off these machines."
Now, that was the beginning of a piecework fight that lasted for nearly three years, as I remember it—two or three years—in which I was doing everything in my power to increase the output of the shop, while the men were absolutely determined that the output should not be increased. Anyone who has been through such a fight knows and dreads the meanness of it and the bitterness of it. I believe that if I had been an older man—a man of more experienceI should have hardly gone into such a fight as thisdeliberately attempting to force the men to do something they did not propose to do.
We fought on the management's side with all the usual methods, and the workmen fought on their side with all their usual methods. I began by going to the management and telling them perfectly plainly, even before I accepted the gang boss-ship, what would happen. I said, "Now these men will show you, and show you conclusively, that, in the first place, I know nothing about my business; and that in the second place, I am a liar, and you are being fooled, and they will bring any amount of evidence to prove these facts beyond a shadow of a doubt." I said to the management, "The only thing I ask you, and I must have your firm promise, is that when I say a thing is so you will take my word against the word of any 20 men or any 50 men in the shop." I said "If you won't do that, I won't lift my finger toward increasing the output of this shop." They agreed to it and stuck to it, although many times they were on the verge of believing I was both incompetent and untruthful.
Now, I think it perhaps desirable to show the way in which that fight was conducted.
I began, of course, by directing some one man to do more work than he had done before, and then I got on the lathe myself and showed him that it could be done. In spite of this, he went ahead and turned out exactly the same old output and refused to adopt better methods or to work quicker until finally I laid him off and got another man in his place. This new man—I could not blame him in the least under the circumstances—turned right around and joined the other fellows and refused to do any more work than the rest. After trying this policy for a while and failing to get any results I said distinctly to the fellows, "Now, I am a mechanic; I am a machinist. I do not want to take the next step, because it will be contrary to what you and I look upon as our interest as machinists, but I will take it if you fellows won't compromise with me and get more work off of these lathes, but I warn you if I have to take this step it will be a durned mean one." I took it.
I hunted up some especially intelligent laborers who were competent men, but who had not had the opportunity of learning a trade, and I deliberately taught these men how to run a lathe and how to work right and fast. Every one of these laborers promised me, "Now, if you will teach me the machinist's trade, when I learn to run a lathe I will do a fair day's work," and every solitary man, when I had taught them their trade, one after another turned right around and joined the rest of the fellows and refused to work one bit faster.
That looked as if I were up against a stone wall, and for a time I was up against a stone wall. I did not blame even these laborers in my heart, my sympathy was with them all of the time, but I am telling you the facts as they then existed in the machine shops of this country, and in truth, as they still exist.
64 Labor and Monopoly Capital
Scientific Management
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the case so baldly as did Taylor, in his naive assumption that all reasonable people, including workers, would see the supreme rationality of his argument and accede to it. What he avows openly are the now-unacknowledged private assumptions of management. On the other hand, most of the academic commentators on Taylor are of limited usefulness, since everything that is so clear in Taylor becomes blurred or misunderstood. Kakar's book is a useful exception, despite his conventional conclusion that “with Taylor's ends there is no quarrel."