The job, the man, the boss

Preface

The plan of employment set forth in this book is the outgrowth of fifteen years' experience in the practical work of advising men in regard to their vocations, counseling employers in the selection and assignment of employees, investigating industrial and commercial institutions for the purpose of professional advice upon efficiency in general, and increasing the efficiency of employees in particular, and in the installation, operation, and supervision of employment departments under the Blackford Employment Plan.

Our purposes in presenting the book are: first, to set forth the advantages of a definite plan and orderly methods of employment; second, to inspire all who work to study themselves with reference to their vocational fitness; third, to add our voices to those of many others in calling for more scientific vocational guidance of the young; fourth, to arouse interest among all thoughtful people, and especially among parents, employers, teachers, and workers, in the possibilities of character analysis by the observational method.

The Authors.

Hastings-on-Hudson, N. Y.

February 22, 1914.

Contents

Introduction xiii

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Mind or Muscle — Which? . . . 3

Chapter I Mind Or Muscle — Which?

ONE of the most common sights from our steamer as we ascended the Nile was the shadoof men. Hour after hour, day after day, under the burning Nubian sun, they dipped water from the Nile and poured it out upon the sands of the desert for irrigation. When the banks were high, one naked man stood in water up to his waist; a second was stationed halfway up the bank, and a third at the top. Thus, in perfect rhythm, chanting weird songs, they passed the life-giving, brown water from hand to hand.

In India we saw porters plodding along, mile after mile, with heavy burdens on their shoulders. On the Canton River in China we saw coolies on their treadmills, toiling day after day to furnish motive power for their clumsy boats. In the city of Canton we saw fiour ground by great millstones turned by men who ran upon treadmills until they almost dropped with exhaustion.

And the wages paid to all of these men, some of them furnishing human muscle power in quantities of which we in America can scarcely conceive, average between 10 and 15 cents a day.

Cheap labour? Yes, perhaps it is cheap labour. But it is not cheap power. It is the most expensive and most wasteful form of motive power known. Even at 10 cents a day, and working at their highest possible muscular efficiency, men can not furnish motive power for less than about $3 per horsepower per day. A large steam or gasoline engine will furnish horsepower at the rate of from 6f cents to 66 cents a day. To purchase human muscle power is, therefore, not the purpose of employment.

The wise employer seeks to develop and secure for his business the highest and best physical and psychical forces of the men and women he employs. It is only within the last few years that we have begun to understand the purely psychological nature of business. Even yet we only dimly understand the great truth that materials, equipment, methods, money, and all the other tangible factors in our commerce and industry are but the visible counters in a game played solely by the invisible forces of mind and soul.

MIND OR MUSCLE — WHICH ? 5

CONSTRUCTIVE AND DESTRUCTIVE MENTAL STATES

Walter Dill Scott says: "Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities."* Dr. Wm. S. Sadler, Post-Graduate Medical School of Chicago, relates in his exhaustive work, "The Physiology of Faith and Fear," a multitude of incidents from his own practice, all demonstrating the destructive effects upon the human body of such emotions as ^ear, worry , anger, hate, grief, uncertainty, and discburagemeiits He shows that almost every known form of disease, in some cases at least, has been the result of destructive mental attitude. He also cites a large number of cases in which speedy and perfect restoration to health and vigour has followed the recovery of mental peace, courage, or happiness. Thus, mental attitudes in the human body may be either destructive or constructive. Either they tear down or build up the physical and mental powers. In a similar way, destructive and constructive mental forces either tear down or build up business institutions.

It is no secret to any careful observer that every place of business or manufacture has its own particular mental atmosphere or spirit. One does not need to be a psychic to sense the spirit of har-

*" Increasing Human Efficiency in Business," page 134, mony, teamwork, enthusiasm, and happiness in any successful business. Nor is it difficult to feel the atmosphere of gloom, suspicion, irritation, petty jealousy, discord, or careless indifference in one which is on the road to failure.

We have studied many business concerns. In every one of them we have found the mental and moral character of the man or men who dominated it reflected and exaggerated in the rank and file. In one organization a man high in authority was an inveterate meddler and gossip. Not even the lowliest worker in the organization was safe from his curious, prying eyes and his inquisitive nose, and no one, either in the institution or outside, could escape the sting and defilement of his slanderous tongue. It was inevitable that this destructive spirit should permeate the entire organization, until almost every one in it was both backbiting and backbitten. No one could come into contact with this spirit without feeling demoralized, less selfrespecting, less efficient, and less happy.

By a curious coincidence, at the same time we were studying this institution, we also made an investigation of the most successful corporation in its line of business in the United States. Here we found the vice-president, who was also its chief executive, and the twelve department heads associated with him, happy and harmonious. Every

MIND OR MUSCLE — WHICH ? 7

man enthusiastically told us that he belonged to the finest and best organization on earth, and was eager to praise the character and ability of every one of his associates. Not once in our interviews with any of them did we hear the time-worn and all-too-universal stab-in-the-back, "Yes, he's a mighty good fellow, but — — " All through the offices and works, and in our contact with employees of all grades, we found the same happy, harmonious spirit of teamwork. We were quite prepared for the information that this spirit, this constructive mental atmosphere, extended to the patrons of the institution and the public generally, and that, as a result, its profits and dividends were higher than those of any other corporation of its size in the country.

HAPPINESS AND LABOUR COST

William C. Redfield, in his book, "The New Industrial Day," pp. 120-1-2, says: "Given the scientific spirit in management, constant and careful study of operations and details of cost, modern buildings and equipment, proper arrangement of plant, and proper material, ample power, space, and light, a high wage rate means inevitably a low labour cost per unit of product and the minimum of labour cost. ... A steadily decreasing labour cost per unit of product is not inconsistent with, but on the contrary is normal to, a coincident advance in the rate of pay for the work when accompanied by careful study of methods and equipment, as previously suggested. Conversely, low-priced labour nearly always is costly per unit produced, and usually is inconsistent with good tools, equipment, and large and fine product, else such labour would not be low-priced."

In a large factory manufacturing a food product of international reputation, $25,000 a year was added to the wages paid employees, and $17,000 a year additional was expended in betterments of their conditions, such as lunch-rooms, gymnasiums, night schools, and sanitation. This addition of $42,000 a year to the expenses of the company resulted, not in a decreased dividend, but in an increased dividend. As a further confirmation of this principle we have but to call attention of the reader to his own experiences, to the fact that he does more work and better work when happy and contented, when interested and enthusiastic, than when he is unhappy or indifferent.

"We might multiply examples of the effect of destructive and constructive attitudes in executives and employees, but the truth is so well known that we should merely be demonstrating the obvious.

Since it is mental and psychical forces rather than muscle power that we are purchasing when

MIND OR MUSCLE — WHICH ? 9

we employ men and women, we should therefore seek mental and psychical power that is constructive and not destructive. Expressing the idea concretely, we want men and women who love their work, who find joy in doing it, and who, because of their happiness and psychical inspiration, give us the very finest products of their heads and hearts, and, therefore, of their hands.

The plan which we are to present in this book is designed to obtain and to conserve for the employer, the employee, and humanity in general the highest and best constructive thoughts and feelings of those employed according to its principles.

Chapter II

WHEN Thomas A. Edison is bent on realizing one of his ideas, his absorption in his work exempHfies Emerson's dictum: ''Nothing great was ever accomphshed without enthusiasm. The way of hfe is wonderful — it is by abandonment." He shuts himself away from all interruption in his laboratory. He works for hours, oblivious of everything but his idea. Even the demands of his body for food and sleep do not rise above the threshold of consciousness.

Edison himself says that great achievement is a result, not of a great genius, but of just this kind of concentration in work. And, until the mediocre man has worked as has Edison, he cannot prove the contrary. Mr. Edison has results to prove the value of his way of working. Even our most expert statistician and mathematician would find it difficult to calculate the amount of material wealth this one worker has added to humanity's store. Of the unseen but higher values in culture, in knowledge, in the spreading of civilization, and in greater joy of living for millions of people, there are even greater results. Other men of the past and present, in every phase of activity, have demonstrated that Edison's utter abandonment to his task is the keynote of efficiency and achievement.

And right here, too, is the ideal in employment: To secure, cultivate, and maintain this spirit of absorption in the work of every man in the organization — and thus to develop, conserve, and utilize the mental and psychical forces of our latent and potential Edisons.

Each employee, even the lowliest and least skilled, can be as efficient and as happy in his task as is Edison in his, but only under similar conditions. Mr. Edison is doing work for which he is preeminently fitted. He shows his fitness by doing it supremely well. He has created an environment under which he works at his best. He sees the results of his efforts. He receives rewards commensurate with his efficiency.

THE employer's IDEAL

These, then, are the ideal conditions of employment:

That each worker should do work for which he is preeminently fitted;

That each should work in an environment in which he can do his best;

That each should be able to see and enjoy the results of his work;

That each worker should receive a reward commensurate with his efficiency. "^

Industry, like health, is normal. All healthy children, and even men, are active. Activity means growth and development. Inactivity means decay and death. The man who has no useful work to do will sometimes express himself in wrongdoing and crime, for he must do something industriously to live. Even our so-called idle rich and leisure classes are strenuously active in their attempts to amuse themselves.

When, therefore, a man hates his work, when he is dissatisfied and discontented in it, when his work arouses in him destructive thoughts and feelings rather than constructive, there is something wrong, something abnormal. He is trying to do work for which he is not fitted, or he is in the wrong environment, or under wrong management, or he is physically or mentally ill.

The remedy for all of this, as we have seen, is to give the man something to do which he can do well, and to fit his environment to his needs. In practice, of course, this means the selection for each job in our organization of the one man out of all others who, by natural aptitudes, training, and experience, is best fitted to fill all the requirements of that job, and suited to its environment and conditions.

In fitting a man to his environment perhaps the personal element in that environment is the most important. One of the first things we all want to know about any human relationship, whether it finds its expression in work, play, society, or politics, is the human atoms with whom we are to be commingled and compounded in that relationship. We may readily admit the universal brotherhood of man, but we also have to admit that there are some of our brothers and sisters with whom we do not make a very pleasant chemical combination.

Hydrogen and oxygen by themselves form water, one of the most beneficial and useful of all fluids, but combine sulphur with hydrogen and oxygen, in certain atomic proportions, and you have highly destructive sulphuric acid. In a similar way, we are happy and efficient when associated with some people, but unhappy and positively destructive when compelled to associate with others.

In the ideal organization all the human chemical combinations are made by the wise master chemist in such a way that every employee is associated with immediate and more remote superiors, who inspire him to give only constructive thoughts and feelings, and each executive supervises and directs the work of the kind of men and women from whom he can secure the best results.

We have spoken about selecting for every position the man who is best fitted for it, not only for the duties of that position, but for the environment and conditions attached to it. A most important corollary of this proposition is naturally this: In the ideal organization the environment and conditions attached to every position should be such that the man who will fit them is the best possible man for that work.

RATE OF PAY AND EFFICIENCY

For example, if it is desirable that a man should express in his work neatness, order, accuracy, cleanliness, and beauty, then a workshop or office which is neat, clean, orderly, and beautiful will suit the man best fitted for that work. The blacksmith shops of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railway are called "white blacksmith shops." They are well lighted, well arranged, and constantly kept clean. Even the walls and ceilings are whitewashed and never allowed to become smoke-stained and sootsmeared. As a result there have been gathered in these shops men who take pride in their surroundings, and who are glad to do their best to keep them neat and clean. It follows, of course, that these men take pride in their work and do their best with it.

It is an old saying that the workman is known by his tools. Frank A. Gilbreth, in his excellent book, "Motion Study," page 59, says: "The influence of the tools used upon the output is large. No workman can possibly comply with standard motions unless he has the standard tools." In the ideal organization all tools and equipment are most carefully selected and kept in condition to fit the needs and requirements of the most desirable workers.

There is no factor in the conditions of employment more important than that of the rate of pay, and there is none over which there has been more controversy. The time is already here, however, when the enlightened employer no longer quarrels with his workmen about their rate of pay. In conference with one of the most successful manufacturers in the city of Philadelphia we learned that, as the result of his scientific study of costs and their causes, he had increased the pay of his men from $2.50 and $3.50 a day to $6 a day and upward, the pay of some of the men reaching as high as $18 a day. These men perform the same operations on their new wages that they performed on their old, and yet this employer told us that his costs per unit of production had been greatly reduced since he began to pay his men better wages.

"As manufacturing establishments are improved and humanized," says James H. Collins in the Saturday Evening Post, "it is becoming clearer and clearer that in buying labour quality counts first, just as it does in materials, and that price is really secondary. While governments collect statistics showing wages paid in different countries, and that the cheapest product is usually found where the most skilful employees earn the highest wages, the American manufacturer is arriving at the same truth through his own experience in the management of works and through his export connections. . . . The vital point about an employee is not how much he gets a day, nor how many hours he works, but how much he can do with a given machine. . . . Each improvement in the quality of the output cuts labour costs. . . . The actual money saving on the cost-sheets is only a part of the benefit ; for a high-grade workman on a high-grade job facilitates deliveries, helps sales, and forwards the whole organization. A few dollars additional in his pay envelope may count so little that it would be worth the money to be certain he will turn up beside his machine every morning when the whistle blows."

The ideal, so far as wages and salaries are concerned, is not to fix a rate of pay for any particular job and then to find some man or woman (efficiency not specified) willing to accept that rate of pay.

but rather to fix upon the standard requirements in aptitudes, training, experience, and consequent efficiency for that job, find some one who meets the requirements, and then pay him enough to secure his very best constructive thought.

HOURS OF LABOUR — PERIODS OF REST

Next to rate of pay probably the most difficult point of adjustment between employers and employees is that of hours of labour. It has been only natural, in the absence of exact knowledge on the subject, that the employer should conclude that the more hours his employees worked the more they would accomplish. It is also perfectly natural that the employees should respond to this attitude on the part of the employer by feeling that the fewer hours they worked for the same rate of pay the better off they were.

Little by little, hours of labour have been reduced from fourteen to twelve, from twelve to ten, and from ten to nine and eight. The results have been nothing short of astonishing to both parties in the controversy. Who could have predicted that a man would do more and better work in eight hours than he had done in fourteen.^ And yet that is exactly what has happened in hundreds of different industries and different factories on both sides of the Atlantic.

Will hours of labour be still further reduced? The question can be answered correctly only by the application of the new scientific spirit, the spirit which does not assume, as we formerly did, that a reduction in hours of labour means a reduction in output, but by careful experiment and the use of accurate records, carefully analyzed, ascertains the truth. The ideal in employment will be attained when every man works just that number of hours each day that will enable him to accomplish the maximum amount of the highest quality of work.

Scientific investigation has clearly shown that men and women do more and better work if given carefully ascertained periods of rest and relaxation during working hours. When a man works either his muscles or his brain, fatigue poisons are produced in his system more rapidly than they are eliminated. These fatigue poisons, as science has demonstrated, clog a man's mental and physical machinery, slowing up every process, dulling the senses, and robbing every effort of some of its reliability and accuracy. A certain period of absolute rest and relaxation relieves mental and physical tension and permits the processes of elimination to catch up and overtake the production of fatigue poisons. In ordinary physical work, into which the mind scarcely enters, men have been known to accomplish 400 per cent, more in a given number of hours with carefully worked-out intervals of rest and relaxation than when working continuously. In mental work the effect has often been found to be even greater. In the ideal organization, experts carefully standardize the proper intervals and periods of work and relaxation for every job, and the executives see that these intervals and periods are made effective.

RELATIONS WITH SUPERIOR

Some years ago we had occasion to study the efficiency of a number of accountants in a bank. Among them was a young man of twenty-two, well educated, with splendid natural talents as an accountant, intelligent, honest, industrious, ambitious to succeed. There seemed to be every reason why he should be efficient. The bank was well lighted, well ventilated, and in many other ways a delightful place to work. His rate of pay was fully satisfactory to him, and his companions were congenial. And yet he accomplished little, and that little was so poor that he was hardly "worth his salt." Furthermore, instead of improving, he was rapidly growing worse. A little investigation soon brought out the fact that the chief accountant, while most efficient himself, and while securing a high quantity and quality of work

/irom most of the other employees, kept this particular young man in a constant state of terror and nervousness. The young man was of an exceedingly sensitive and responsive disposition, and would have accomplished wonders if his loyalty, love of achievement, and ambition had been appealed to. Instead, his chief had attempted to stimulate him by rather sharp rebuke and stinging criticism. It took a great deal of careful and painstaking instruction to the chief accountant about the disposition of his employee and the right way of handling him, but such efforts finally brought results. This bookkeeper, who had been almost worthless, became a valued employee in a few months under right methods of treatment.

It is well known to any one who will observe and think even a little that every man, woman, and child is a separate and distinct individual in all respects, and responds best to the kind of treatment best suited to his individuality. In the ideal organization, therefore, every employee is handled and managed, not according to the whims, prejudices, and pet theories of his superiors, but according to the needs of his own peculiar type.

HOPE OF PROMOTION

Among the fundamental principles of the universe is the law of growth. Of the laws applying peculiarly to sensate beings, this law of growth, the law of self-preservation, and the law of raceperpetuation constitute a fundamental trinity. No matter how low a man has fallen, no matter how hard the conditions under which he lives, no matter how great his privations or severe his trials, let him but feel that the law of growth is having its way with him, that he is progressing, that he has the right to hope, and he will have courage and strength for it all. But take away that hope, and no matter how pleasant and agreeable his surroundings and conditions, no matter how great his achievements, how high his attainments, or how many and valuable the things he possesses, he will look at life with the tragic eyes of despair. When there is no opportunity for advancement, for promotion, a man may work under the spur of necessity, but his work has in it nothing of that joyous abandon which arises from constructive thought and feeling, and results in efficiency.

In the ideal organization every man performs his part with the hope of a better to-morrow ever beckoning him on. The law of growth applies also to the feeling of the wise employer toward his employee.

When we studied the most successful organization of its kind in the United States, already mentioned in these pages, we found that every member of the executive staff had been a member of the organization for from fifteen to thirty-five years, and that every one of them had begun work in the organization as a boy. Each of them had developed along the lines of his talents and tastes until he had become the head of a great department.

Now, the development of an office boy into a general manager, of a stenographer into a purchasing agent, or of a clerk into an advertising manager, is not a matter of chance, but rather of education. Every factory, every store, every office is in the best and truest sense of the word a school. One of the finest things about work done by the right kind of man under the right conditions is the fact that work is an education. There is more true and valuable learning, more real and permanent development, in work under proper conditions than in any other kind of schooling.

In the industrial era just passed and now drawing to a close, it was to have been expected that employers, with their chief attention absorbed by questions relating to machines and methods, should neglect the greatest of all their assets — namely, the latent but easily developed mental and psychical forces of their employees. The men who, like Carnegie, have made their organizations schools in which masters and millionaires were trained, have stood out from all the rest by reason of their success.

In order that work may educate a man he must know what he is doing and why he is doing it; he must be taught not only how to do things in the best, easiest, and quickest ways, but must be taught why he does them at all, and why he does them in the way pointed out. We have encountered thousands of workmen standing at their machines day after day, working on parts of commodities whose place and function in the whole they had never been taught. Since the blunder of some obscure employee may possibly lose a sale or estrange a valuable customer, why not teach that employee just what part he takes in producing the goods and services of the concern and just how his part of the work may affect the patron who pays his money for it?

THE SPIRIT OF^ THE HIVE

Men are naturally gregarious — they like to "belong." Many a man is far more eager for the success of his team, of his club, of his party, than he is for his own individual success. It is natural for men to devote themselves and all they possess — even their life's blood — to a leader, to a cause, or to their country. Men who are often apathetic and indifferent to their own interests will rise to heroic heights under such incentives. It is easy for the wise employer to appeal to this quality through right methods of education.

Many stories are told vividly exemplifying this devotion of men to a leader. Perhaps none is more striking than this one from the History of Napoleon by Lockhart. A company of grenadiers, former soldiers of Napoleon, had been sent out to intercept his march when he was on his return from Elba. "Either party halted until Napoleon himself came up," says Lockhart. "He did not hesitate for a moment. He dismounted, and advanced alone ; some paces behind him came a hundred of his guard with their arms reversed. There was perfect silence on all sides until he was within a few yards of the men. He then halted, threw open his surtout so as to show the star of the Legion of Honour, and exclaimed, 'If there be among you a soldier who desires to kill his general — his Emperor — let him do it now. Here I am.' The old cry of Vive I'Empereur burst instantaneously from every lip. Napoleon threw himself among them, and taking a veteran private, covered with chevrons and medals, by the whisker, said, 'Speak honestly, old Moustache, couldst thou have had the heart to kill thy Emperor.?' The man dropped his ramrod into his piece to show that it was uncharged, and answered, 'Judge if I could have done thee much harm — all the rest are the same.' "

We have never worked with a more intensely loyal and self-forgetful band of men and women than the employees of a certain manufacturing concern with a rather remarkable history and strongly individual policies, traditions, and ideals. This spirit of loyalty was created and developed largely by educating the employees so that every one of them could, and did, talk eloquently and enthusiastically about the past triumphs of *'our house," about its clear-headed, common-sense policies, about its traditions of high quality and excellent service, and about its splendid moral ideals.

THE employee's IDEAL

In the ideal organization every employee is looked upon as a bundle of limitless latent possibilities, and his training and education are held to be of far more importance than the invention of new machinery, the discovery of new methods, or the opening of new markets. And this is reasonable. Some obscure employee, thus trained and educated, may invent more wonder-working machinery, discover more efl&cient methods, and open up wider and more profitable markets than any before dreamed. Even if no such brilliant star rises as the result of education, the increased efiiciency, loyalty, and enthusiasm of the whole mass of employees lifted, be it ever so little, by education within the organization, has yielded results in scores of institutions that have come under our observation within the last few years far beyond any won by mechanical or commercial exploitation.