"Let me suggest to Mr. Taylor and his other experts ... what is the really great problem of Scientific Management in our time. Let them set themselves down to figure how the ninety million people residing in the United States of America, and being in full communal ownership and democratic control of the instruments and means of production and distribution, can so organize and administer these instruments and means as to produce the greatest quantity of necessary wealth with the least possible expenditure of labor." (Sinclair, p. 243)
In response to Frederick W.
Taylor’s The
Principles of Scientific Management, Upton Sinclair writes a provoking
critique in the defense of the workingman. To give a brief summary of Taylor’s
Scientific Management, his proposed ideas promised great increase in
productivity through finding the quickest, most efficient method of performing
a certain job and enforcing this method on the laborers. In doing so, Taylor argues
that not only will productivity increase but also the employers would be able
to increase pay for its staffers with the moneys earned from the extra products
sold. In short, both the employer and the employee benefit from Scientific
Management.
In response to this, Sinclair
argued that Taylor’s Scientific Management was not in favor of
the workingman. In particular, when Taylor wrote
that a man should be given $1.85 for loading 47 pig irons (having previously
been making $1.15 for loading 12.5 pig irons), Sinclair attacked Taylor’s
suggestion that the workingman should be given only a 60% increase in pay for a
362% increase in productivity. He mocks how Taylor’s figures do not
seem to have any financial basis, or, if it does, that his basis is very skewed
in the employer’s favor. (For information on justifying for inflation, go to http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl)
Sinclair also finds Taylor’s
idea, increased productivity leading to men being laid-off being a good thing
because they will find work elsewhere, very disturbing; Sinclair believes that
the laid-off men will not be able to find work elsewhere because everywhere
else will be just as scientifically managed as the place from which they were
just let go. Being a notable “muckraker,” founder of the Californian’s chapter
of the American Civil Liberties Union, and an open Socialist, Sinclair
naturally opposed the idea that the workingmen be laid-off for the sake of
something as ethereal as progress—especially when he considered that this
progress was being built on the backs of these selfsame workingmen.
Lastly, Sinclair wonders aloud
about what will happen with the surplus now being made due to the increase in
productivity. Does the productivity outweigh the demand for the product? How
can the employer find new consumers for their products? Do they rehire the men
they fired to go out and market the surplus products to other communities?
Sinclair notes the slant Taylor has given towards the
employer, but ever the Socialist optimist, Sinclair uses his critique to
sprinkle more Socialist propaganda and looks to the future saying, “I believe
that the time will come when [the workingmen] will take possession of the
instruments and means of production, in order that when they produce $1,000 in
value they may receive $1,000 in wages” (p. 243)—thus reconciling the
Scientific Management with the workingmen’s agenda.
Alternatively, Sinclair opts that Taylor stop
pandering to the employer and use his researchers to find out how a workingman
can make a good living and sell that research to them for fifty cents so that
Taylor can get rich and shut up. Sinclair writes that since the business is
built on the backs of the workingman, then the workingman should receive his
raise in direct correlation to his productivity, not be laid-off for the sake
of progress, and therefore given a better opportunity to make a living for his
family."And the means which the writer firmly believes will be adopted to bring about, first, efficiency both in employer and employee and then an equitable division of the profits of their joint efforts, will be Scientific Management, which has for its sole aim the attainment of justice for all three parties through impartial scientific investigation of all the elements of the problem." (Taylor, p. 245)
To defend his case, Taylor is
given his own turn in the same piece. Taylor argues
that Sinclair has only looked at his Scientific Management through the lens of
a workingman and not those of the employer or especially the consumer. Taylor
starts by taking the side of the employer and defends his only 60% raise by
saying that the workingman had before been “incompetent,” and now that the
managers have made him competent, or in Taylor’s words “not due to this man’s
initiative or originality … but to the knowledge … developed and taught him by
someone else” (p. 244-245). In other words, because the workingman did not
teach himself how to be more productive he does not receive a better increase
in salary than 60% for his greatly increased productivity.
Taylor does
not dwell on this subject for long, but jumps right into the consumer’s
point-of-view. He gives a lot of pomp about how the consumer gains “the greater
part of the benefit coming from all industrial improvements” (p. 244), but he’s
really just saying that the more output the company has the lower the prices
will be for the product before he gets right back to showing us why the
workingman shouldn't be given a raise any larger than 60% of what he’s already
making.
Taylor actually
has five reasons why the workingman should not get a better raise than 60%.
Reason number one, Taylor says that the workingman is not such a hard to come
by and actually compares the workingman to an ox, saying that the workingman is
“heavy both mentally and physically” (p. 244). Reason number two is that this
new work pace does not tire this man out anymore than his previous one, and if
it does end up making the workingman more tired clearly the employer is not
using the Scientific Management in the way Taylor intended.
The third reason is the same as the
one stated beforehand; the workingman should not be paid any more than 60%
because it was not his own idea to make himself more competent with his job. It
was the employer who made the workingman more productive, so the workingman
cannot take credit for, in Taylor’s example, loading
more pig iron than before Scientific Management was applied. The forth reason
takes this a step further and says that all workingmen should be paid about the
same amount of money because “[it] would be grossly unjust to other laborers, for instance,
to pay this man three and six tenths as high wages as other men of his general
grade receive for an honest full day’s work.” (p. 245).
In Taylor’s last reason, he makes
an outrageous claim that employers should not give the workingman more than a
60% raise because, in his words “[our] experiments showed … that for [the
workingmen’s] own best interest it does not do for most men to get rich too
fast.” (p. 245). Taylor claims that if the
workingman does receive more than a 60% increase in pay he will squander it,
but if he receives the 60% increase or less then the workingman will be content
and save his money. Oddly enough, Taylor forgot
that if the workingman does not get a raise in direct proportion to his
increased productivity than the employer runs the risk of becoming unfathomably
rich too fast. Who is going to protect that poor employer from squandering his
wealth? Having finished listing his reasons, Taylor pats
himself on the back saying, “[the workingman’s] 60 per cent increase in wages
is not an object for pity, but rather a subject for congratulation” (p. 245).
Lastly, Taylor concludes
that his Scientific Management’s sole aim is “the attainment of justice for all
three parties [the employee, employer, and consumer] through impartial
scientific investigation of all the elements of the problem” (p. 245). Taylor does
expect that there will be a backlash from the employer and employee, but he
believes that eventually the consumer will straighten the two out and
Scientific Management will ring in a new, more productive future.
