Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
[1UJIC TIRADE
VOL. LXII. No. 15 Published Every Saturday by the Estate of Edward Lyman Bill at 373 4th Ave., New York, April 8, 1916
O
Single Copies 10 Cents
$2.00 Per Year
NLY a very stupid person would be likely to decry any honest attempt made by any business man
or men to improve the physical conditions of manufacturing.
In any sort of manufacturing process, carried on wholesale, there are innumerable opportunities
for lost motion, innumerable loopholes for waste, innumerable leaks and seepages. 'The idea of
stopping these is an admirable idea. The idea of eliminating lost motion between the processes originating
on floor A and those on floor B of a given piano factory, for example, is just as legitimate as the idea of
eliminating the lost motion between the key of a piano and the abstract of its action.
The great question is not whether the elimination of lost motion is desirable—for that is admitted—
but whether the capstan screw which can be turned to take up the lost motion in the one case, has its
analogue in the other. Can we find a capstan screw to join in harmonious contact the large processes of
manufacture ?
For something like ten years now, men calling themselves efficiency engineers, or something like that,
have been assuring us that the road to industrial success lies in systematizing factory work so as to
eliminate lost motion, stop leaks and make the best of the time expended by every unit in the system, human
and mechanical alike.
Tt is an idea, so beautiful, in fact, that its difficulties never seem serious; at least they never seem
serious at the beginning. Yet, somehow or other, there is a growing disappointment with the sort of
engineering the efficiency engineers have been giving us. The business machines they design do not work
quite so well in practice as they did on paper. Business men, not being the most patient men on earth—
and why particularly should they be patient?—are beginning to show a little restiveness under the
ministrations of the systematizers; and there are signs of a reaction.
Hence a word of opinion from a new angle is pertinent and may have its value.
If the word "efficiency" means anything at all, it means harmonious adaptation of the forces and
powers at one's disposal, to the end of producing some desired effect. An efficient machine is simply a
machine that works well; the better it works, of course, the more efficient it is.
But what do we mean by working well? Plainly we mean working without friction. Kriction
anywhere impairs the usefulness of the machine; in fact, reduces its efficiency. And friction, which the
efficiency engineers have been eliminating—to the sound of loud applause—from one part of the machine,
they have been assiduously fostering in the others.
To put it bluntly, the efficiency systems have had two big faults. They have ignored the human
equation and they have failed to ask themselves what the ultimate object of all their systematization really is.
You cannot, treat a body of workmen or office men or salesmen or managers as so many machines.
You cannot do it because they are not machines. If they were, things would be different. Hut the human
person declines to be permanently tied down to a fixed and mechanical routine of work, and so gets
stubborn and rebellious when treated without regard to human crochets.
There is no use in arguing that people ought to be only too glad to have systematizers make everything
nice and easy for them, taking away all necessity for independent thought, and leaving only the nicely
systematized work to be done; but in fact they are not only not glad, they are even much annoyed; and
their work soon shows the result of their mental attitude. The simple truth, so simple that the scientific
persons decline to recognize it, is that men are not machines.
.
The second mistake is still more serious. What are we really trying to do? Are we trying to improve
our methods so as to turn out better goods, or simply more of the same goods, or more of cheaper goods?
(Continued on page 5)