Standard work

“ From the conversion of industry into a profession those who at present do its intellectual work have as much to gain as the manual workers. For the principle of function, for which we have pleaded as the basis of industrial organization, supplies the only intelligible standard by which the powers and duties of the different groups engaged in industry can be determined. ”

“ The quality of skilled work depends mainly on the standard required of the workman. If his judges and patrons belong to the discerning few who, knowing what is excellent, are intolerant of everything which falls short of excellence, the standard required will necessarily be a high one, and the standard required will be the standard attained. ”

“ The division of a given job into its proper elementary units, before beginning the time study, calls for considerable skill and good judgment. If the job to be observed is one which will be repeated over and over again, or if it is one of a series of similar jobs which form an important part of the standard work of an establishment, or of the trade which is being studied, then it is best to divide the job into elements which are rudimentary. ”

“ The standard of work that ensures a successful professional career is now technically very high and nothing but years of determined study can equip you for equal competition with the rest in the field. ”

“ Standards Lead to Right Methods of Thinking and Acting. — The standards of Scientific Management, as presented to the worker in the instruction card, lead to good habits, in that they present the best known method of doing the work. They thus aid the beginner, in that he need waste no time searching for right methods, but can acquire right habits at once. They aid the worker trained under an older, supplanted method, in that they wage a winning war against old-time, worn-out methods and traditions. ”

“ I know not how to offer you specific advice respecting this important matter, and fortunately I think it is not needed; for all general knowledge expands the mind, clears it of prejudice, and qualifies it for application to any particular subject; and where the field is so wide, and the labour required so vast and diversified, each labourer must select that style of work which he finds most congenial to his taste and best suited to his powers. ”

“ The relative training and talents required for different kinds of work, and the relative demands made upon the individual by different kinds of work will always remain, to a great extent, a matter of opinion. ”

“ Human labour cannot, it is notorious, have full knowledge of and free access to all sorts of work, from the work of research and invention, or of business control, to the various grades of mental and manual skilled and unskilled labour. ”

“ Standardization Eliminates the Shifting Viewpoint. — Under old-time Traditional Management the way that the man happened to feel at the particular time made a great difference, not only in his work, but in his relations with other men. ”

“ In applying these new principles, in place of the old individual effort of each workman, both sides share almost equally in the daily performance of each task, the management doing that part of the work for which they are best fitted, and the workmen the balance. ”

“ The degree in which a man individualises his work and gives it the quality of his own mind and spirit is, therefore, the measure of his success in giving his nature free and full expression. For work, in this large sense, is the expression of the man; and as the range and significance of all kinds of expression depend upon the scope and meaning of the ideas, forces, skills, and qualities expressed, so the dignity and permanence of work depend upon the power and insight of the worker. ”

“ You could not have any of this education carried out, unless you had thoroughly practiced workmen; and you should fix your pass as you fix your university pass, and you should pass a man in architecture, sculpture, and painting, because he knows his business, and knows as much of any other science as is necessary for his profession. You require a piece of work from him, and you examine him, and then you pass him,—call him whatever you like;—but you say to the public, Here is a workman in this branch who will do your work well. ”

“ But I must beg you to understand that I shall proceed by a severe process, that of analysis, for nothing less than the results of analysis of work done can establish as proved what many feel as a sentiment. You will understand both the censure and the acclamation of what we will call the world; you will see the necessity for a reform in the philosophy of many of us; you will see how the life and labor of one man have produced vast applications and industries, improved or created a large commerce, and enhanced or engendered art ”

“ The idea, then, of taking one man after another and training him under a competent teacher into new working habits until he continually and habitually works in accordance with scientific laws, which have been developed by some one else, is directly antagonistic to the old idea that each workman can best regulate his own way of doing the work. ”

“ If we establish a system of professed workers, amateur or paid, we shall quickly begin to hug our system, and perhaps to want to perpetuate it even to the extent of making work for it. Well, here we have then our wonderful company of visitors full of real care for the people, with time and intelligence to apply the wisest principles, did they but know them, with fullest thought, to individual cases ”

“ The craftsman, the artist, the scientist, the professional man, and to some extent the business man make new experience the basis of organized activity, of work, and produce thereby social values. The division of labor which removes the problematical from the various operations of the work makes the task totally unstimulating. ”

“ The higher theoretical knowledge, that body of tenets which rises to the dignity of a philosophical or scientific system, in the early culture, is a complex of habits of thought which reflect the habits of life embodied in the institutional structure of society; while the lower, matter-of-fact generalisations of work-day efficiency—the trivial matters of course—reflect the workmanlike habits of life enforced by the commonplace material exigencies under which men live. ”

“ For the most part the various vocations are said to be actuated by much the same motives, the leading satisfactions being honor, truth, position, beauty, progress, fees or salary, and welfare. These enumerations, of course, help us in no way to distinguish between the particular satisfactions or interests involved in the different types of work. Quite the same thing is true of the abilities required. Most of them call for energy, industry, judgment and ability to deal with people. ”

“ The work may be done in a thousand different ways —with the brain or the hands, in the study, the field, or the workshop—if it is honest work, honestly done and well worth doing, that is all we have a right to ask. ”

“ So far as the external result is held in view, rather than the mental and moral states and growth involved in the process of reaching the result, the work may be called manual, but cannot rightly be termed an occupation. ”

“ The standards of measure of each one of the men and the standards of measure of conducting the business are set forth in other chapters. At this time it is sufficient to say that getting the capital is the easiest part of the job. The real work is the preliminary work of acquiring experience and devising plans. ”

“ But oftentimes it takes rather definite characteristics to do this.
Every business institution has, or should have, its moral, commercial, financial, artistic, and other standards with reference to personnel, according to the character of the business and other important considerations. And the man who contemplates work with any firm will examine himself to see whether he can harmonize happily with these standards. In like manner, every profession and art has its traditional standards and ethics, which should be considered. ”

“ A most able work, the design of which is to determine from an examination of the various forms in which society has been formed, what was the origin of civilization, and under what circumstances those attributes of humanity, which in one country become the foundation of social happiness, and in another perverted to the production of general misery. For this purpose the author has separately examined the principal elements by which society, under all its aspects, is held together, and traced each to its source in human nature. ”

“ The higher quality of its work will be reflected in the greater pride of the worker—in a spirit of professionalism that will insist on adequate training and proper compensation and possibly will use organization to enforce these ideals. ”

“ The conclusion of a new volume of a work, involving so much care, labour and responsibility, as are necessarily attached, at the present day, to a Journal of Science and the Arts, naturally produces in the mind, a state of not ungrateful calmness, and a disposition, partaking of social feeling, to say something to those who honour such a production, by giving to it a small share of their money, and of their time. ”

“ Sound work, clean work, finished work; feeble work, slack work, sham work—these words express an identical contrast in many different departments of activity. In so far forth, then, even the humblest manual trade may beget in one a certain small degree of power to judge of good work generally. ”

“ Now we begin to feel the great need of larger means with which to carry on our work—to purchase books, MSS., &c., which we cannot otherwise secure, to print more of our MSS., and to carry out various plans for the enlarged usefulness of the Society. ”

“ The writer trusts that it is now clear that even in the case of the most elementary form of labor that is known, there is a science, and that when the man best suited to this class of work has been carefully selected, when the science of doing the work has been developed, and when the carefully selected man has been trained to work in accordance with this science, the results obtained must of necessity be overwhelmingly greater than those which are possible under the plan of 'initiative and incentive. ”

“ Each labourer has simply to perform his work in accordance with directions which emanate from some mind other than his own, and the whole practical value of what the labourers do depends on the quality of the directions which are thus given to each. ”

“ The working logic of the current state of the industrial arts will necessarily insinuate itself as the logical scheme which must, of course, effectually govern the interpretation and generalizations of fact in all their commonplace relations. ”

“ The following illustrations will be given for the purpose of demonstrating the fact that in the higher classes of work the scientific laws which are developed are so intricate that the high-priced mechanic needs (even more than the cheap laborer) the cooperation of men better educated than himself in finding the laws, and then in selecting, developing, and training him to work in accordance with these laws. ”

“ Indeed, the volume of work done is large and of substantial value, but it runs chiefly on compilation of details and on the scrutiny and interpretation of these details with a view to their conformity with the approved generalizations of the day before yesterday, -- generalizations that had time to grow into aphoristic commonplaces at a date before the passing generation of businessmen attained their majority. ”

“ Invention Is Stimulated. — Chances for invention and construction are provided by standardization. 14 By having a scientifically derived standard method as a starter, the worker can exert much of his mental power toward improvement from that point upward, instead of being occupied with methods below it and in wasting, perhaps, a lifetime in striving to get up to it,15 this in distinction to the old plan, where a worker knew only what he could personally remember of what had been handed down by tradition, tradition being the memory of society. ”

“ We shall labour to attain as much exactness as can be expected in such variety, and shall give as much variety as can consist with reasonable exactness; for this purpose, a selection has been made of men qualified for the different parts of the work, and each has the employment assigned him, which he is supposed most able to discharge.
A DISSERTATION UPON THE GREEK COMEDY, TRANSLATED FROM BRUMOY [1] . ”

“ Your work has evidently been prepared with immense labor; and it exhibits proofs from beginning to end that knowledge has presided over its execution. The rising generation will be greatly benefited, both in the accuracy and extent of their information, should your work be kept as a book of reference on the table of every professor and teacher in the country. ”

“ A more striking instance never came under my notice of what, I believe, is the experience of those who best know the working classes, that the most essential of all recommendations to their favour is that of complete straightforwardness ”

“ Apart from the representative authority with which it is thus invested, it must be at once acknowledged to be an able, learned, and important work, founded on diligent research, evincing careful elaboration of materials, much acuteness of logical analysis, and so much solicitude for precision that a special terminology has been invented to secure it. ”

“ At present I am content with the indirect proof that the existence of such a standard is necessary to the existence of the arts. The standard or measure, which we are now only applying to the arts, may be some day required with a view to the demonstration of absolute truth. ”

“ That it was essential to the work that it should be carried on from regions far removed from the haunts of men, at least of civilised men, for they could repel the interference of savage races without endangering the fulfilment of their purpose. He went on to tell us that in this station of his he had two classes of work to do, one class consisting of intellectual work of a high order, and affecting more directly the fulfilment of the common purpose, the other class consisting of merely mechanical work, affecting the routine of life and its conditions here. ”