Kelsey
Hartmann
3/27/13
Within
all cultures and societies of the world there are underlying rules
and traditions that should be of norm. One such aspect of society is
the way of living and how one shall obtain the necessities of life to
live. Within the United States of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries many people had to work positions held by others for
currency, usually in factories and industrial positions. During this
time a huge boom of industrial and factory work arose, leaving
laborers to know little of their positions. Along with factory work
came the concept of Taylorism, or scientific management, which caused
great struggles for the workers and left them disconnected from their
work, themselves and others.
During
the industrial and factory work boom in the United States of the
early twentieth century, the concept of Taylorism, or Scientific
management of the workplace caused great struggles of exhaustion and
injury to everyday workers. With the incorporation of Taylorism into
industrial work it provided a feeling of alienation from ones work,
better known as Marxism. Taylorsim affected the whole working
population similarly for all the workers but also differently for
lower class immigrants and racially different populations.
Industrial Engineer Fredrick Wilson Taylor devised the notion of
yielding production into its most effective state, to create products
and minimize skill for employee training time.
During
the turn of the twentieth century a change from rural and farming
life changed into a mechanical, antistatic, and industrial life. An
economic Capitalist system was put into place and people’s
possessions were changing from necessities to personal pleasured
objects; with this change also came the dissatisfaction of personal
work or trades one once use to have. An industrial engineer by the
name of Fredrick Wilson Taylor came up with the notion of yielding
production into its most effective state, to create products and
minimize skill for employee training time. “The origin of the
system of scientific management is commonly dascribed to the late F.
Taylor, who, after preparing for college, went to work instead, and
who in 1882 was made machine-shop foreman of the Midvale Steel
Company of Philadelphia”.1
Instead of attending college Taylor became a machine shop foreman of
the Midvale Steel Company of Philadelphia in 1882. When Taylor
became the manager of Midvale Steel Company, he realized the
struggles that came with production and maintaining a profit of a
product.2
With this background and experience of being on the employer’s
side, Taylor believed the best solution for his company and other
companies was time management.
Taylors
scientific management system of the workplace incorporated efficiency
by breaking down production into specialized repetitive tasks,
timekeeping, and eliminating all unnecessary motions and steps in the
process known as Taylorism.
In
his efficiency studies Taylor analyzed all the movements and tasks
involved in the creation of a single product. He then broke down the
production process further into small simple tasks. As Meiksins
writes of Taylorism is was “…a system for rationalization of
blue-collar work; for its fragmentation, control and speed-up”.
An
addition to Taylor’s system of scientific management was the
concept to timming each position on the assembly line of production.
A set time was standardized for each task done, if a baked goods
factory made loafs of bread that particular company would set a time
of five seconds to package and seal the loaf of bread, and those who
did not meet this standard of production were let go to be replaced
by the many men waiting for jobs. “Taylor was unlike other foremen
in that he believed that it was possible to determine accurately, by
research and experiment, the amount of work of which a man was
capable, and proposed to obtain this amount and no less by suitable
methods of payment, writes Horace Drury”.3
With such relentless timekeeping, workers found it very difficult to
consistently keep up with the pace and eventually overexerted
themselves to the point that they were replaced by other laborers.
Taylorism
affected many working people, not only with the idea that one could
be easily replaced but with the extra stress that one compounded
problems that already existed for some workers, including racism and
discrimination. According to Esch and Rodiger Taylor believed in a
system of “race management” as well, and he “occasionally
professed a belief in Black inferiority and that he was capable of
glorying that when ‘American’ labourers moved up to operate
machines, ‘the dirt handling is done by Italians and Hungarians’”.4
The collective working industrial class suffered the consequences of
time management, but for selective others it became more intense and
overwhelming for the discriminating positions given to them for their
ethnicity or religious traits. Through following the concept of
Taylorism, factory and business owners sought to take advantage of
their workers tot he furthest point in order to create a bigger
empire for themselves. Business owners wanted what was physically
impossible by a single worker over time; therefore, once an
individual worker’s physical strength was reached, they became
unwanted. Indeed, as Meiksins writes, “ the wage laborer does not
possess the means of production and can obtain his subsistence only
by selling his labor power to the capitalist, the capitalist has the
ability to dispose of labor power and the means of production as he
sees fit”.5
With piece rates and low wages at this time it made it impossible for
many to survive. Jobs were lost easily and replacements were ready
within seconds. The scarcity of labor and the need for it made it
very difficult for the lower class society to maintain their lives
steadily.
The
working conditions that came along with Taylorism were incredibly
destructive to the U.S. working class. Multiple processes like
sanitation conditions and safety precautions were overlooked and
viewed as unnecessary tasks so they could be set to the side to cut
costs. Many factories were cluttered with materials, had decaying
lighting, and laborers were constantly forced to work nonstop. One of
the most well-known examples of the destructive nature of poor
working conditions was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911,
which broke out when factory owners had blocked exit pathways.
According to historians Robert and Marilyn Aitken, What burned so
quickly and disastrously for the victims were shirtwaists, hanging on
lines above the tiers of workers, sewing machines placed so closely
together that there was hardly aisle room for the girls between them,
and shirtwaist trimmings and cuttings which littered the floors above
the eighth and ninth stories…”6
Many girls and women were killed because they had been locked in by
employers who were preventing them from leaving or taking
unauthorized breaks. "Thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead. Sixty-two
thuds. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death
came to me each time, at the same instant. There was plenty of chance
to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.”7
After the horrific incident, many people—and especially women—spoke
out for workers’ rights and union reform. Jack Skeels argues,
during thepre-1949 period of the twentieth century “unionism was
poorly established, membership was often small and unstable, and
labor's political status was uncertain—strikes fluctuated”.8
After the Triangle factory fire, some change did occur. Reforms for
safe sanitation conditions, preventing child labor and wage fairness
were put into place and action was taken by local government and
activists such as Al Smith and Frances Perkins, a New York state
legislator who would later become governor.
Taylorism
had degenerated working conditions in early twentieth century U.S.
factories, and this provoked politicians, reforms, and unions alike
to propose and institute legislation that would protect the U.S.
working class. If it wasn’t for the concept of Taylorism and the
incidences like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire such law and
labor positions wouldn’t be how they are in present time. Although
the concept of Taylorism may have been intended as a great process
especially for Taylor himself it concluded to many incidences that
were horrid and unbelievable. With this experience of death,
declining health and injuries caused by Taylorism it allowed for the
workers to see the inhumane treatment, to reach out and step up for
better equality.
1
Horace Bookwalter Drury. “Scientific Management: A History and
Criticism” The Nation, The New Efficiency. 101.2626 (1915)
520-521
2
Meiksins, Peter F. “SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AND CLASS RELATIONS:
A Dissenting View.” Science & Theory. 13.2 (1984)
177-209
3
Horace Bookwalter Drury. “Scientific Management: A History and
Criticism” The Nation, The New Efficiency. 101.2626 (1915)
520-521
4
E Esch & D. Roediger. “One Symptom of Originality: Race and
the Management of Labour in the History of the United States”
Historical Materialism Research in Critical Marxist Theory. 17.4
(2009): 3-44
5
Meiksins, Peter F. “SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AND CLASS RELATIONS:
A Dissenting View.” Science & Theory. 13.2 (1984)
177-209
6
Aitken,
Robert & Aitken,
Marilyn. “The Triangle Fire: Tragedy: Trial, and Triumph”
Litigation. 36.3 (2010) 53-56
7
Aitken,
Robert & Aitken,
Marilyn. “The Triangle Fire: Tragedy: Trial, and Triumph”
Litigation. 36.3 (2010) 53-56
8
Skeels, Jack. “The Economic and Organizational Basis of Early
United States Strikes” Industrial and Labor Relations Review.
35.4 (1982) 491-503
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