pacity
of a boss to get work out of the men collectively. In work where labor
counted for so much in the final cost as here, it appeared as though
this involved almost the whole question of profit and loss. With a
hundred men employed at a dollar and a half a day, the saving of a
single hour meant the saving of a good many dollars.

It may seem odd that so obvious a fact was not taken advantage of by
the present contractors. Doubtless it was realized but my later
experience showed me that the obvious is very often neglected. In this
business as in many others, the details fall into a rut and often a
newcomer with a fresh point of view will detect waste that has been
going on unnoticed for years. I was almost forty years old, fairly
intelligent, and I had everything at stake. So I was distinctly more
alert than those who retained their positions merely by letting
things run along as well as they always had been going. But however
you may explain it, I knew that the foreman didn't get as much work
out of me as he might have done. In spite of all the control I
exercised over myself I often quit work realizing that half my
strength during the day had gone for nothing. And though it may sound
like boasting to say it, I think I worked both more conscientiously
and intelligently than most of the men.

In the first place the foreman was a bully. He believed in driving his
men. He swore at them and goaded them as an ignorant countryman often
tries to drive oxen. The result was a good deal the same as it is with
oxen--the men worked excitedly when under the sting and loafed the
rest of the time. In a crisis the boss was able to spur them on to
their best--though even then they wasted strength in frantic
endeavor--but he could not keep them up to a consistent level of
steady work. And that's what counts. As in a Marathon race the men who
maintain a steady plugging pace from start to finish are the ones who
accomplish.

The question may be asked how such a boss could keep his job. I myself
did not understand that at first but later as I worked with different
men and under different bosses I saw that it was because their methods
were much alike and that the results were much alike. A certain
standard had been established as to the amount of work that should be
done by a hundred men and this was maintained. The boss had figured
out loosely how much the men would work and the men had figured out to
a minute how much they could loa