only when the equipment, surroundings and methods of the worker are
standardized. Therefore the insistence upon standardization, even
down to the smallest things, is vital for achieving the greatest
output.

For example,--suppose the keys of the monotype machine, piano or
typewriter were not located permanently in the same relative
position. Consider the loss of time in not being able to use habits
in finding each key. Such an arrangement sounds ridiculous on the
face of it, yet it is a common practice for many operators,
especially of monotype machines, to make a complete mental decision
as to the muscles and fingers with which they will strike the
desired key.

Imagine the records of output of a typist who was using a
different keyboard every day, if there were that many kinds of
keyboards. It is easy for anyone to conceive the great advantages of
standard keyboards for such machines, but only those who have made a
study of output of all kinds of workers can fully realize that
similar differences in sizes of output are being produced by the
workers of the country for lack of similar standardization of
working conditions and equipment.

UTMOST STANDARDIZATION DOES NOT MAKE "MACHINES" OF THE WORKERS
OPERATING UNDER IT.--The attention of those who believe that
standardization makes machines out of the workers themselves, is
called to the absence of such effect upon the typist as compared
with the scribe, the monotype and linotype operator as compared with
the compositor, and the mechanical computing machine operator as
compared with the arithmetician.

STANDARD METHODS DEMAND STANDARD TOOLS AND DEVICES.--Habits
cannot be standardized until the devices and tools used are of
standard pattern. It is not nearly so essential to have the best
tools as it is to have standard tools.[8] Experience in the
hospitals points to the importance of this fact in surgery. Tools
once adopted as standard should not be changed until the improvement
or greater efficiency from their use will compensate for the loss
during the period of "breaking in" the user, that is, of forming new
habits in order to handle strange tools. As will be brought out more
fully under "Teaching," good habits are as difficult to break as bad
ones, the only difference being that one does not usually desire to
break good ones. Naturally, if a new device is introduced, what was
an excellent habit for the old device becomes, perhaps, a very bad
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