APTER XIII

EFFICIENT ADMINISTRATION

Scientific management is the application of the conservation
principle to production.

The time, health and vitality of our people are as well worth
conserving, at least, as our forests, minerals, and lands.

When we get efficiency in all our industries and commercial
ventures, national efficiency will be a fact.

_Theodore Roosevelt._

CHAPTER XIII

EFFICIENT ADMINISTRATION

If the Country Girl of the future takes her life in her hands and asks
for a household laboratory such as has been described, she must make
sure also that she will be able to work in that place in such a way as
to get the most good out of it and to prove its value to those that have
installed it for her. This presupposes a high degree of efficiency in
herself as well as in the tools she handles.

Never has young womanhood been so fortunate in opportunities for
preparation as is the girl of this day. The very minutes seem to bristle
with the word "efficiency." On every side she may receive suggestion and
instruction as to how to make herself consonant with her era. Scientific
management is being carried out in every sort of factory, workshop,
studio, regiment,--everywhere,--with the one exception, perhaps, of her
own, the household workshop. Therefore it is for her to see what
scientific management means to all these other institutions and to apply
the lesson to her own realm, and make that factory of hers, that
workshop, regiment, and studio, into the most efficient place upon
earth!

The great movement in the interest of efficiency has its origin in the
desire to get just as much result as possible out of the labor of the
workers. Their strength must be conserved, not because of any
philanthropic feeling for the man, but because that strength is needed
for further use, in order that a greater output of the product may be
gained. The method employed is to consider studiously the movements made
in carrying on any one part of the work. They separate this operation
into its elements, and then they determine upon the best motions to make
to accomplish the end, and upon the exact order of those motions,
shaving off a part of a second here and there by the careful choosing of
motions and the surest order of them. The motions the workman makes,
whether with eyes, fingers or arms, are thus economized. The bricks for
the building up of the wall are conveniently plac