d that point. These plans are called
"premium plans," "progressive wage systems," and "gain sharing." One
of the first of these, Halsey's premium plan, fixes a standard time
for a job and if the worker falls short of, or merely attains to,
that standard he gets the regular pay; but if he takes less than the
standard time he receives a fixed premium per hour for the time saved.
For example, if the standard time is 10 hours for a $3.00 job and the
premium for speed is ten cents per hour, the worker would receive 20
cents premium if he did the work in 8 hours ($2.40 +.20, total $2.60),
and 50 cents premium if he did it in 5 hours ($1.50 + 50, total
$2.00). His average wage per hour thus rises as his speed increases;
it becomes 32.5 cents per hour when the job is done in 8 hours, and 40
cents per hour when the job is done in 5 hours. The reduction of cost
per job to the employer evidently would be 40 cents in the first case,
and $1.00 in the second. This is Halsey's plan, by which the worker
gets one-third and the employer two-thirds of the time saved.

The same plan has been applied (Weir's method) with a premium that
equally divides between the workman and the employer the time saved.
By Rowan's method the premium is not a fixed sum but a percentage of
the standard rate per hour equal to the percentage of reduction in
time consumed. For example, if in the foregoing example the time were
reduced 20 per cent (to 8 hours) the premium would be 20 per cent of
30 cents, and the workman would receive 36 cents per hour. By this
plan the premium becomes less for the later reductions than in either
of the other plans. The utmost possible wages would be double the
standard rate.

A number of other variations have been worked out by the promoters of
recent scientific management, and are known as Taylor's, Gantt's,
and Emerson's plans. The authors of all these plans agree as to
the importance of fixing the standard rate so that it will leave a
possibility of considerable improvement with unusual effort, and of
leaving the standard rate and premium unchanged as long as no new
process or new machinery is introduced into the business. If this is
not done the employees lose faith in the plan and refuse to make the
necessary effort to earn the premium. Most of these plans of
payment recently have been connected with experiments and studies in
scientific management to reduce the time and increase the ease of the
operations.

In a variet