grave discouragement, a long, hard, and victorious contest of
his conducted as gang boss of the machinists of the Midvale Steel
Company in Pennsylvania. In the course of the last three years, as he
narrates in his book "Academic and Industrial Efficiency":[45]--

By discharging workers, lowering the wages of the more stubborn
men who refused to make any improvement, lowering the
piece-work rate, and by other such methods, he (the writer)
succeeded in very materially increasing the output of the
machines, in some cases doubling the output, and had been
promoted from one gang boss-ship to another until he became the
foreman of the shop.... For any right-minded man, however, this
success is in no sense a recompense for the bitter relations
which he is forced to maintain with all those around him. Life
which is one continuous struggle with other men is hardly worth
living.... Soon after being made foreman, therefore, he decided
to make a determined effort in some way to change the system of
management so that the interests of the workmen and the
management should become the same instead of antagonistic....
He therefore obtained the permission from Mr. William Sellers,
the President of the Midvale Steel Company, to spend some money
in a careful scientific study of the time required to do
various kinds of work.

Lack of information on the part of both workers and the
management as to the quickest time in which a piece of work can
be done constitutes what has been the most formidable obstacle
in the path of all progress toward improved industrial
conditions.... Every wasteful operation, every mistake, every
useless move has to be paid for by somebody, and in the long
run both the employer and the employee have to bear a
proportionate share.... For each job there is the quickest time
in which it can be done by a first-class man; this time may be
called the "Standard Time," for the job.... Under all the
ordinary systems this quickest time is more or less completely
shrouded in mist.

Through a period of about twelve years the simplest operations in the
shop were now timed, observed, and studied by graduates from science
courses, different university men, engaged by Mr. Taylor, until a general
law had been discovered regarding the exertion of physical energy a
first-class worke