"SPEEDING UP."

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXII, Issue 2787, 8 May 1911, Page 3

"SPEEDING UP."

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

It is said that the " speeding up " process is to be introduced into New Zea-

land, and it is sure to be strongly resisted. The British people object to a scheme by which it is proposed to treat a human being as a machine, holding that it is fundamentally wrong,* and those who wish for general progress on the part of the working man will doubtless agree with them. In the United States, however, manufacturers are partial to standardised workmen, just as they are fond of turning out standardised commodities, but it is argued that experience shows that the standardised workman does not do the best work. But the argument that is used most honestly against the American " speeding up " process is that no share of profit accruing from improvements ever falls to the lot of the worker. "If there is anything in this economising ot hnman energy," said the secretary of the official' Labour Party at Home, " how is labour to profit ? It is true that the authors of this system contemplate an equitable division of the amount

saved when resolved into money value, but in matter's of this kind we are justified in appealing to experience ; and our experience is that workmen have never worked fewer hours as the result of scientific adjustment and economics applied to industry." Mr J. Batchelor, the general secretary of the Operative Bricklayers' Union, is equally emphatic upon the subject. " The Americans, " he says, "may have worked out labour motions to a fine art. They may have so standardised them that every action of

a man's body, every pulsation of his heart, one might almost say, whilst he is at work for his employer has got to be used in productive labour. But that is notthe system on which we wish to work in this country. " He will find this view of the matter very practically supported in New Zealand's labour legislation.