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certain. To measure the success of scientific management by the volume of goods produced is not enough, for the social loss may more than offset the economic gain. Like other forms of invention, scientific management under judicious control could be of real benefit to mankind. Provided that the necessary safeguards are employed, and that scientific management is confined to its proper function of securing a given output for the minimum of effort, there is no reason why the improved organisation should not be to the general advantage. But when one considers the use made of scientific management in relation to methods of payment, the connection does not seem clear or justifiable. Elaborate organisation and the detailing and standardising of tasks do not, of themselves, indicate the specific productivities of different workers, and of labour as a whole compared with the other factors of production. The operation of such schemes has not caused any visible improvement in the mode of distribution, while many workers have been given reason to suspect the “science that lies at the back of these systems. With the development of the factory system, the personal relationship found in the earlier systems of production grew weaker, and where the joint-stock company took the place of the individual employer, the personal element practically disappeared. The employer, whether an individual or a company, might provide the workpeople with certain amenities, but the extent and organisation of the firm became so enormous and complex that the full provision and proper administration of these faculties could not always be ensured. Recognition of the need for some department, concerned with the human, as distinct from the profit-making, activities of a business, led to the establishment of the welfare department.

Welfare
Work.

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Welfare work has been defined as the efforts on the part of employers to improve, within the existing industrial system, the conditions of employment in their own factories."* It had been instituted by some employers in the late nineteenth century, but it was not until the war that it reached its present vogue. The stimulus was largely due to the increased number of women taken into industry (not that men are excluded from the schemes), and to the recognition that even the strictest observations of the Factory Acts did not provide really good conditions for the workers.

In 1916 a certain measure of welfare work was brought within the Factory Acts, but several employers supplemented the compulsory provisions. The advocates of welfare work set out to obtain a higher minimum of comfort and other amenities than that enforced by legislation. Their motives were not primarily, if at all, philanthropic. Many employers frankly favoured the plan because it was to their economic advantage. It was recognised that better conditions and surroundings improved the workers' efficiency, and that the financial outlay was usually more than balanced by the greater output. In America, the science of "personnel administration" (as welfare work is termed there) has secured many adherents essentially for this reason.

The first object of the welfare department is to ensure that the working conditions are as safe and healthy as the occupation permits. The works must be well ventilated, heated, etc., and rest, recreation, games and sports and social facilities should be adequately provided. Medical and dental services should be freely supplied. (A few firms medically examine all workers, but this practice is usually deprecated as an unwarrantable interference with the in* Proud, Welfare Work, p. 5.

dividual worker's liberty.) Education, both general and technical, should have a place in the welfare scheme, and with this should be coupled an arrangement for securing promotion for workers qualified to take high positions. In many firms the welfare department is empowered to engage workers, subject to the final decision of the departmental manager. Selecting suitable workers is a task which is only too frequently left to ill-equipped officials. Numerous other activities are added to the scope of welfare work, according to the policy of individual firms. While in some factories the operations of the welfare department are limited to the securing of discipline and the supervision of simple working conditions, in other concerns they go so far as to have some voice in regulating wages and hours, and in dealing with grievances and discharges.

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Though welfare work has done, and may continue to do, good service, its function is necessarily limited. The fact that the welfare department is appointed and paid by the employer frequently arouses a degree of suspicion in the minds of the workers. Girls object to even a good welfare supervisor, because they think her goodness will not last, and they wonder what her game is."* There is a feeling among many workers that welfare schemes are prejudicial to trade unionism. Rightly or wrongly, they suspect a welfare supervisor who does not belong to their own class, particularly if she (or he) happens to be related to the employer. The fear has also been expressed that unless the workers are on their guard, “welfare” may be substituted in effect for part of the wage.

The resentment would certainly be justified if welfare work were made a disguise for an insidious type of scientific management. Whether this suspicion is warranted de

* Report of Women's Conference 1917, quoted in Webb: The Works Manager To-day, p. 143.

pends on particular employers and circumstances. The admission of many employers that they find welfare work a paying proposition is not in itself a reason why the workers should object to its introduction, provided that the scheme is mutually advantageous. But there is always the fear that an employer, if he has sole power over the welfare department, may use it too much to his own advantage. It appears desirable, therefore, that the control of welfare work should be vested in a body on which the workers are adequately represented.

CHAPTER VI.

Women in
Industry.

WOMEN'S WORK AND WAGES.

Women have always been engaged in industrial activities, though they played a less important part before the Industrial Revolution than after. In the so-called domestic system of production women, besides carrying on the ordinary home duties, had assisted the male members of the household in such occupations as agriculture, spinning and weaving. Frequently they were given home work directly by the capitalist middleman, and "outside" employment of women in the textile trades and in the mines was not uncommon. *

With the industrial changes of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the number of women who took up outside employment greatly increased. The introduction of the new machinery meant a falling-off in the demand for the skilled hand-workers, whose places were taken by semi-skilled operatives, many of them women. Male workers had to face the competition of women as well as

*The mistake is often made of assuming that there were no large-scale enterprises before the eighteenth century, that a number of wage-earners were rarely collected under one roof, and that practically all employment was domestic. There is ample evidence to show that an elementary factory system existed before the Industrial Revolution.

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