SOURCE: Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era 1890-1920, The University of Chicago Press, 1964, 181 p.

In the following excerpt from his book Efficiency and Uplift, Haber examines Taylor's early leanings toward scientific management, including early events in his life that may have led to his later obsession with systematizing, and explains the practical application of Taylor's system in factories.

Young Gentleman in the Steel Works

At the summer meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 189S, a small, thin, pernickety engineer named Frederick Winslow Taylor read a paper entitled, "A Piece-Rate System, Being a Step toward a Partial Solution of the Labor Problem." Most of those who heard it considered this paper but one more in the series of papers on the question of wage payments that had been presented to the Society over the years. Actually it was much more. It was the...