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 worker could employ “and thrive under.”  It was found that the worker’s resistance of fatigue in lifting and carrying the load depended, not on the amount of strength in terms of horse-power which he was obliged to exert to elevate and sustain the load, but on the proportion of his day spent in rest.  For instance, a pig-iron handler, lifting and carrying pigs weighing 92 pounds each, could lift and carry 47 tons of iron in a day without undue fatigue if fifty-seven per cent of his working hours were spent in rest, and forty-three per cent were spent in work.  If he lifted and put in place a number of pigs amounting to half that tonnage, he might work without undue fatigue for a greater part of the day.  Under a certain far lighter load he could work without fatigue all day long, with no rest whatever.

With accurate time-study as a basis, the “quickest time” for each job is at all times in plain sight of both employers and workmen, and is reached with accuracy, precision, and speed.[46]