POSTING OF RECORDS BENEFICIAL.—­As has been already noted under Individuality, and must be again noted under Incentives, much benefit is derived from posting records, especially when these are of such a character, or are so posted, that the worker may see at a glance the comparative excellence of his results.

SUMMARY

RESULTS OF RECORDS TO THE WORK.[4]—­The results of recording are the same under all forms of management, if the records are correct.

Output increases where records are kept.  Under Traditional Management there is the danger that pressure for quantity will affect quality, especially if insufficient records of the resultant quality are kept.  Under Transitory and Scientific Management, quality is maintained or improved, both because previous records set the standard, and because following records exhibit the quality.

RESULTS TO THE WORKER.—­James says, “A man’s social use is the recognition which he gets from his mates.  We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be liked in sight of our fellow, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.  No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof.  If no one turned around when we entered, answered when we spoke or minded what we did, but if every person we met ‘cut us dead’ and acted as if we were non-existing things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would ere long well up in us, from which the cruelest bodily tortures would be a relief; for these would make us feel that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk to such a depth as to be unworthy of attention at all."[5] This recognition the worker gets partly through the records which are made of him.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE ATTAINED THROUGH RECORDS.—­Through records of output, and especially through charts of such records, and timed motion-picture films, or micro-motion study pictures the worker may, if he be naturally observant, or if he be taught to observe, gain a fine knowledge of himself.

The constant exhibit of cause and effect of the relation of output to, for example,—­drink of alcoholic beverages; to smoking; to food values; to nutrition; to family worries; and to other outside influences;—­in fact, the effects of numerous different modes of living, are shown promptly to the worker in the form of records.

    Two things should here be noted: 

1.  The necessity of having more accurate records of the worker and the work, that the relation oL cause to effect may be more precise and authentic.

2.  The necessity for so training the worker, before, as well as after, he enters the industrial world, that he can better understand and utilize the lesson taught by his own records and those of others.