This represents a type of systematic soldiering which is not, however,
very serious, since it is done with the knowledge of the employer, who
can quite easily break it up if he wishes.
The greater part of the systematic soldiering, however, is done by the
men with the deliberate object of keeping their employers ignorant of
how fast work can be done.
So universal is soldiering for this purpose, that hardly a competent
workman can be found in a large establishment, whether he works by the
day or on piece work, contract work or under any of the ordinary systems
of compensating labor, who does not devote a considerable part of his
time to studying just how slowly he can work and still convince his
employer that he is going at a good pace.
The causes for this are, briefly, that practically all employers
determine upon a maximum sum which they feel it is right for each of
their classes of employees to earn per day, whether their men work by
the day or piece.
Each workman soon finds out about what this figure is for his particular
case, and he also realizes that when his employer is convinced that a
man is capable of doing more work than he has done, he will find sooner
or later some way of compelling him to do it with little or no increase
of pay.
Employers derive their knowledge of how much of a given class of work
can be done in a day from either their own experience, which has
frequently grown hazy with age, from casual and unsystematic observation
of their men, or at best from records which are kept, showing, the
quickest time in which each job has been done.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29