Suppose that two
men, named respectively Smart and Honest, are at work by the day and
receive the same pay, say 20 cents per hour. Each of these men is given
a new piece of work which could be done in one hour. Smart does his job
in four hours (and it is by no means unusual for men to soldier to this
extent). Honest does his in one and one-half hours.
Now, when these two jobs start on this basis under the Towne-Halsey plan
and are ultimately done in one hour each, Smart receives for his job 20
cents per hour + a premium of 20 cents = a total of 40 cents. Honest
receives for his job 20 cents per hour + a premium of 3 1/8 cents = a
total of 23 1/8 cents.
Most of the men in the shop will follow the example of Smart rather than
that of Honest and will "soldier" to the extent of three or four hundred
per cent if allowed to do so. The Towne-Halsey system shares with
ordinary piece work then, the greatest evil of the latter, namely that
its very foundation rests upon deceit, and under both of these systems
there is necessarily, as we have seen, a great lack of justice and
equality in the starting-point of different jobs.
Some of the rates will have resulted from records obtained when a
first-class man was working close to his maximum speed, while others
will be based on the performance of a poor man at one-third or one
quarter speed.
The injustice of the very foundation of the system is thus forced upon
the workman every day of his life, and no man, however kindly disposed
he may be toward his employer, can fail to resent this and be seriously
influenced by it in his work.
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