In the first case, however, the work is done by an
especially trained body of men who work together like a smoothly running
machine, and in the second by a much larger number of men very poorly
trained and ill-fitted for this work, and each of whom while doing it is
taken away from some other job for which he is well trained. The work
which is now done by one sewing machine, intricate in its appearance,
was formerly done by a number of women with no apparatus beyond a simple
needle and thread.
There is no question that the cost of production is lowered by
separating the work of planning and the brain work as much as possible
from the manual labor. When this is done, however, it is evident that
the brain workers must be given sufficient work to keep them fully busy
all the time. They must not be allowed to stand around for a
considerable part of their time waiting for their particular kind of
work to come along, as is so frequently the case.
The belief is almost universal among manufacturers that for economy the
number of brain workers, or non-producers, as they are called, should be
as small as possible in proportion to the number of producers, i.e.,
those who actually work with their hands. An examination of the most
successful establishments will, however, show that the reverse is true.
A number of years ago the writer made a careful study of the proportion
of producers to non-producers in three of the largest and most
successful companies in the world, who were engaged in doing the same
work in a general way.
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