Efficiency Movement
Encyclopedia
The Efficiency Movement was a major movement in the United States, Britain and other industrial nations in the early 20th century that sought to identify and eliminate waste in all areas of the economy and society, and to develop and implement best practices. The concept covered mechanical, economic, social, and personal improvement. The quest for efficiency promised effective, dynamic management rewarded by growth.
in the United States, where it flourished 1890-1932. Adherents argued that all aspects of the economy, society and government were riddled with waste and inefficiency. Everything would be better if experts identified the problems and fixed them. The result was strong support for building research universities and schools of business and engineering, municipal research agencies, as well as reform of hospitals and medical schools, and the practice of farming. Perhaps the best known leaders were engineers Frederick Winslow Taylor
(1856–1915), who used a stopwatch to identify the smallest inefficiencies, and Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) who proclaimed there was always "one best way" to fix a problem.
Leaders such as Herbert Croly
, Charles van Hise and Richard Ely sought to improve governmental performance by training experts in public service comparable to those in Germany, notably at the Universities of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Schools of business administration set up management programs oriented toward efficiency.
State governments were active as well. For example, Massachusetts set up its "Commission on Economy and Efficiency" in 1912. It made hundreds of recommendations.
and John D. Rockefeller
actively promoted the efficiency movement. In his many philanthropic pursuits, Rockefeller believed in supporting efficiency. He once said,
regarding national resources came to prominence during the Progressive Era. According to historian Samuel P. Hays, the conservation movement was based on the "gospel of the efficiency.".
The Massachusetts Commission on Economy and Efficiency reflected the new concern with conservation. It said in 1912:
President Roosevelt
was the nation's foremost conservationist, putting the issue high on the national agenda by emphasizing the need to eliminate wasteful uses of limited natural resources. He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter, Gifford Pinchot
. Roosevelt was deeply committed to conserving natural resources, and is considered to be the nation's first conservation
President.
In 1908, Roosevelt sponsored the Conference of Governors
held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use. Roosevelt delivered the opening address: "Conservation as a National Duty."
in contrast, environmentalist John Muir
promulgated a very different view of conservation, rejecting the efficiency motivation. Muir instead preached that nature was sacred and humans are intruders who should look but not develop. Working through the Sierra Club
he founded, Muir tried to minimize commercial use of water resources and forests. While Muir wanted nature preserved for the sake of pure beauty, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees."
, a trained engineer who downplayed politics and believed dispassionate, nonpolitical experts could solve the nation's great problems, such as ending poverty.
on Hoover and helped to somewhat discredit the movement, though the demand for efficiency and elimination of waste remains an important component of American values.
(1856–1941) argued bigness conflicted with efficiency and added a new political dimension to the Efficiency Movement. As early as 1895 he had warned of the harm that giant corporations could do to competitors, customers, and their own workers. The growth of industrialization was creating mammoth companies which he felt threatened the well-being of millions of Americans. In "The Curse of Bigness" he argued, "Efficiency means greater production with less effort and at less cost, through the elimination of unnecessary waste, human and material. How else can we hope to attain our social ideals?."
(1887–1944) combine elements of Taylorism and Fordism and was especially influential in Germany. The Bedaux system represented a method of time and motion studies with aspects of both wage management and business management. For wages, the system promoted premiums for extra performance on top of a guaranteed hourly wage. The Bedaux system tried to reconfigure management and accounting, with an emphasis on controlling costs. It covered both blue- and white-collar workers, and especially middle managers. During the 1920s-1990s worldwide there were about one thousand companies in 21 countries that were run according to Bedaux, including giants such as Swift meatpacking, Eastman Kodak cameras, B.F. Goodrich rubber, DuPont chemicals, and General Electric. In addition there were numerous users in Britain, France and Germany.
, for instance, more of a fad than a movement, and others flourished in the 1930s and 1940s.
Postmodern opponents of nuclear energy in the 1970s broadened their attack to try to discredit movements that saw salvation for human society in technical expertise alone, or which held that scientists or engineers had any special expertise to offer in the political realm.
(1724–1792). Called the "father of civil engineering", he studied water wheels and steam engines. In the late 19th century there was much talk about improving the efficiency of the administration and economic performance of the British Empire.
National Efficiency was an attempt to discredit the old-fashioned habits, customs and institutions that put the British at a handicap in competition with the world, especially with Germany, which was seen as the epitome of efficiency. In the early 20th century, "National Efficiency" became a powerful demand — a movement supported by prominent figures across the political spectrum who disparaged sentimental humanitarianism and identified waste and model as witnesses a mistake that could no longer be tolerated. The movement took place in two waves; the first wave from 1899 to 1905 was made urgent by the inefficiencies and failures in the Second Boer War
(1899–1902). Spectator magazine reported in 1902 there was "a universal outcry for efficiency in all departments of society, in all aspects of life". The two most important themes were technocratic efficiency and managerial efficiency. As White (1899) argued vigorously, the empire needed to be put on a business footing and administered to get better results. The looming threat of Germany, which was widely seen as a much more efficient nation, added urgency after 1902. Politically National Efficiency brought together modernizing Conservatives and Unionists, Liberals who wanted to bring modernize their party, and Fabians such as George Bernard Shaw
and H. G. Wells
, along with Beatrice
and Sidney Webb, who had outgrown socialism and saw the utopia of a scientifically up-to-date society supervised by experts such as themselves. Churchill in 1908 formed an alliance with the Webbs, announcing the goal of a "National Minimum", covering hours, working conditions, and wages – it was a safety net below which the individual would not be allowed to fall.
Representative legislation included the Education Act of 1902
, which emphasized the role of experts in the schools system. Higher education was an important initiative, typified by the growth of the London School of Economics
, and the foundation of Imperial College.
There was a pause in the movement between 1904 and 1909, when interest resumed. The most prominent new leaders included Liberals Winston Churchill
and David Lloyd George
, whose influence brought a bundle of reform legislation that introduced the welfare state to Britain.
Much of the popular and elite support for National Efficiency grew out of concern for Britain's military position, especially with respect to Germany. The Royal Navy underwent a dramatic modernization, most famously in the introduction of the Dreadnought
, which in 1906 revolutionized naval warfare overnight.
. The Bedaux system was widely adopted in the rubber and tire industry, despite strong resistance in the socialist labor movement to the Bedaux system. Continental AG
, the leading rubber company in Germany, adopted the system and profited heavily from it, thus surviving the Great Depression relatively undamaged and improving its competitive capabilities. However most German businessmen preferred the home-grown REFA system which focused on the standardization of working conditions, tools, and machinery.
"Rationalization" meant higher productivity and greater efficiency, promising science would bring prosperity. More generally it promised a new level of modernity and was applied to economic production and consumption as well as public administration. Various versions of rationalization were promoted by industrialists and Social Democrats, by engineers and architects, by educators and academics, by middle class feminists and social workers, by government officials and politicians of many parties. It was ridiculed by the extremists in the Nazi and Communist movements. As ideology and practice, rationalization challenged and transformed not only machines, factories, and vast business enterprises but also the lives of middle-class and working-class Germans.
(1900–1993) brought the efficiency movement to Japan after World War II, teaching top management how to improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales (the last through global markets), especially using statistical methods. Deming then brought his methods back to the U.S. in the form of quality control called Continuous improvement process
.
United States
The Efficiency Movement played a central role in the Progressive EraProgressive Era
The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political...
in the United States, where it flourished 1890-1932. Adherents argued that all aspects of the economy, society and government were riddled with waste and inefficiency. Everything would be better if experts identified the problems and fixed them. The result was strong support for building research universities and schools of business and engineering, municipal research agencies, as well as reform of hospitals and medical schools, and the practice of farming. Perhaps the best known leaders were engineers Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants...
(1856–1915), who used a stopwatch to identify the smallest inefficiencies, and Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) who proclaimed there was always "one best way" to fix a problem.
Leaders such as Herbert Croly
Herbert Croly
Herbert David Croly was an intellectual leader of the Progressive Movement as an editor, and political philosopher and a co-founder of the magazine The New Republic in early twentieth-century America...
, Charles van Hise and Richard Ely sought to improve governmental performance by training experts in public service comparable to those in Germany, notably at the Universities of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Schools of business administration set up management programs oriented toward efficiency.
Municipal and state efficiency
Many cities set up "efficiency bureaus" to identify waste and apply the best practices. For example, Chicago created an Efficiency Division (1910–16) within the city government's Civil Service Commission, and private citizens organized the Chicago Bureau of Public Efficiency (1910–32). The former pioneered the study of "personal efficiency," measuring employees' performance through new scientific merit systems.State governments were active as well. For example, Massachusetts set up its "Commission on Economy and Efficiency" in 1912. It made hundreds of recommendations.
Philanthropy
Leading philanthropists such as Andrew CarnegieAndrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...
and John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...
actively promoted the efficiency movement. In his many philanthropic pursuits, Rockefeller believed in supporting efficiency. He once said,
- "To help an inefficient, ill-located, unnecessary school is a waste...it is highly probable that enough money has been squandered on unwise educational projects to have built up a national system of higher education adequate to our needs, if the money had been properly directed to that end."
Conservation
The conservation movementConservation in the United States
Conservation in the United States can be traced back to the 19th century with the formation of the first National Park.-Philosophy of early American conservation movement:During the 19th century, Americans developed a deep and abiding passion for nature...
regarding national resources came to prominence during the Progressive Era. According to historian Samuel P. Hays, the conservation movement was based on the "gospel of the efficiency.".
The Massachusetts Commission on Economy and Efficiency reflected the new concern with conservation. It said in 1912:
- "The only proper basis for the protection of game birds, wild fowl and, indeed, all animals is an economic one, and must be based upon carefully constructed and properly enforced laws for the conservation of all species for the benefit of future generations of our citizens, rather than based on local opinion....This expenditure for the protection of fish and game is clearly a wise economy, tending to prevent the annihilation of birds and other animals valuable to mankind which might otherwise become extinct. It may be said that Massachusetts and her sister States have suffered irreparable loss by carelessly allowing, for generations past, indiscriminate waste of animal life."
President Roosevelt
Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States. He had been the 25th Vice President before becoming President upon the assassination of President William McKinley...
was the nation's foremost conservationist, putting the issue high on the national agenda by emphasizing the need to eliminate wasteful uses of limited natural resources. He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter, Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot was the first Chief of the United States Forest Service and the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania...
. Roosevelt was deeply committed to conserving natural resources, and is considered to be the nation's first conservation
Conservation biology
Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction...
President.
In 1908, Roosevelt sponsored the Conference of Governors
Conference of Governors
The Conference of Governors was held in the White House May 13-15, 1908 under the sponsorship of President Theodore Roosevelt. Gifford Pinchot, at that time Chief Forester of the U.S., was the primary mover of the conference....
held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use. Roosevelt delivered the opening address: "Conservation as a National Duty."
in contrast, environmentalist John Muir
John Muir
John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...
promulgated a very different view of conservation, rejecting the efficiency motivation. Muir instead preached that nature was sacred and humans are intruders who should look but not develop. Working through the Sierra Club
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president...
he founded, Muir tried to minimize commercial use of water resources and forests. While Muir wanted nature preserved for the sake of pure beauty, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees."
National politics
In U.S. national politics, the most prominent figure was Herbert HooverHerbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
, a trained engineer who downplayed politics and believed dispassionate, nonpolitical experts could solve the nation's great problems, such as ending poverty.
Attacks on efficiency
After 1929, Democrats blamed the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
on Hoover and helped to somewhat discredit the movement, though the demand for efficiency and elimination of waste remains an important component of American values.
Antitrust
Boston lawyer Louis BrandeisLouis Brandeis
Louis Dembitz Brandeis ; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents who raised him in a secular mode...
(1856–1941) argued bigness conflicted with efficiency and added a new political dimension to the Efficiency Movement. As early as 1895 he had warned of the harm that giant corporations could do to competitors, customers, and their own workers. The growth of industrialization was creating mammoth companies which he felt threatened the well-being of millions of Americans. In "The Curse of Bigness" he argued, "Efficiency means greater production with less effort and at less cost, through the elimination of unnecessary waste, human and material. How else can we hope to attain our social ideals?."
Bedaux system
The Bedaux system, developed by American entrepreneur Charles BedauxCharles Bedaux
Charles Eugène Bedaux was one of the most colorful millionaires of the early twentieth century. Friends with British royalty and Nazis alike, he amassed a fortune expanding on the Taylorism style of scientific management and was a big game hunter and explorer.-Early years:Charles Bedaux was born...
(1887–1944) combine elements of Taylorism and Fordism and was especially influential in Germany. The Bedaux system represented a method of time and motion studies with aspects of both wage management and business management. For wages, the system promoted premiums for extra performance on top of a guaranteed hourly wage. The Bedaux system tried to reconfigure management and accounting, with an emphasis on controlling costs. It covered both blue- and white-collar workers, and especially middle managers. During the 1920s-1990s worldwide there were about one thousand companies in 21 countries that were run according to Bedaux, including giants such as Swift meatpacking, Eastman Kodak cameras, B.F. Goodrich rubber, DuPont chemicals, and General Electric. In addition there were numerous users in Britain, France and Germany.
Relation to other movements
Later movements had echoes of the Efficiency Movement and were more directly inspired by Taylor and Taylorism. TechnocracyTechnocracy movement
The technocracy movement is a social movement which arose in the early 20th century. It put forth a plan for operating the North American continent as a non-monetary society. Technocracy was highly popular in the USA for a brief period in the early 1930s, when it overshadowed many other proposals...
, for instance, more of a fad than a movement, and others flourished in the 1930s and 1940s.
Postmodern opponents of nuclear energy in the 1970s broadened their attack to try to discredit movements that saw salvation for human society in technical expertise alone, or which held that scientists or engineers had any special expertise to offer in the political realm.
Britain
In engineering, the concept of efficiency was developed in Britain in the mid-18th century by John SmeatonJohn Smeaton
John Smeaton, FRS, was an English civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist...
(1724–1792). Called the "father of civil engineering", he studied water wheels and steam engines. In the late 19th century there was much talk about improving the efficiency of the administration and economic performance of the British Empire.
National Efficiency was an attempt to discredit the old-fashioned habits, customs and institutions that put the British at a handicap in competition with the world, especially with Germany, which was seen as the epitome of efficiency. In the early 20th century, "National Efficiency" became a powerful demand — a movement supported by prominent figures across the political spectrum who disparaged sentimental humanitarianism and identified waste and model as witnesses a mistake that could no longer be tolerated. The movement took place in two waves; the first wave from 1899 to 1905 was made urgent by the inefficiencies and failures in the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
(1899–1902). Spectator magazine reported in 1902 there was "a universal outcry for efficiency in all departments of society, in all aspects of life". The two most important themes were technocratic efficiency and managerial efficiency. As White (1899) argued vigorously, the empire needed to be put on a business footing and administered to get better results. The looming threat of Germany, which was widely seen as a much more efficient nation, added urgency after 1902. Politically National Efficiency brought together modernizing Conservatives and Unionists, Liberals who wanted to bring modernize their party, and Fabians such as George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
, along with Beatrice
Beatrice Webb
Martha Beatrice Webb, Lady Passfield was an English sociologist, economist, socialist and social reformer. Although her husband became Baron Passfield in 1929, she refused to be known as Lady Passfield...
and Sidney Webb, who had outgrown socialism and saw the utopia of a scientifically up-to-date society supervised by experts such as themselves. Churchill in 1908 formed an alliance with the Webbs, announcing the goal of a "National Minimum", covering hours, working conditions, and wages – it was a safety net below which the individual would not be allowed to fall.
Representative legislation included the Education Act of 1902
Education Act 1902
The Education Act 1902 , also known as Balfour's Act, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom affecting education in England and Wales. At the time of passage of the Act, the Conservative Party was in power...
, which emphasized the role of experts in the schools system. Higher education was an important initiative, typified by the growth of the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
, and the foundation of Imperial College.
There was a pause in the movement between 1904 and 1909, when interest resumed. The most prominent new leaders included Liberals Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
, whose influence brought a bundle of reform legislation that introduced the welfare state to Britain.
Much of the popular and elite support for National Efficiency grew out of concern for Britain's military position, especially with respect to Germany. The Royal Navy underwent a dramatic modernization, most famously in the introduction of the Dreadnought
Dreadnought
The dreadnought was the predominant type of 20th-century battleship. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts...
, which in 1906 revolutionized naval warfare overnight.
Germany
In Germany the efficiency movement was called "rationalization" and it was a powerful social and economic force before 1933. In part it looked explicitly at American models, especially FordismFordism
Fordism, named after Henry Ford, is a modern economic and social system based on industrial mass production. The concept is used in various social theories about production and related socio-economic phenomena. It has varying but related meanings in different fields, as well as for Marxist and...
. The Bedaux system was widely adopted in the rubber and tire industry, despite strong resistance in the socialist labor movement to the Bedaux system. Continental AG
Continental AG
Continental AG, internally often called Conti for short, is a worldwide leading German manufacturer of tires, brake systems, vehicle stability control systems, engine injection systems, tachographs and other parts for the automotive and transport industries. The company is based in Hanover, Germany...
, the leading rubber company in Germany, adopted the system and profited heavily from it, thus surviving the Great Depression relatively undamaged and improving its competitive capabilities. However most German businessmen preferred the home-grown REFA system which focused on the standardization of working conditions, tools, and machinery.
"Rationalization" meant higher productivity and greater efficiency, promising science would bring prosperity. More generally it promised a new level of modernity and was applied to economic production and consumption as well as public administration. Various versions of rationalization were promoted by industrialists and Social Democrats, by engineers and architects, by educators and academics, by middle class feminists and social workers, by government officials and politicians of many parties. It was ridiculed by the extremists in the Nazi and Communist movements. As ideology and practice, rationalization challenged and transformed not only machines, factories, and vast business enterprises but also the lives of middle-class and working-class Germans.
Japan
W. Edwards DemingW. Edwards Deming
William Edwards Deming was an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer and consultant. He is perhaps best known for his work in Japan...
(1900–1993) brought the efficiency movement to Japan after World War II, teaching top management how to improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales (the last through global markets), especially using statistical methods. Deming then brought his methods back to the U.S. in the form of quality control called Continuous improvement process
Continuous Improvement Process
A continuous improvement process is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek "incremental" improvement over time or "breakthrough" improvement all at once...
.
Primary sources
- Dewey, Melville. "Efficiency Society" Encyclopedia Americana (1918) online vol 9 p 720
- Emerson, Harrington, "Efficiency Engineering" Encyclopedia Americana (1918) online vol 9 pp 714-20
- Taylor, Frederick Winslow Principles of Scientific Management (1913) online edition
- Taylor, Frederick Winslow. Scientific Management: Early Sociology of Management and Organizations (2003), reprints Shop Management (1903), The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) and Testimony Before the Special House Committee (1912).
- White, Arnold. Efficiency and empire (1901) online edition, influential study regarding the British Empire