Excerpt from Machine MoldingPeople are beginning to realize that the high cost of living is due chiefly to extravagance and waste, and that there is such a thing as Scientific Management1 by which human labor may be conserved and its products enormously increased. When rightly understood and applied this benefits the wage-earner, the employer and the public as well, and goes a long way toward the solution of the labor problem which is inseparable from the cost of living.Improvements in machinery, combined with power for its oper ation, have worked wonders in the output of labor, but only a frac tion of what can be realized from the same amount of human effort when more intelligently directed and controlled. The all - round mechanics of former years have well-nigh disappeared and good workmen, if obtained at all, must be recruited from such raw mate rial as can be found unemployed. There is always an abundance of the inefficient kind, and the problem now confronting the manu facturer is how to make it efficient. And valuable. The answer to this is to be found in the introduction of an educational system of management not unlike the laboratory system adopted in some of our schools and colleges. Men must not be left to their own devices to pick up-such knowledge as may make them inferior or merely good enough workmen. They must be systematically taught to per form the work assigned to them by shop bosses or foremen who are interested in the result, and whose chie'f function it is to teach. In this way every shop in the country may become in effect a trade school of the most valuable kind, in which the pupils are not only taught how to do' certain things but how to do them quickly and well and earn a substantial reward commensurate with the skill attained. No labor-saving machine can produce results without human aid in one way or another, and many a machine, good for its purpose, has been abandoned to the scrap heap, not from any in herent defect or inability to effect a saying, but simply as the result of awkward or inefficient handling. We must have efficient work men as well as efficient machines to obtain the best results, and foundries need both as much as, or possibly more than any other kind of operating plant to-day.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.