WEBVTT - Taylorism: Work Faster! 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:09.160 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:13.640 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:17.160 and Jerry's here too, timing us, telling us to hurry up, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.560 scowling at us, even which makes this another average episode 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:26.200 of Stuff you Should Know. She said, get this in 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.560 forty five minutes on the nose, no more, no less, 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:31.880 and then she went uh and walked out of the 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:32.960 room holding a pillow. 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:35.640 Was that me or Joe? 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:36.280 That was Jerry? 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.880 Okay, I'm usually the timekeeper. 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.400 Are you? I'd never noticed with your new swatch. 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:46.560 Yeah. No, I just feel like I'm the one that's 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:48.720 like forty five minutes and you're like, no, let's make 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:49.440 it three hours. 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:52.720 I don't like three hour podcasts, but I also don't 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:55.280 like living under the clock, which is why I probably 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.600 would not have personally liked Frederick Winslow Taylor. 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:00.960 Yeah, should we talk about this guy? 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:03.840 I don't think we have any choice. And by the way, 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:06.840 this is not a biopic. It's not a biography or 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:10.000 a profile. It's about a man that you can't not 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:13.240 talk about. But really this is about his whole system. Okay, 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:14.680 I just want to make that clear. 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:17.679 To you use people likely, Well, I don't want to 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:19.440 hear about that guy. 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:21.720 Well, ts, you're gonna have to. 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:27.520 Big thanks to Olivia because she pushed out another banger here, 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:32.319 thanks in part by this great, great article in The 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:38.600 New Yorker from Jill Lapour, who Lvia calls a genius, 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.200 absolute genius in fact, is a quote she definitely is 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:44.920 great article. Anyway, I think the setup that Livia gave 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:47.000 is kind of worthy of going over a little bit 0:01:47.120 --> 0:01:51.279 because when you look at the you know, nineteen hundred 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.800 through the nineteen twenties and thirties, you looked at in 0:01:54.840 --> 0:02:00.640 America that was really changing in that these huge Industrial 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:05.720 Revolution born industries where all of a sudden, like, hey, 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:09.840 now we're kind of corporations and now we have middle 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:12.680 managers and CEOs and things, and it's a little different 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:14.880 than it used to be, right, And so we need 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:18.640 to start kind of really thinking about how to squeeze 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:23.239 every dime out of this company we can and make 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:28.120 these workers. We'll call it efficiency, but between us, let's say, 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.800 let's call it working them to the bone until they're 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:34.040 near exhaustion so we can maximize profits. 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:37.600 Yeah, and I could just hear our left leaning listeners 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:42.320 going boo his. But efficiency was not in and of 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:45.560 itself a naughty word on either side of the political 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:50.320 spectrum at the time, because you could also hope that 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:55.200 a more efficient factory, or a more efficient workforce, or 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:59.480 a more efficient whatever would increase productivity but also give 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:03.040 workers like more free time and then ideally a larger 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:05.560 share of the profit in the form of higher wages. 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.160 Right, that's how that works, right exactly. 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:11.600 I mean, I can't imagine a more naive progressive movement 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:13.840 than that, But that's exactly what they were hoping for. 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:16.839 But not just hoping for. They were fighting for, agitating 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:20.040 for it, doing whatever they could, taking it to the courts. 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:23.040 Sometimes they were successful, but I think we all know 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:26.600 spoiler alert, in the long run they lost thus far. 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:29.839 That's right, and a lot of the work being done 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:33.080 on efficiency can be laid at the feet of a 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:36.200 person and then some other people. But initially, at least 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:41.200 this guy that you mentioned, Frederick Winslow Taylor, who was 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:45.160 from Philadelphia born in eighteen fifty six, had an attorney 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.960 father an abolitionists mother. It's a very smart guy and 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.280 was all set to take Harvard by storm before his 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:57.000 eyesight started to fail. Right after that got better. He 0:03:57.600 --> 0:03:59.680 may not have gone to Harvard, but he was still 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.440 a really smart guy and ended up studying engineering at 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:09.720 night and became a chief engineer for the Enterprise Hydraulic 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:13.400 Works in Philly and then Midvale Steel Company. 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.760 Yeah, at Midvale Steel Company, that's where he really made 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:19.120 his name. I think that's where he became the chief engineer. 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:21.840 And one of the things he did as he was 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:26.400 working his way up was he was, I guess, out 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:29.839 of the gate obsessed or at least deeply interested with 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:34.200 the idea of doing something in the least number of movements, 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:37.440 the most precise way, the most foolproof way, and that 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:41.919 if you studied a task closely enough and understood it 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.080 well enough, you could find the most efficient way to 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:47.080 do it. And so over. Like his twenty six year 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:54.039 career at Midvale, he conducted more than thirty thousand experiments 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:58.240 in metal cutting, figuring out which tool went with, which 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:00.960 motion went with you know, know, how to grab the 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:04.960 tool the best way. And from that he ended up 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:07.320 writing a book called on the Art of Cutting Metals 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:10.080 in nineteen oh seven. And from what I saw for 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.640 years and years, that was considered like a bible in 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:16.360 the metal cutting industry, and so he definitely put his 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:18.279 money where his mouth is, and that's how he first 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:21.680 kind of got into the idea of becoming an efficiency expert. 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:25.000 Yeah, I think this is a certain kind of brain 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:29.120 because I am on that spectrum a little bit and 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:33.880 trying to weed out inefficiencies with certain things. But I'm 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:36.280 on the side of the spectrum that is also it 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:40.760 comes from laziness. Oh yeah, so I'll try and do 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:43.479 that because I'm inherently kind of lazy, I think. So 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:46.120 I'm like, I look for ways to cut corners to 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:49.000 still get the job done right. And I've had people 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:52.760 compliment me in the old days, like on film sets, like, hey, 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:56.280 you know, I see what you're doing there, and you're 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:59.400 the kid I would hire twice, whereas the guy next 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:01.400 to you who's just like, no, man, let's just make 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:03.960 eight trips and just hump it and do it right. 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.160 He's like, I know, he thinks he's getting it done 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:08.040 just the old fashioned way. He's like, but you're the 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:10.000 guy we would hire a second time. 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:12.360 In your response is like, we'll kind of go home 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:15.360 early probably, so, but. 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:17.640 That was always my aim. But it's interesting that, you know, 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:20.159 I had that a little bit in my brain, but 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.120 not like this guy did. Like he was obsessed with 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:27.440 efficiencies such that he thought, and he's kind of right 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:30.240 in some ways that one of the biggest threats to 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:34.480 getting something done in a productive efficient way was slacking 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.400 off in what he called systematic soldiering. And I kind 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:39.640 of agree with that to a certain degree. 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:42.960 Yeah. Remember in our Peter Principal episode, we talked about 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.159 a corollary to that called Parkinson's law, which is like 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:49.040 a tongue in cheek law that work expanded to fill 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:49.960 the time allotted. 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:50.360 Yeah. 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:53.960 Yeah, So yeah, if you're sitting there like making widgets. 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:57.120 Sorry to be cliche, but that's what I'm going With 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.680 eight or ten hours a day, You're not going to 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:03.880 be the most efficient you can be. You're going to 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:08.960 be about as efficient as as as ambitious as you are. 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:13.320 Like your ambition how far you want to go is 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:17.040 basically equaled in some weird ratio to the amount of 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:19.640 efficiency that you produce at your job. Right, So if 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:22.520 you're like, I'm happy here, I'm not going to bust 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:26.280 my hump like that guy to go an extra half 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:28.920 mile because I'm not going to get anything in return, 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:31.520 So I'm just going to do my job at a 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:35.440 pace that I find acceptable and that the people I 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:38.000 work for find acceptable. And I mean, if you want 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:40.840 to call that slacking off or being lazy, fine, and 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.680 Frederick Taylor definitely did, But it's also just kind of 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:46.480 like being a human being, you know. 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:51.320 Yeah. And to be clear, because I think it seems 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:54.680 like I might have been mischaracterized here. The film set 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.480 thing was, I wasn't like, let's just do the minimum. 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:02.200 I was in the situation, in this specific incident where 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:04.720 I was trying to do a little extra work by 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:10.000 getting a cart loaded rather than just making a ton 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:13.360 of trips, and the guys and he was like, now 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:15.480 I'm mess with getting that cart out. Let's just hump 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:17.880 all this stuff back and forth. And they were like, 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:21.240 hey guys, or to me, hey guy, And I said 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.400 my name is Chuck, right, and they said, hey, Chuck, 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:27.200 you're the guy I would hire twice because you were 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:29.560 taking the time to do it more efficiently, not like, hey, 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:31.320 I admire like the lazy side. 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:34.320 Of you, right, And they appreciated your soft touch with 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:36.160 the donkey that pulled the cart. 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:38.400 Right, But it was lazy, and that I didn't want 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:40.560 to do all those trips. So that's where it initially 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:42.920 sprang from, was I don't want to have to tote 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:45.600 all that stuff eight times. Does that make sense? 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:48.560 Yeah? I think the reason you're man, we're really going 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:50.679 deep on this. But I think the reason that you're 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:54.560 feeling mischaracterized is because you're misusing the word lazy. That's 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:58.280 not lazy. That's what they call work harder or work smarter, 0:08:58.400 --> 0:08:58.960 not harder. 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:01.240 Yeah, but you only do that if you get a 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:02.600 little laziness in you. 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:06.079 No, that's not necessarily true. I think it's just sensible. 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:08.800 Okay, but I'm also lazy. Then how's that? 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:12.520 Okay, there you go. But they're not necessarily inextricably tied 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:13.680 together in that instance. 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:14.440 Okay. 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:20.760 Anyway, I don't think what you just describe qualifies as laziness. 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:25.720 But what Frederick Taylor considered laziness he called something called 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:30.080 systematic soldiering, which I still can't make heads or tails of. 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:32.040 It does not make any sense to me, does it 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:32.400 to you? 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:34.959 Well? What a soldiering mean? 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:38.080 I don't know. I mean you're you go off and 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:41.040 fight battles, or you go and follow orders. I don't know. 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:42.440 I don't know what he means. 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:45.160 Did you look up soldiering? 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:51.679 No? I didn't. I just access to my brain data banks. 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:53.920 Well I'm gonna look it up. Go ahead, we'll do 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:58.560 a rare uh a rare look Okay, Well, serve as 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:03.520 a soldier to aha. Oh well, no, that didn't make 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:07.959 any sense either, like soldiering on right persevering, Yeah, I 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:10.040 doesn't make any sense to me officially as. 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:12.600 Well, it makes no sense because that was his term, 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:14.360 systematic soldiering. 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:17.640 I would call it systematic leaning against something. 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:22.080 Yeah, right, that's what he called slacking off. And like, 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.400 this guy was an aristocrat through and through right. His 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:29.640 mother's family came over in the early sixteen hundreds, I think, 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:33.120 to America. So like he was a wealthy, blue blooded 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:38.160 Quaker boy who because his parents were like do gooders. 0:10:38.200 --> 0:10:41.120 His mom certainly was. She was a suffragette and abolitionist. 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:45.440 He was raised to care about humanity, but he also 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:49.080 didn't have that spark of compassion that it takes to 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:52.800 care about humans individually. So he cared about creating a 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:56.440 better society for humans, but he couldn't really help but 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.080 look down on other people. He considered lower than him, 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:02.600 including him. So he did notice things like, you're not 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:05.080 working as hard as you can. I'm going to see 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:07.600 to it that you work harder. And he felt totally 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:11.200 comfortable with filling that role and he actually created that 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:15.320 role for himself to phill which is pretty remarkable if 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:15.800 you ask me. 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:20.240 That's right. So he was at Midvale and he sort 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:23.160 of started breaking down the operations of the jobs that 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:26.040 they had there at Midvale and he was like, you know, 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.240 there's some elementary operations that happen here. So we're going 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:31.920 to form an estimating department where we're going to sit 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:34.719 around and do time studies, which he got from a 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.600 class at Phillips Exeter, and we're going to time workers 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:40.640 doing all these little small tasks. We're going to add 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:43.680 that up to the whole and kind of average it 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:45.800 out and say, hey, you should be able to do 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:48.359 this in that amount of time, and we'll adjust accordingly, 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:53.559 we'll incentivize accordingly. And he said, and you know what else, 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:56.920 this is now a new career. I'm going to be 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:00.680 a consulting engineer and management and I'm going to charge 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:03.800 you to tell you how bad you're doing things. 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:09.000 Yeah, and so those management companies like KPMG and Mackenzie, 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:14.760 they would not exist ostensibly had Frederick Taylor not created 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:18.040 that field. Like that's what he created. These huge, just 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:23.080 mega world influencing companies came from this guy basically making 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:24.000 up the profession. 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:26.679 Yeah, and you know what we should We should give 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.280 a good example here because what he was really most 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:31.720 or not most well known for, but something he became 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:34.040 very well known for was his work at Bethlehem Steel. 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:38.640 And he started looking at the process of loading iron 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:42.760 onto railcars pig iron, and said, all right, we need 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:45.080 to figure out how much of this stuff is reasonable 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:48.080 for one of these men to load onto a railcar. 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:50.920 The average right now is twelve and a half tons 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.000 a day. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:59.400 to get ten large, powerful Hungarian workers to and say, 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:02.840 heyde as much as you can, as fast as you can. 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:05.360 Sixteen and a half tons is your goal. And they 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.079 did that in fourteen minutes, whereas twelve and a half 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:11.880 tons was the daily rate for their average worker. So 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:14.280 that's seventy one tons in a ten hour day. He 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:16.560 rounds it up to seventy five and then said, yeah, 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:19.120 but you know what people get tired and they need breaks. 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:24.720 So let's whack off forty percent of that and we'll 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:26.800 just make we'll just call it even at forty seven 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:29.040 and a half tons per day, which is four times 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:31.800 as much as you've usually been doing. That's that's the 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:32.599 new expectation. 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:36.080 Yeah, And that thing about people getting tired he called 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:38.920 the law of heavy laboring. And from what I can tell, 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:41.920 he made up that law that I'd put into scare quotes, 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:44.000 and this is a really good example of what he did. 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:47.440 Like he was supposed to be precise in finding like 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:52.120 ultimate efficiency, but he was arbitrarily rounding up and arbitrarily 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:55.240 coming up with forty percent off based on this law 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:58.160 that he made up. And now you kind of start 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:01.280 to get to see like the veil or like the 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:04.600 meat that's on the bones. I don't know the analogy 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.120 I'm looking for, but you can pull back the curtain, 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:09.720 that's the one, and see that this stuff is actually 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:13.360 not what Frederick Taylor cracked it up to be. 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:16.520 The Great Oz exactly so much. 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:20.000 Right. It wears no clothes, all right. 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:23.720 So when this happened, some people said, I ain't doing this. 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:27.760 They quit, they got fired. Some people tried and couldn't 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:31.160 do it. Some people were so tired from trying to 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:33.960 load that much or that they couldn't come back the 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:37.320 next day, and things got really heated. He needed he 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:39.560 hired arm guards to walk him home at night. Taylor 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.960 did because he was so worried. And then he said, 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:45.600 all right, I'm going to create a new fake scenario. 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:48.520 And this is something that I've seen businesses do that 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:51.640 I hate when they create, like, you know, here's our 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.040 worker Todd and Todd you know, and it's all just 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:58.760 made up bs. And that's what he did with Schmidt. 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.479 Here's the thing though, So Schmidt, yes, was a fictional 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:07.640 invention essentially of Taylor's making. But he went around the 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:11.680 country giving this this lecture or wrote in his books 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:13.680 like as if Schmidt this actually. 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:14.800 Happened about Schmidt. 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:18.960 Yeah, that was a great movie. I really felt uncomfortable 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.600 when he made a pass at the wife of the 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:24.240 fiby couple that he met. Other than that, I thought 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:25.080 it was a great movie. 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:26.640 Yeah. 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:28.680 I think at that point that was actually just an 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:31.040 outtake of Jack Nicholson doing his thing. 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:34.120 Keep rolling the cameras. This is great. 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:39.320 So like so he was he put out there that 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:41.920 the Schmidt character was like a real deal thing, not 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.200 a made up thing, not a made up anecdote to 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:47.560 prove his point, and he actually did consult at Bethlehem Steel, 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:50.360 where Schmidt supposedly worked. But the upshot of all of 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:52.920 it was this, there was this guy named Schmidt who 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:56.480 was known to work very hard, and he was also 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:59.080 very motivated by money because he was building his own 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:01.360 house and he he needed as much money as he 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:03.120 could get to build said house. 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:05.520 But not too bright, right, not too bright. 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:09.160 That's a really important point that Taylor would hammer home 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:12.760 any chance he got. This guy was sluggish mentally speaking, 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:15.760 is the way that he put it. But he got 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:18.280 through to him with a pep talk, whereas essentially he said, 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:21.080 are you a high priced man? And Schmidt was like, 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.920 I don't know what you're talking about. And when he 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:27.840 wrote about Schmidt, he replaces w's with VS and stuff, 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:31.920 and he's a German immigrant. And he said, well, this 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:35.200 is what a high priced man does. He does everything 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.960 that his manager tells him to do. If your manager 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:41.120 tells you to pick up that pig iron and take 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:43.760 six steps and then set it down over there, you 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:46.080 do that. If your manager tells you to sit down 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:48.800 and rest for ninety seconds. Then after ninety seconds he 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:50.360 tells you to get up and then go grab that 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:52.640 piece of pig iron. You do that too, with no 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:55.920 backtalk whatsoever. That's a high priced man. 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:58.040 You want to be a mister big boy pants. 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:02.840 Exactly. Press men make more money. So we'll give you 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:05.359 not just the dollar fifteen an hour that you're making, 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:08.320 we'll give you a dollar eighty five for making this 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:11.359 forty seven and a half tone quota. And all you 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:14.560 have to do is do what your manager tells you. 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:17.640 And this is the other thing that I guess Frederick 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:21.240 Taylor revolutionized in a way. He divided the workforce into 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:24.280 two parts, managers who had the brains and did the 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:28.640 bossing around, and workers who were, according to Taylor, meant 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:32.680 to do exactly what their managers told them. And if 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:34.680 you put the two together, you would have the most 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:38.760 efficient way to say, like load pig iron onto a 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:39.480 railroad car. 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:44.239 That's right in this anecdote, who that he, you know, 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.080 sort of reached around as if it were real. He said, 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:49.240 Then I did this. It works so great. Schmid was 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.800 so happy, and Roland in dough I got all of 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:56.280 his coworkers to jump aboard because I showed him what 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.040 a mister big boy pants look like, and everybody wanted 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:02.600 big boy pants and so everybody, as long as you 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:05.359 just do what your boss says, then you're going to 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:09.360 make more dough and forget the fact that I'm choosing, 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:13.240 you know, the very strongest workers to set the standard 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:16.680 for everyone. And then in nineteen eleven a US House 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:20.560 committee said, yeah, but we can't just forget that, because 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:23.320 you can't just pick the strongest worker and say that's 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:27.000 the standard for everyone. And so he got into a 0:18:27.000 --> 0:18:33.040 bit of a tit for tat in that committee meeting, 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:36.920 I guess with the chairman, William Ballshop Wilson, and he said, 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:39.840 you know what about if you don't have big boy 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:42.760 pants men on your staff and like or all big 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:45.680 boy pants men. And he said, well, it has no 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:48.560 place for a bird that can sing but won't. And 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:51.359 he kind of got smacked down for that because he 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:54.199 was just lifting lines out of books that he had written. 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:59.159 Well. Yeah, also, William Wilson said basically like, we're not 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:01.920 dealing with singing birds. We're dealing with men here who 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:04.960 are part of society and for whom or for whose 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:09.000 benefit society is organized, right, so you can't essentially, you 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:13.960 can't treat people like automatons and drones and robots. You 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:18.080 have to consider them as human beings. And the lines 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:22.080 from his book that you mentioned, apparently Jillipoorr reported that 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:26.200 he did so poorly in this committee hearing that by 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:28.840 the way, if you want to ever be nervous about 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:31.960 a committee hearing, you have to go testify at go 0:19:32.080 --> 0:19:36.119 to one that's literally named after you. This was this 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:40.359 hearing was called the House Committee to Investigate Taylor, not Taylorism, 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:44.679 Taylor and other systems of shop management. And so he 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.240 actually ordered one of his underlings to go steal William 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:53.560 Wilson's copy of his book, and I guess didn't wasn't successful, 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:56.399 and just kind of went ahead with the terrible testimony. 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:58.840 But as we'll see, he used it to turn bad 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:02.080 publicity into any publicity, which is good publicity. 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:05.960 That's right. The long inshort with Bethlehem Steele, at least 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:09.720 was that they fired him. They quit the tailor's and 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:12.040 methods that he had brought in, and he said, all right, 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.120 pay me one hundred thousand dollars and we'll call it even, 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:16.919 which is about three and a half million bucks today, 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:20.760 and that's probably a good time for a break, eh, agreed. 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:23.359 All right, we'll come back and move on from Taylor 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:26.199 for a moment to talk about the Gilbreaths right after this. 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:49.880 Okay, Chuck, you mentioned that we're going to talk about 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:52.720 the Gilbreaths, So I say we do that. Now. We're 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:56.760 talking about Frank and Lillian Gilbreath, and anyone who has 0:20:56.800 --> 0:20:59.480 ever read the book or seen the movie or the 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:02.800 remake Cheaper by the Dozen, this is the family that 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:06.440 that movie and that book were based on. Frank, Lily 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:10.840 and Gilbreath were one of the more amazing interesting couples 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:12.640 that came out of the twentieth century. 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:16.560 Yeah, for sure. And two of their kids wrote that 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:21.240 book in nineteen forty eight, and you know, it was fun. 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:22.359 It's a classic for a reason. 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:25.800 They remade it for a reason, for sure, to make money. 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:31.680 Frank was a bricklayer in his earlier life, and he 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:36.439 was one of these people that thought, including too but 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:38.880 not limited to cat skinning, that there was one best 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.239 way to do any task. And so he was one 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:44.840 of those guys where he was like, hey, that scaffold 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:46.560 for laying bricks is kind of great, But what if 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:49.399 there was a shelf on the scaffold for those bricks 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:51.480