The Dark Side of the 1920s: Elimination of Waste in

IndustrySharon Rounds

McElroy Project through

Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum

What Was Seen as Waste in Industry?

• Unemployment during the Depression (1918–1920)

• Speculation and overproduction in booms• Labor turnover and labor conflicts• Variation in products and divergency in

grades and standards• Inefficient processes• Inadequate transportation terminals

Herbert Hoover’s View• “While we currently assume that great

advancements in living standards are brought about by new and basic invention, an even larger field for advancement of these standards is found in the steady elimination of our economic wastes….”

Foreword by Herbert Hoover for Year’s Review in Industry, “Factory”; 12/10/1924; sent through A. W. Shaw; Herbert Hoover Presidential Library files.

• “The necessity of maintaining a high wage level requires that all processes of manufacture and distribution be reduced to the lowest possible. This can be done through the elimination of those wastes arising out of too high a degree of diversification in certain basic products.”

Foreword by Herbert Hoover for Year’s Review in Industry, “Factory”; 12/10/1924; sent through A. W. Shaw; Herbert Hoover Presidential Library files.

Herbert Hoover’s View

Unemployment during Depression

• After World War I• Many soldiers came back to no jobs• Farmers still producing at levels needed for

feeding troops• Farmers losing money — not able to hire

workers

• Speculation is engagement in business transactions involving considerable risk but offering the chance of large gains, especially trading in commodities, stocks, etc., in the hope of profit from changes in the market price

“About time to cut away the harness.” Ding Darling Cartoon, http://ddr.lib.drake.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/ddarling&CISOPTR=1495&CISOBOX=1&REC=2

Speculation

Prevention of Booms• “The best protection against booms is that

every business man shall have the information so that he may realize from the shifts in credit, from the movements in stocks, of production and consumption, that the economic balance wheel is moving too fast and if every man then safeguards against danger disaster never comes.”

Quotation taken from page 7 of A Problem of Distribution: An Address by Hon. Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce. [Pamphlet at Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum.]

Labor Turnover and Conflicts• Strikes seen as steps

to overturn industrial system

• Strikes– Over 4 million

workers went on strike in 1919

– One-fifth of nation’s workforce Image donated by Corbis-Bettmann

http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=3294

• Labor’s demands– Union recognition– Shorter hours– Raises exceeding

the inflation rate

Labor Turnover and Conflicts

Image donated by Corbis-Bettmann

http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=3294

Inefficient Processes• Unskilled laborers seen as “dumb brutes”• Skilled craftsmen were “obstacles to efficiency”• Scientific management style

– Frederick Winslow Taylor– made up data, trafficked in racist

stereotypes, treated industrial workers like livestock to be trained

– charged companies ridiculous fees for the service

• Increased gap between what workers produced and what they could buy

• How did Taylor arrive at forty-seven and a half tons [as the amount of iron one man could load in a day] for Bethlehem Steel? He chose twelve “large, powerful Hungarians,” observed them for an hour, and calculated that, at the rate they were working, they were loading twenty-four tons of pig iron per man per day. Then he handpicked ten men and dared them to load sixteen and a half tons as fast as they could...

http://denimandtweed.blogspot.com/2009/10/birth-of-scientific.html

Scientific Management Quote

http://denimandtweed.blogspot.com/2009/10/birth-of-scientific.html

Scientific Management Quote

• They managed to do it in fourteen minutes; this yields a rate of seventy-one tons per man per ten-hour day. Taylor inexplicably rounded up the number to seventy-five. To get to forty-seven and a half, he reduced seventy-five by about forty percent, claiming that this represented a work-to-rest ratio of the “law of heavy laboring.” Workers who protested the new standards were fired.

“16 Tons”by Tennessee Ernie Ford

http://coalcampusa.com/nowv/panhandle/cliftonville.jpg

http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/classic-country/sixteen-tons---tennessee-ernie-ford-14930.html

“You load sixteen tons, what do you get

Another day older and deeper in debt

Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go

I owe my soul to the company store.”

Why Owe Soul to the Company Store?

http://www.nationalscripcollectors.com/Home/tabid/1031/Default.aspx

• Mines were communities

• Miners often paid in scrip

• Scrip only good at store owned by mining company

• Prices were inflated

Variation in Products

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

“Wasteful Australia,” The Herald, Tuesday, December 9, 1924

• Saves resources and wasted labor

• Cuts down on types produced

• Helps with inventory• Cuts down on lack

of standardization

Setting Standards for Quality and Grade

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/54900/54987/54987_seal_commerc.htm

• Need tests to apply to determine whether standards have been fulfilled

• Set up by the Department of Commerce

• Producers, distributors, and consumers agree and benefit from them

Transportation

• Waste in the use of refrigerator equipment• Waste in shipping gin-compressed cotton• Light loading of freight cars• Delays in loading and unloading of freight cars• Waste in less than carload lots• Waste due to improper ordering of cars• Waste due to loss and damage

Memorandum to Herbert Hoover; 2/25/1925; “Elimination of Waste Program”; Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum

“At last we’ve found something we can blame everything onto without its talking back.”

http://ddr.lib.drake.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/ddarling&CISOPTR=1398&CISOBOX=1&REC=7

“The consequent reduction of manufacturing, selling, and distribution costs, and the release, for active use, of millions now tied up in slow-moving stocks, combine to yield savings eventually reaching the consumer in lower prices, thus increasing his real wage and assisting him to a higher standard of living.”

Foreword by Herbert Hoover for Year’s Review in Industry, “Factory”; 12/10/1924; sent through A. W. Shaw; Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum files.