SOURCE: Scientific Management and the Unions 1900-1932: A Historical Analysis, Harvard University Press, 1955, 187 p.

In the following excerpt from his book Scientific Management and the Unions, Nadworny traces the history of theories of scientific management from their roots after the Civil War to the introduction of Taylor's system to American industry and discusses the adaptation of Taylor's methods by his successors, as well as union opposition to scientific management.

The Origins of the Taylor System

Scientific management was fashioned during the post-Civil War era, when business enterprises were expanding in size and scope, and when the mode of industrial production was becoming increasingly complex. This development was generating a separation of the "businessman" and the "captain of industry" from the technical problems of industrial enterprises, for manufacturing was becoming highly mechanized. Automatic and semiautomatic methods of processing goods have by now become characteristic of American industry, but the...