National Bureau of Standards and the Industry and Mechanics Administration Founded as Two New Sub-Agencies of Department of Commerce and Industry
In this timeline (as opposed to our own timeline), the Department of Commerce and Industry was adopted in 1880.
The self-styled
progressive president Theodore Roosevelt, upon taking his oaths of office, has initiated a series of reforms within the Department of Commerce and Industry that are meant to reconcile labor unions with capital and provide a ‘square deal’ for all.
The reforms are based on the works of
Frederick Winslaw Taylor who’s promulgation of progressive
shop management, many in the progressive movement been very impressed with.
George Bruce Cortelyou, Secretary of Commerce and Industry
Secretary of Commerce and Industry, George B. Cortelyou, responding to presidential direction, has founded two new sub-agencies, the National Bureau of Standards and the Industry and Mechanics Administration.
The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) is overseen by newly appointed Samuel Wesley Stratton. Mr. Stratton is a graduate of Illinois Industrial University at Urbana where he received his degree in mechanical engineering. He became Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering there and moved to the University of Chicago in 1892 as Assistant Professor of Physics, then Associate Professor in 1895 and Professor in 1898.
Samuel Wesley Stratton, director of the National Bureau of Standards
The NBS mandate to provide standard weights and measures, and to serve as the national physical laboratory for the United States. Its tools and measurements will ultimately serve as the basis for the standardization Mr. Frederick Taylor envisions.
Frederick W. Taylor is experienced as a general manager and consulting engineer (working for Manufacturing Investment Company of Philadelphia from 1890 to 1893). He has operated his own consulting practice for which his business card read "Consulting Engineer - Systematizing Shop Management and Manufacturing Costs a Specialty”. In 1898 he joined Bethlehem Steel in order to solve an expensive machine-shop capacity problem. As a result, he and Maunsel White, with a team of assistants, developed high-speed steel, paving the way for greatly increased mass production.
Frederick Winslow Taylor, Director of the Industry and Mechanics Administration
Taylor has spent his free time promoting his management and machining style through lectures, writing and consulting. In 1900, after meeting with President Roosevelt and greatly impressing the later with his philosophies and ideas, he was offered the chance to apply his revolutionary theories on a national scale and accepted directorship of the Industry and Mechanics Administration.
The Industry and Mechanics Administration has as its goal the wide-scale application of Taylor’s well-known process management protocols in private industry across the United States. Taylorism rejects the notion, which until recently has been universal, that the trades, including manufacturing, are resistant to analysis and can only be performed by craft production methods.
Taylor's scientific management consists of four principles grounded in
empirical methodology:
- Replace 'rule-of-thumb' work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
- Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
- Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task"
- Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.
To assist in implementing Taylorist protocols nationally, Roosevelt has promised significant funds to the Industry and Mechanics Administration to subsidize adoption of Taylorist methodology in private industries. To reconcile these methods with concerns of labor and workers, the subsidies will only be available to those industries that adopt a number of regulations, including limitation of children in labor, abbreviating the work day to 9 hours, allowing for scheduled breaks, investing in worker training, and improving wages.