Letter to the Frederick W. Taylor Co-operators

              that he thus becomes a liar or a fool, that no other principles will work, and that Taylor's principles, which are the principles sometimes called democracy although very few people knew what democracy was until Taylor stated the principles with reference to particular work, will work, and will work well in the degree in which they are intelligently applied. I destroy all loopholes by which various false prophets of scientific management could come through with their bluffs. That proof incidentally required the revision of the orthodox theories of logic and mathematics: that is, all the logic and mathematics written in the books have a fundamental contradiction which has to be eliminated before the real idea of scientific management can be rigorously stated: after that, it is impossible for men of intelligence honestly to dodge acceptance of it. So the book extends scientific management to the ultimate limits. Other men will perhaps make the required intension to one after another of the particular occupations.

8. The argument of the book has already been approved by various competent authorities, -scientific, philosophical, and religious. (Incidentally, the theoretical basis of all the theologians, except perhaps the Unitarians and Christian Scientists, is dead wrong,--which is one reason they do not take kindly to real democracy.) Within the past three months John Dewey, professor of philosophy at Columbia, who has the soundest knowledge of things in general of any living man (or dead one, for that matter, that I know of), has unqualifiedly approved my general argument, and stated that it is a very important advance in logic and all the sciences. I judge that after a time I shall find a publisher who will accept the book: the publishers are now thoroughly afraid of the book, as I found by trying some.

9. I have above attempted to make it apparent to you that I am trying to begin at the other end, so to speak, and prove and apply in general what will turn out in particular to be scientific management as it is usually defined. Most of the public criticisms of what the critics think may be scientific management are tacitly based on vague ideas of economics, government, and ethics. I try to stop such criticisms' ever starting.

10. I should be glad to have any of you read and criticize the book, as that would help me in my continual effort to make it more intelligible. However, about the only adverse criticism the book has yet received from its readers is that it is painfully clear. One publisher went so far as to call it sensational; David Starr Jordan says its clearness is gripping, which is perhaps a better word than sensational; Dewey uses psychological terms, and says that I almost have a hallucination of clearness. Briefly, the book has too much of a punch, when it comes to be read by experts at least. --- But I recognize that probably none of you are especially interested in the line I have struck out, so I by no means want you to feel any obligation to wade through the book. In order to eliminate the highbrow criticism I have to consider definitely all the subjects on which the highbrows think they think, and that stuff is not always entertaining to men who have not yet found time from making a living to consider it. It is valuable stuff, but not agreeable to them in such a large dose as I supply. For instance, I had to eliminate such fakers as Ostwald, who at one time pretended to go in for scientific management; he became subtly one of the false prophets so far as I could judge from the article of his on the subject which I saw. I almost made Taylor angry by telling hime that Ostwald was a false alarm, not only in scientific management, but also in chemistry, and even worse in his general ideas.