Paper Mill Machinery
Middletown, Ohio
May 2, 1916
Mr. Wm. A. Fannon,
Appleton, Wisc.
Dear Sir:-
I am pleased to acknowledge receipt of the copies of letters which you wrote to Miss Mitchell. I think you did very well, and I do not know of anything I could add which would be of any interest.
In your letter you stated that Mr. Taylor's object was to establish a rate per diem, or rather, per day, and I have always been under the impression that his object was to establish a rate per piece, which would pay a man a fair rate per day. You know I was never very much in sympathy with Mr. Taylor's system. In fact, we never agreed upon it at all. So by being in this state of mind I do not see how I can write anything which would be acceptable to the work now in progress.
One little instance occurs to my mind that might be of interest, and that was his establishing of the system of oiling. You remember that he had all the oil holes in every machine fitted with a plug. In fact, there were two sets of plugs, one of them had round heads and the other one square heads. It was the duty of each man starting his days work to remove the round plug, oil the hole, and insert a square plug. To show how absolute he was in his orders, that is, to have his orders obeyed, he did not allow any variation from any rule. For instance, if one man was started on a machine at seven in the morning, that is, at the beginning of the
Paper Mill Machinery
Middletown, Ohio
May 2, 1916
Mr. Wm. A. Fannon,
Appleton, Wisc.
Dear Sir:-
I am pleased to acknowledge receipt of the copies of letters which you wrote to Miss Mitchell. I think you did very well, and I do not know of anything I could add which would be of any interest.
In your letter you stated that Mr. Taylor's object was to establish a rate per diem, or rather, per day, and I have always been under the impression that his object was to establish a rate per piece, which would pay a man a fair rate per day. You know I was never very much in sympathy with Mr. Taylor's system. In fact, we never agreed upon it at all. So by being in this state of mind I do not see how I can write anything which would be acceptable to the work now in progress.
One little instance occurs to my mind that might be of interest, and that was his establishing of the system of oiling. You remember that he had all the oil holes in every machine fitted with a plug. In fact, there were two sets of plugs, one of them had round heads and the other one square heads. It was the duty of each man starting his days work to remove the round plug, oil the hole, and insert a square plug. To show how absolute he was in his orders, that is, to have his orders obeyed, he did not allow any variation from any rule. For instance, if one man was started on a machine at seven in the morning, that is, at the beginning of the
