The Principles of Scientific Management

by

FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR, M.E., Sc.D.

1911



INTRODUCTION

President Roosevelt in his address to the Governors at the White House,
prophetically remarked that "The conservation of our national resources
is only preliminary to the larger question of national efficiency."

The whole country at once recognized the importance of conserving our
material resources and a large movement has been started which will be
effective in accomplishing this object. As yet, however, we have but
vaguely appreciated the importance of "the larger question of increasing
our national efficiency."

We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste, our
soil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal and
our iron is in sight. But our larger wastes of human effort, which go on
every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or
inefficient, and which Mr. Roosevelt refers to as a, lack of "national
efficiency," are less visible, less tangible, and are but vaguely
appreciated.