started to introduce scientific management into the Bethlehem Steel
Company, was to handle pig iron on task work. The opening of the Spanish
War found some 80,000 tons of pig iron placed in small piles in an open
field adjoining the works. Prices for pig iron had been so low that it
could not be sold at a profit, and it therefore had been stored. With
the opening of the Spanish War the price of pig iron rose, and this
large accumulation of iron was sold. This gave us a good opportunity to
show the workmen, as well as the owners and managers of the works, on a
fairly large scale the advantages of task work over the old-fashioned
day work and piece work, in doing a very elementary class of work.

The Bethlehem Steel Company had five blast furnaces, the product of
which had been handled by a pig-iron gang for many years. This gang, at
this time, consisted of about 75 men. They were good, average pig-iron
handlers, were under an excellent foreman who himself had been a
pig-iron handler, and the work was done, on the whole, about as fast and
as cheaply as it was anywhere else at that time.

A railroad switch was run out into the field, right along the edge of
the piles of pig iron. An inclined plank was placed against the side of
a car, and each man picked up from his pile a pig of iron weighing about
92 pounds, walked up the inclined plank and dropped it on the end of the
car.

We found that this gang were loading on the average about 12 and a half
long tons per man per day. We were surprised to find, after studying the
matter, that a first-class pig-iron handler ought to handle between 47,
and 48 long tons per day, instead of 12 and a half tons. This task
seemed to us so very large that we were obliged to go over our work
several times before we were absolutely sure that we were right. Once we