could permanently and legitimately earn higher wages.

Although the reader may be convinced that there is a certain science
back of the handling of pig iron, still it is more than likely that he
is still skeptical as to the existence of a science for doing other
kinds of laboring. One of the important objects of this paper is to
convince its readers that every single act of every workman can be
reduced to a science. With the hope of fully convincing the reader of
this fact, therefore, the writer proposes to give several more simple
illustrations from among the thousands which are at hand.

For example, the average man would question whether there is much of any
science in the work of shoveling. Yet there is but little doubt, if any
intelligent reader of this paper were deliberately to set out to find
what may be called the foundation of the science of shoveling, that with
perhaps 15 to 20 hours of thought and analysis he would be almost sure
to have arrived at the essence of this science. On the other hand, so
completely are the rule-of-thumb ideas still dominant that the writer
has never met a single shovel contractor to whom it had ever even
occurred that there was such a thing as the science of shoveling. This
science is so elementary as to be almost self-evident.

For a first-class shoveler there is a given shovel load at which he will
do his biggest day's work. What is this shovel load? Will a first-class
man do more work per day with a shovel load of 5 pounds, 10 pounds, 15
pounds, 20, 25, 30, or 40 pounds? Now this is a question which can be
answered only through carefully made experiments. By first selecting two
or three first-class shovelers, and paying them extra wages for doing
trustworthy work, and then gradually varying the shovel load and having
all the conditions accompanying the work carefully observed for several