any other reason, that we so seldom hear of a miscellaneous machine
works starting in on a large scale and meeting with much, if any,
success for the first few years. This difficulty is not fully realized
by the managers of the old well established companies, since their
superintendents and assistants have grown up with the business, and have
been gradually worked into and fitted for their especial duties through
years of training and the process of natural selection. Even in these
establishments, however, this difficulty has impressed itself upon the
managers so forcibly that most of them have of late years spent
thousands of dollars in re-grouping their machine tools for the purpose
of making their foremanship more effective. The planers have been placed
in one group, slotters in another, lathes in another, etc., so as to
demand a smaller range of experience and less diversity of knowledge
from their respective foremen.

For an establishment, then, of this kind, starting up on a large scale,
it may be said to be an impossibility to get suitable superintendents
and foremen.

The writer found this difficulty at first to be an almost insurmountable
obstacle to his work in organizing manufacturing establishments; and
after years of experience, overcoming the opposition of the heads of
departments and the foremen and gang bosses, and training them to their
new duties, still remains the greatest problem in organization. The
writer has had comparatively little trouble in inducing workmen to
change their ways and to increase their speed, providing the proper
object lessons are presented to them, and time enough is allowed for
these to produce their effect. It is rarely the case, however, that
superintendents and foremen can find any reasons for changing their
methods, which, as far as they can see, have been successful. And