having, as a rule, obtained their positions owing to their unusual force
of character, and being accustomed daily to rule other men, their
opposition is generally effective.

In the writer's experience, almost all shops are under-officered.
Invariably the number of leading men employed is not sufficient to do
the work economically. Under the military type of organization, the
foreman is held responsible for the successful running of the entire
shop, and when we measure his duties by the standard of the four leading
principles of management above referred to, it becomes apparent that in
his case these conditions are as far as possible from being fulfilled.
His duties may be briefly enumerated in the following way. He must lay
out the work for the whole shop, see that each piece of work goes in the
proper order to the right machine, and that the man at the machine knows
just what is to be done and how he is to do it. He must see that the
work is not slighted, and that it is done fast, and all the while he
must look ahead a month or so, either to provide more men to do the work
or more work for the men to do. He must constantly discipline the men
and readjust their wages, and in addition to this must fix piece work
prices and supervise the timekeeping.

The first of the four leading principles in management calls for a
clearly defined and circumscribed task. Evidently the foreman's duties
are in no way clearly circumscribed. It is left each day entirely to his
judgment what small part of the mass of duties before him it is most
important for him to attend to, and he staggers along under this
fraction of the work for which he is responsible, leaving the balance to
be done in many cases as the gang bosses and workmen see fit. The second
principle calls for such conditions that the daily task can always be
accomplished. The conditions in his case are always such that it is