Letter to the Editor

Citation

Wrege, C. (1998), "Letter to the Editor", Journal of Management History (Archive), Vol. 4 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmh_arc.1998.15804caf.001

Letter to the Editor

Dear Jack,

I am writing to comment on two articles that recently appeared in the Journal of Management History, now the brief comments on the next twenty some odd pages could be a hundred pages long, but my life is short and I can't spend it correcting the inaccuracies of others. I also write to make your readers aware of two useful observations of historian Sherman Kent (over 50 years ago) that would help prevent these inaccuracies. Kent said that:

... criticizing was an essential part of historical research: it encompasses the desire to detect the wholly false, the fake evidence ... that has been deliberately planted in order to deceive. Next, his (the historian's) critical sense is necessary to correct evidence which has not been tampered with, but which is misleading because of its incompleteness (Kent, 1941, p. 7).

The articles I wish to comment on are excellent examples of Kent's observation:

1. 1.

   The first, "Frederick W. Taylor, J. Maunsell White III, and the Matthew effect: the rest of the story" (Neck and Bedeian, 1966) is an example of not detecting the fake evidence planted by Frederick W. Taylor in order to deceive. Because of the success of this hoax by Taylor, Edmund B. Lewis, the actual discoverer of the high-heat process which led to high-speed steel, was cheated from his rightful rewards (in the form of a patent), as I will explain in detail.

2. 2.

   The second, "Lines of authority: readings of foundational texts on the profession of management" (O'Connor, 1996) is an example of the failure to correct evidence which is misleading because of its incompleteness, thereby reaching erroneous conclusions, since Frederick W. Taylor was not the actual author of the Principles of Scientific Management (hereafter cited as PSM). Taylor's close associate, Morris L. Cooke compiled the bulk of the original manuscript by adopting (chapter 2 of a manuscript he had already written for a book entitled Industrial Management(IM). When Taylor was unable to compose a manuscript of his own, Cooke's manuscript was substituted in 1910, along with changes in the text supplied by Alfred Baxter and Henry Kendall. (Wrege and Stotka, 1978).

Under these conditions, no analysis of the contents of each page can give us insight into Taylor's personal ideas and expressions since the words are not, in most instances, not directly his, but what others conceived of as his ideas. Further, Cooke readily informed Taylor that his original manuscript contained material from published sources, letters, etc. Cooke told Taylor he derived his data (in his own words) by gathering material in the manner of newspaper reporters. (Cooke formerly was a reporter on the Philadelphia Press and the New York Evening Telegram, and he used his experience to gather material (Trombley, 1954, p. 2)). He rented a room in downtown Philadelphia, and on the walls mounted material he had gathered and went around the room assembling the material into chapters. He told Taylor, in 1907, that "The method I pursued in building the book was as follows: I first gathered everything obtainable in the way of technical papers, clippings, letters, etc." (Cook, 1907, p. 5). He also utilized the stories of pig-iron loading and shoveling in Taylor's Boxly talks (reproduced in Vol. 1 of the Journal of Management History), in 1905 (Wrege, 1955), but elaborated in the manner of a reporter adding color to a dull story.

As an added problem to any textual analysis was the almost instant popularity of the term "scientific management", by December 1910 (after Louis Brandeis used the term in the Eastern Rate case on 21 November 1910). This resulted in a stream of editors from popular magazines visiting Taylor seeking information on the subject. As a result, Taylor had a meeting with Henry Gautt, King Hathaway, Sanford Thompson and Carl Barth in New York City on 7 December 1910, to plan strategy regarding any articles. At this meeting Taylor and his associates decided to use the paper Cooke had already prepared for Taylor's talk before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, as the basis for a book to be titled The Principles of Scientific Management. Following suitable revisions this book would be published as soon as possible (Taylor, 1910, p. 2). Page 1A of Cooke's IM manuscript is reproduced here in Figure 1 to show how his manuscript was utilized to create PSM.

At this point, Cooke's manuscript was titled: "The Philosophy of Modern Scientific or Task Management" (accounting for the TM page number in the manuscript). However, it was then changed to "The Principles of Scientific Management" by Henry P. Kendall. This change from "philosophy" to "principles" reflects the criticism of C.B. Thompson in 1914 of the lack of principles in the book, as I shall discuss later. Both these titles are easily seen on the reproduction in Figure 2.

The use of the term "scientific management" at this time has, in the past, been attributed to a decision made in Henry L. Gautt's apartment in New York City in October 1910 (Brandeis, 1984, p. 68). Unfortunately, for this myth, Holden Evans had utilized the term in June 1910, in an article in The American Machinist, three months before the October meeting (Evans, 1910).

To benefit from the publicity generated by the rate hearings, many of the words in Cooke's manuscript were changed to reflect the idea of science in the Taylor system instead of "philosophy" or "art". This was achieved, for example, by inserting the words "scientific" or "scientific management" and by rewording the text in general. Some of these changes can be seen in the examples in Figures 3-5. It should be noted that the word "science" (replacing "art") appears to be in Taylor's handwriting, but Taylor never wrote in pencil in any other manuscripts so it may not be his writing (a similar example will be seen later in Figure 13, where the word "discovered" is in pencil and not Taylor's handwriting).

Following the publication of PSM and a flood of articles in both the technical and popular press a sub-committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers studied the papers devoted to industrial management and concluded that many significant changes had taken place since 1886 (Majority Report of Sub-Committee on Administration, 1912, p. 1149). The sub-committee also said that, since 1910, there was a growth of widespread, sometimes erroneous, interest in the subject:

The term "scientific management" has been generally and loosely applied to the new system and methods. This is commonly taken to mean there is a science rather than an art of management. A truer interpretation is that it means management using scientific methods, these being taken largely from the sciences and psychology (Majority Report of Sub-Committee on Administration, 1912, pp. 1140-1).

Figure 1.Page 1A of Morris L. Cooke's "Industrial Management" manuscript, 1909. This page became page 30 of Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management. Cooke page-typed on "Persion Bond", Taylor pages in manuscript have no watermarks.

These remarks clearly show that the sub-committee believed that the term "scientific management" was loosely applied to Taylor's system, but that the new system was management using scientific methods (gathering facts, investigation, etc.) from the sciences and psychology.

Examining Paper Number One

In the article on J. Maunsell White, the authors observe that J. Maunsell White was a victim of the "Matthew effect" which, according to Robert K. Merton, "is the accruing of greater increments of recognition for a particular scientific proposition to scientists of considerable repute and the withholding of such recognition from scientists who have not yet made their mark" (Neck and Bedeian, 1996, p. 20).

Figure 2.Page 9 of the manuscript to Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management, illustrating the change from "The philosophy of modern scientific management, or task management" to "The principles of scientific management" in Henry Kendall's handwriting

The authors remark that despite White's contribution to the discovery of the high-heat process of treating tool steel, "the literature of the Scientific Management era, as well as more contemporary offerings, fails to acknowledge his role in this discovery. Taylor is typically given complete credit for developing high speed steel. Research suggests, however, that White played an equal role in this important discovery" (Neck and Bedeian, 1996, p. 21). The authors rely upon Daniel Nelson's account of the supposed discovery of the high-heat process, but more recent research reveals that, starting in 1899, Taylor initiated an elaborate hoax designed to suppress the facts concerning the accidental discovery by Edmund B. Lewis of the Bethlehem Iron Company (on 31 October 1898), that the use of high-heat (l832 Fahrenheit) improved the cutting speed of tool steel. The exact details of this discovery and the subsequent events that led to Taylor preventing Lewis from filing for a patent on the process and the eventual dismissal of Lewis from Bethlehem Steel, were published by the late Ronald Greenwood and myself in 1994 (Wrege and Greenwood, 1994). A few of the important points of our 1994 paper are necessary here to demonstrate to management historians how they can detect the false evidence planted to deceive.

Figure 3.Various examples of the words "science", "scientific" from the manuscript of Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management

Figure 4.Page 25 of Taylor'smanuscript to Principles of Scientific Management, revealing a number of additons by other individuals besides Taylor

In studying Taylor for more than thirty years, I have discovered that the statement found in Copley's biography of Taylor that the "story of the development of the details of Scientific Management is sometimes more the story of one of Taylor's associates than of Taylor himself", is frequently true (Copley, 1923, I, p. xxvi). This is certainly the case of Shop Management where Sanford Thompson's reports were utilized to write the book, or in the case of Taylor's famous "pig iron" experiments, where Gillespie and Wolle did the work and wrote the report, or, finally in the case of The Principles of Scientific Management, where Cooke wrote the bulk of the manuscript (Wrege and Perroni, 1974; Wrege and Greenwood, 1981). In view of my earlier experiences with Taylor and his writings, I decided, in 1989, that perhaps someone else, besides Taylor and White, discovered the high-heat treatment process that led to high-speed steel.

Figure 5.Page "TM-29" (also numbered 36-c) of the manuscript of Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management, showing additions by Taylor and others. This became pages 63-64 of the published version of Principles of Scientific Management.

Among the thousands of pages of manuscript material, letters and reports filed in the Taylor collection at Steven's Institute of Technology, there are record sheets containing the details of the steel cutting experiment at the Bethlehem Iron Company in 1898. They have obviously been ignored by management historians because their technical details do not seem to be related to any facet of management history. In studying these records I discovered that one set (on neatly typed forms titled "Steel Experiment, Bethlehem Steel Company") were almost useless because they did not contain the actual cutting time of the various tools in the experiment (e.g. 8.27-8.29 am), a crucial fact in determining the value of the heat treatment used. It was very obvious that these could not be the actual records of the 1898 experiment, since the Bethlehem Steel Company was not formed until March 1899, five months after the crucial experiment of 31 October 1898.

The second set of records (also on neatly typed forms, but marked "Steel Experiment, Bethlehem Iron Company") did, however, contain the crucial cutting times and other remarks about each experiment (e.g. 31 October 1898, "steel burned to tool") but no identification of the experimenter. It seemed apparent to me that these could not be the original records since it did not seem reasonable that a neatly typed form would be used at the onset of the experiment. I based this assumption on my familiarity of the original records of both the Hawthorne Illumination Tests of 1924-1927, and the early records of the First Relay Assembly Group, 1927-1932, Hawthorne, where the output results are written by hand1. Since the original handwritten records were not found in the Taylor files, the problem became of how to locate such records after the passage of 91 years.

In Copley's biography of Taylor, Copley uses Taylor's account of the discovery of the high-heat treatment process in 1898, as the basis of his story of the origins of the high-speed steel process:

Four of these "L" tools were freshly forged in the blacksmith shop and then stamped successively as follows: L.L..L...and L..

These tools were then successively heated at heats between cherry red and a bright yellow heat. L being heated at a cherry red. L...at a bright yellow heat and the intermediate tools to heats intermediate between these two points. These tools gave, when used in the Experimental lathe, successively higher cutting speeds. L giving the lowest cutting speed and L...the highest (Copley, 1923, II, p. 101).

We are told this account is derived from Taylor's own testimony in the patent suit by the Bethlehem Steel Company against the Niles-Bement-Pond Company over the "Taylor-White" patent. Researching The Federal Reporter, I discovered this suit ran from 1905 to 1908, with the testimony being given before the Federal Circuit Court in the District of New Jersey. Extensive searching revealed the court records of the case were stored at the Naval Supply Depot at Bayonne, New Jersey. Here, I discovered the testimony was stored in archival storage boxes in large bundles tied with actual red tape. Investigation uncovered the 1906 testimony of Taylor and White, with Mr. H. Duell, the lawyer for Niles-Bement-Pond, asking the question: "Who were the inventors, or who was the inventor, of the alleged invention in question" (National Archives, 1906, p. 161). Neither Taylor or White ever answered this question, except for a statement by White that "I do not recall just now, anyone scientifically trained enough to go thoroughly into this matter, except Mr. Taylor and myself, who were engaged in the development of this patent" (National Archives, 1906, p. 161).

Following the testimony of Taylor and White in January and February, 1906, John Hay, a former chemist of the Crescent Steel Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1897-1903, testified about a high-heat treatment process he had sold to Bethlehem Steel before Taylor and White secured their patent in 1901. In court, Duell reminded Hay that when he was interviewed in Duell's office in January, 1906, he had informed Duell that neither himself, Taylor or White had "made the invention ... but that a certain individual, now deceased, made it" (National Archives, 1906, pp. 231-2). In his testimony on February 16, 1906, Hay did not reply directly to Duell's remark, but said he only knew the deceased individual as "Lewis" and that:

He was assisting Mr. Taylor and White in some experiments along the line of the tool steel invention, as his assistant one evening when they were treating steel in a furnace and that Mr. White had a tool in a pair of tongs in the fire heating it when he turned to Lewis and asked him to hold it. Lewis took the tongs and held it and when it was taken out of the fire that tool was treated. From what he said at the time that the condition that the tool was in, my experienced and knowledge of treated steel would tell me positively that the tool was treated...because...it was soft on the nose which is the condition necessary to produce treated steel (National Archives, 1906, p. 233).

I wondered what Taylor might have said about Lewis in his 1908 testimony, but it was not possible to find it among the tied bundles at Bayonne in 1989. With the name, "Lewis", in my possession I re-examined the documents in the Taylor collection discovering a report by Joseph Welden in October 1899, regarding experiments and mentioning that, "E.B.Lewis" had worked for White heat treating tools in October 1898 (Weldon, 1899, p. 5). In another report by White, written in 1900, E.B.Lewis is identified as "Edmund Lewis" (White, 1900, p. 4). A further search of Taylor's papers revealed Edmund B. Lewis (a brother of Wilfred Lewis, a long-time friend of Taylor) was at Bethlehem Iron on September 26, 1898, making lists of tools for machine shops No. 2 and No. 3 (Wrege and Greenwood, 1994, p. 129). In October, 1898, he was assigned by Taylor to help White perform the tool steel experiment, by holding the tools in the fire during the heat treatment process. Subsequent research revealed Edmund Lewis was born in Penns Manor, Falls Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1861, at the summer home of his father Edward Lewis which was a short distance from the farm owned by Taylor's aunt, Sarah Taylor Allen, as shown in the 1853 map of Falls Township, reproduced below in Figure 6. Sarah Taylor Allen held this farm under her own name just as Frederick W. Taylor's wife held the land for Taylor's "Boxly" estate in her name.

It was obvious that Edmund Lewis had participated in the October 1898, experiment and, perhaps, was the "Lewis" mentioned by John Hay, but how could I discover if Lewis was the actual inventor?

Fortunately, by 1990, the court records of the patent suit were moved to the National Archives ­ Northeast Region, in New York City, and filed in more convenient document boxes. Through the gracious assistance of Mr. Gregory Plunges, Taylor's 1908 testimony was located, and although I learned that Taylor once again had not mentioned Edmund Lewis, I also discovered that during his testimony on 20 February 1908, he introduced the actual handwritten summary sheet of the 31 October 1898 experiment, which is in the court record as page 10441Ž2. This page is reproduced here as Figures 7a and 7b. I subsequently compared the hand writing on this sheet with the letters of Edmund Lewis in the Taylor collection, proving that the 31 October 1898, record was written by Edmund Lewis (Wrege and Greenwood, 1994, pp. 128-9).

Other research in Taylor's records revealed letters between Taylor and Wilfred Lewis in 1899, where Taylor urged Wilfred to encourage Edmund to resign from Bethlehem and where Wilfred Lewis said that Edmund believed he was the "victim of malicious criticism ... (and) has been made accountable for neglect of duty which he had no authority to perform" (no doubt referring to his accidental discovery) and, that he planned to file for a patent (Wrege and Greenwood, 1994, p.142). Wilfred Lewis' letter of July 30, 1899, on this topic is reproduced in Figures 8a and 8b.

Figure 6.1853 map of "Penns Manor", Falls Township, Bucks Couty, Pennsylvania. On the left is the 80 acre farm of Edward Lewis (father of Edmund Lewis) and on the right is the 129 acre farms of Sarah Taylor Allen (wife of Dr Allen) and aunt of F.W. Taylor. Edmund Lewis born in Penns Manor, 27 August 1861

Figure 7a.Original summary sheet of the 31 October 1898 experiment at Bethlehem Iron Company, introduced into the court records of the Bethlehem vs Niles-Bement-Pont patent suit, 20 February 1908. Page 10441Ž2, case 4641, National Archives, Northeast Region

Conclusion

It is obvious that Taylor and White did not make the original discovery of the benefit of the high-heat treatment on the cutting speed of tool steel on 31 October 1898. The discovery was accidentally made by Edmund B. Lewis, and that Taylor later forced him to resign so Taylor and White could claim the discovery for themselves. The full details of all the experiments that document the value of Lewis' discovery can be found in the 1994 article by Ron Greenwood and myself. They are too extensive to reproduce here (Wrege and Greenwood, 1994, pp. 131-7). After considerable research into the life of Edmund B. Lewis, I discovered that contrary to the claim by Hay that Lewis was deceased in 1906 (consequently the lawyers for Niles-Bement-Pond did not search for him, much to the relief of Taylor and White), Edmund B. Lewis had become an assistant to Thomas Edison, and later died in Alamagordo, New Mexico, on 5 December 1931.

We can conclude that Edmund B. Lewis was the actual discoverer of the so-called Taylor-White process, and because of the concerted effort of Taylor to cheat him of his proper credit, Lewis rather than White was the victim of the Matthew effect.

Examining Paper Number 2

Thomas Edison is considered the inventor of the first commercially successful incandescent lamp, but when Justice Bradley of the United States Circuit Court at Pittsburgh handed down a decision upholding Edison's patent on 4 October 1889, he awarded priority of invention to Edison with certain reservations:

The principal and great thing ... is the attenuated filament and its enclosure in a perfect vacuum. We think we are not mistaken in saying that but for this discovery, electric lighting could have become a fact. We have supposed it to be the discovery of Edison, because he has a patent for it. This may not be the case, it may be the discovery of some other person (p. 20)[2].

Figure 7b.Round nose tool sketched on upper left corner of original Edmund Lewis summary sheet of test 208, 31 October 1898, showing "steel burned to tool", which marked discovery of high heat treatment for tool steel, in "Remarks" column. F.W. Testimony, 20 February 1908, Bethlehem vs Niles Bemen Pond, p. 10441Ž2

The author of this article assumed, like Justice Bradley, that because Frederick W. Taylor's name appears on the title page of PSM, that he is the author. I, however (unlike Justice Bradley), know PSM is the work of another person: Morris L. Cooke (aided by Alfred Barter and Henry Kendall) with 29 pages written by Taylor, but with the reminder written by Cooke, Barter and Kendall.

Figure 8a.Wilfred Lewis letter to F.W. Taylor, 15 September 1899, on Edmund B. Lewis and accidental discovery of 1898, page 1. F.W. Taylor Collection, File 5

This article was a disappointment to me since I had believed that my 1974, 1978, 1981 papers as well as the 1991 book by Ronald Greenwood and myself had made it clear that Taylor constantly utilized other people to write the basic manuscripts of his published works (Wrege and Greenwood, 1991).

Figure 8b.Page 2 of Wilfred Lewis letter to Taylor,15 September 1899

This is especially true of PSM which was one of three books analyzed by the author (the others being by Follett and Fayol). I believe that any article of a historical nature should not merely accept the name of the author on the title page as representing the true author of a book. In publishing books, the use of "ghost writers" is a frequent occurrence. Earlier in this letter I used a quotation from Copley's biography of Taylor; in doing so, however, I recognized that the words may be those of Henry G. Pearson who was briefly hired by the Taylor Cooperators in 1920, to revise Copley's manuscript (Wrege and Greenwood, 1991, pp. 235-50). No examples of his revisions have apparently survived (although I have searched for them), but Copley's words could be Pearson's words. In the case of Follett and Fayol, there is the possibility that others actually wrote the words in their books or contributed significantly to their ideas and expressions. In Follett's case this could be Herbert Croly, in Fayol's case I would at least ask John Breeze about such possibilities, before analyzing the published works.

My 1978 paper clearly demonstrated that the bulk of the manuscript of PSM was written by Cooke from an older manuscript of his book on Industrial Management, to provide a paper that Taylor could present at the December 1907 meeting of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (Cook, 1907). After revisions by Cooke, Barter, Kendall and Taylor, the 1910 version of PSM (then called "Task Management") was converted into a book and published in May 1911.

Taylor recognized that the publication of PSM could interfere with the "sale of 'Industrial Management' when it comes out" and wrote Cooke, "I shall be very glad to turn over all the profits from the sale of The Principles of Scientific Management to you" (Taylor, 1910, p. 7). Page 7 of this letter of 12/10/10 is reproduced in Figure 9. As proof that Taylor actually rewarded Cooke for preparing the manuscript of PSM with the royalties of the book, a copy of the actual payments to Cooke from the ledgers of Harper and Brothers (starting in June 1911) is reproduced in Figure 10. In this manner, Cooke's considerable role in the writing of PSM was rewarded by Taylor.

The extent of the contributions of Cooke, Barter and Kendall to the PSM manuscript is shown in the various pages reproduced in Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. When I read the original PSM manuscript more than 20 years ago, I only copied pages related to the pig-iron experiments (which was my interest at the time), but anyone can go to Stevens to view the remaining pages of the PSM manuscript to verify for themselves the validity of my remarks.

Our author states she used the methods of literary criticism to perform her analysis. She remarks that she "had never read these works before and had little idea as to how she would interpret them" (Cooke, 1907, p. 29). The method used was to read the text several times and after each time to summarize the contents of each page. In the description of the method used, however, we do not find the most important first step in literary criticism, namely, determining the actual authorship of the text being analyzed, an important step as described by Richard Altick.

Figure 9.Page 7 of F.W. Taylor letter to Morris L. Cooke, 10 December 1910, giving royalties of the Principles of Scientific Management to Cooke and mentioning corrections to manuscript. F.W. Taylor Collection, Cooke fil

Altick's book on literary research is extensive but some of his observations on authorship are important to repeat here. Altick said knowledge of the authorship of any text was important in that:

The research that substantiates, or corrects this knowledge has three chief objects: To identify the author of anonymous or pseudoanonymous works (or of works attributed to the wrong writer). To decide which parts of a work written by two or more authors belong to whom; and to remove from the received list of a writer's works whatever pieces are not his, thereby purifying his cannon (the roster of his authentic writings) (Altick, 1963, p. 64).

We have no evidence that our author has attempted to determine the authorship of any of the books she analyzes in order to reach her conclusions. In the case of Taylor, an original copy of PSM, with corrections and changes and various pages, exists in the collection of Taylor papers.

Altick also pointed out that besides verification and vocabulary as evidence of authorship, in the 1920s a third piece of evidence was introduced: imagery. As a result, specific images or cluster of images were looked for in the text. Our author has attached the image of "science" to Taylor. But, while "science" appears in PSM we can see it was seen in a way to sell the book. The desire to use the approach of the scientist (the collection of facts, observations, experiments, etc.) was part of Taylor's approach, but practicality more than science was Taylor's real concern. Once again, Altick reminds his readers that "whatever evidence imagery provides, must be treated as at best collateral, never conclusive" (Altick, 1963, p. 71).

Figure 10.Ledger pages in archives of Harper and Brothers, 1817-1914, date 1911, showing checks to Morris L. Cooke for royalties on Principles of Scientific Management

Our author has failed to research earlier analysis of PSM, and one readily available is C.B. Thompson's article on "The literature of scientific management", originally published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, but reprinted in 1914 in his book Scientific Management (Thompson, 1914). In discussing PSM, Thompson said it was an amplification of the material in Taylor's 1903 paper on "Shop Management", but observed that in PSM:

Considerable emphasis is laid on the importance of the substitution of scientific knowledge and incentive on the part of the management for the old reliance on the crudely stimulated initiative of the workman. There is the same discussion of "soldiering", inadequacy of piece and premium systems, and a non-technical review of certain typical methods of the system, with illustrations of the application of scientific method to such diverse operations as shovelling, pig-iron handling, and the cutting of metals (Thompson, 1914, p. 13).

Thompson also reviewed the "principles" found in PSM and made the following observations:

It is evident from these statements that Mr Taylor does not distinguish sharply between principles, duties, and methods, and it is difficult to see why the methods selected for elevation into the class of principles are limited to those given and do not include such fundamental and radical departures as functional foremanship and the task and bonus. This is but another evidence of the fact that the Taylor system is in reality the summation of years of the varied experience of many individuals, which has not even yet been thoroughly coordinated and developed into such a system of real principles or laws as characterizes other modern sciences (Thompson, 1914, p. 14).

From these few statements it seems clear to me that the painstaking analysis of the words in PSM has not advanced us beyond Thompson's analysis.

The author states that the scope of her paper "is necessarily limited due to the proximity I maintain towards the texts", but despite this limitation she then remarks that the results of the "close reading" methods were then used to reach "an interpretation supported by direct references to the subject texts" (O'Connor, 1996, p. 26). More important:

This interpretation could serve as the basis for further studies of these writers ­ for example their impact on management practices of the time, or of later times, or even of our time (O'Connor, 1996, pp. 26-7).

In the case of Taylor and the adoption of scientific management, there have been numerous articles on his impact on Richard A. Feiss, Dr Ernest Codman, Dr Elmer Southard, Dr Jun Ball, Keppele Hall to mention a few. The huge outpouring of articles and books after the 1910 rate case hearings also is a testimony to the impact of Taylor's ideas. This is not only found in Thompson's 1914 book I just cited, but in the 1,206 articles on scientific management covering the years 1911-16 in the New York Public Library and the article in The Bulletin of Taylor Society, 1911-33. The material found in the majority of these publications does not differ materially from the interpretation of Taylor's goals reached by our author. Unfortunately, many of these past interpretations were inaccurate due to a lack of accurate information, deliberately withheld by Taylor and associates. The work Ron and I accomplished was to correct these inaccuracies not by "close reading", but by exhaustive research, the discovery of original documents, etc., which I still believe is the most accurate way of understanding the events of the past.

I would like to make a few more comments on the various examples from PSM used by the author to reach some conclusions about Taylor and his work.

Considerable space is devoted to the supposed struggle between Taylor and his machinists in 1880, although, unlike the pig-iron tale, there is not one piece of contemporary evidence to support the validity of the story. In his 1875 piece rate system paper he gives a brief account of the amicable "war" between workers and management due to the arbitrary reduction in piece rates, but no extensive story is found in PSM (Thompson, 1914, p. 644). The story presented in PSM is not in Taylor's testimony either in The Simonds Rolling Machine Company or Bethlehem Steel vs Niles-Bemont-Pond cases, none of Taylor's workers (Shartle or Fannom) from his machine shop mention it in their memories of Taylor in 1915, and it is not in Charles A. Brinley's book on Davenport who was the superintendent of Midvale in 1882 (Wrege and Greenwood, 1914, pp. 64, 132, 262, 275).

The only incidence of this type occurred in the rolling mill in 1882, at the time Midvale had secured the contract for the eye bolts of the East River Bridge (now the Brooklyn Bridge). To produce the bolts, 100 temporary workers were hired who were pressed to work harder to meet the delivery date for the bolts. Because they refused to do so and went on strike, they were fired and new men hired. The action against the workers was not because of an extended conflict or long-standing "soldering" but in response to pressure upon Midvale to complete the bridge in the popular press and by New York officials (New York Times, 1882, p. 4).

Some of Taylor's reasons for adopting more standardized methods of solving management problems can be traced to the work of his superior, Charles Brinley, a chemist who introduced the use of formulas at Midvale (to replace the haphazard mixing of metals), standard methods of work and a differential piece rate before Taylor. There also may have been some influence from the work of Henry Metcalf in 1880 at both the Frankford Arsenal and the William Sellers Company.

Metcalf improved the methods at the Arsenal by studying the methods used at the Sellers Company in Philadelphia. Since Sellers was also the president of Midvale, we do not know how much of his ideas were transferred to Midvale and also how much they may have influenced Taylor (Metcalfe, 1880).

Metcalf also urged the development of a science of administration in 1885 and contrasted the difference between "art" and "science", urging the determination of the facts surrounding the manufacturing process (Metcalfe, 1885).

Taylor's interest in science may have been partially influenced by his contact with Stevens Institute of Technology, which he apparently began attending in 1880, although this is difficult to confirm. At Stevens, Robert H. Thurston was an important figure who, as early as 1878, stressed the need to use scientific methods in regard to engineering and business. In this year, he addressed the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and outlined his goals for science:

1. 1.

   Critical observation of phenomena.

2. 2.

   Systematic arrangement of the phenomena into facts and laws.

3. 3.

   Grouping of facts into some relationship and creation of useful laws.

4. 4.

   Correlation of 1, 2 and 3 into system of science (Thurston, 1878, pp. 11-12).

Thurston further elaborated this theme in 1884 (Thurston, 1884). Thurston's concern with facts and laws is reflected in Taylor's later concerns.

In the 1883-84 Catalogue of Stevens Institute of Technology (after Taylor's graduation in 1883), Thurston's ideas were advanced with plans for a laboratory of technical research as part of the Department of Mechanical Engineering that would serve the needs of industry (Annual Catalouge of the Stevens Institute of Technology, 1883-84, p. 23). This laboratory would accumulate facts and act as a laboratory of applied science which would "do most effectively that work which has hitherto been too much neglected - the application of scientific knowledge to familiar work and matters of business (Annual Catalouge of the Stevens Institute of Technology, 1883-84, p. 24). The application of this idea was not lost on Taylor as seen in the hundred or more pages of facts and data, he and his assistants collected at Midvale from 1880 to 1889 to improve production as seen in the examples in Figure 11.

Taylor's continual preference for careful studies of manufacturing facilities and not the resolution of conflicts is reflected in his work at the Manufacturing Investment Company (MIC) from 1889 to 1893. MIC was originally planned as a larger chain of paper mills, so Taylor and his wife purchased stock in MIC and its licensing company, The International Sulphite and Fibre Company. Taylor was hired by one of MIC's largest stock holders, William C. Whitney, to manage the mills in Appleton, Wisconsin, and Madison, Maine.

The Appleton mill was being rebuilt from a former Fletcher mill before Taylor was hired so he could not influence its construction. Although the Madison mill site was too small and the water power was inadequate, Taylor was able to have the mill constructed with an iron frame filled with bricks which became important during a fire in 1892.

Taylor discovered the conveyors purchased before he came were inadequate and saws incapable of sawing the wood due to inadequate overhead belting. These were the primary problems facing Taylor, problems that better management methods would have prevented, as shown in his report for December 19, 1892, a portion of which is attached in Figure 12. Taylor's physical changes, coupled with the introduction of his differential piece rate, enabled him to reduce the cost of manufacture from $75-85 per ton to $35 a ton and increase the output from 20 to 36 tons a day (Taylor, 1893).

In 1890, Taylor, his wife, and many of his friends in Philadelphia purchased stock in the Simonds Rolling Machine Company with Taylor earning a commission on the sales. This action brought Taylor in close contact with George Simonds, the president of the company, and soon Taylor became a consultant to the firm and aware of its manufacturing problems and the inadequate knowledge by the plant superintendent concerning machinery used to manufacture metal balls for bicycles.

Figure 11.Example of F.W. Taylor's application of the ideas of Robert Thurston to the collection of data at Midvale Steel, 1887. Data taken from Rankins "Machinery and Mill Work". F.W. Taylor Collection

Figure 12.Page 10 of F.W. Taylor report of 19 December 1982, on value of his construction methods at the Madison Mill after fire in 1892. Files on the Interlake Pulp & Paper Company, Appleton, Wisconsin

George Weymouth (a local carriage manufacturer) was well-known in the community and honored as the superintendent of Simonds; Taylor, however, was seen as an outsider. As a result, any of the improvements suggested by Taylor were ignored during the years 1890-1894. In 1894, George Simonds was killed and, because of the business reverses faced by the company, Taylor's expertise was reconsidered and on December ll, 1896, he was placed in charge of the plant. The board of directors now ordered Taylor to "get out all the balls which possibly could be produced" (Bowditch, 1896).

Once in charge, Taylor recognized the only solution was to improve the grinding and hardening of balls. A Simonds rival, the Hathorn Manufacturing Company, was producing one million balls a week with George Hathorn's "lightening grinder". Taylor tried to purchase the grinder, but was unsuccessful, so he hired Henry L. Gantt in 1896, to develop a new grinder and a ball hardening machine to improve the quantity and quality of balls. Gantt was successful in designing a ball hardening machine that could make 250,000 one-quarter-inch balls an hour, the amount a skilled Simonds employee produced in a day, but Taylor still needed a better grinder to produce higher quality steel balls (Hathorn, 1897).

Without an improved grinder in 1896, Taylor could only insure high quality balls through careful inspection methods (determined by time study and record blanks developed by Thompson for Taylor's use) and through what Thompson called "systematic supervision" (Wrege and Greenwood, 1991, p. 92). The examples I have given should demonstrate that carefully planning and changing the work environment were the main reasons for his system of management rather than resolving conflicts. The whole system of Taylor devices, forms, flow charts, etc. reflect this view as revealed in Bertrand Thompson's book on Scientific Management (Thompson, 1914, pp. 3-48).

The material I presented in my comments on paper number one can readily be used as an example of Taylor's focus on the planning portion of management rather than conflict resolution. His desire for improved machine tool performance in the machine shop at Bethlehem was connected to the installation of piece rates (which Taylor had been actually hired to install). Only if the cutting speed of machine tools could be accurately determined (through better cutting tools) could accurate time studies and piece rates be instituted. There was no conflict here in any form.

Figure 13.The word "discovered" in the manuscript of F.W. Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management (replacing "developed") is clearly not written by Taylor as shon by the high "e" (before ("d") in "discovered" as compared to the low "e" in "developed" written by Taylor. In addition, the tail of the "d" in "discovered" sweeps upward, while the tail of the "d" in "developed" goes downward

Our author is critical of the "Law of heavy laboring" and "development" or "discovery" of the law which is interpreted by the author as reflecting a difficulty in Taylor's desire for improved management (O'Connor, 1996, p. 34). While Taylor had used the word "developed" in 1903, in relation to Barth's work, the term "discovered" is introduced into PSM by someone else who apparently believed Taylor used the term "developed" too frequently since the word "discovered" in the PSM manuscript is not in Taylor's handwriting. The comparison between Taylor's "developed" in 1903 and the word "discovered" in the PSM manuscript in Figure 13 illustrates this situation. The additions of these words by others, besides Taylor, makes the position of the author questionable.

In actuality, although Taylor stressed the importance of the pig-iron studies an the "Law of Heavy Laboring" in his Boxly talks and in PSM, these studies had little to do with management, but were vital to his plans to issue a handbook on the time to perform work, designed, primarily for builders and contractors, not managers. This data is in PSM because of Taylor's preference for "examples" of his work and Cooke's desire to meet Taylor's expectations and to provide colorful stories to bring to life what was essentially a dull subject, management.

The author in further discussing the law (ignoring the curves drawn by Barth which revealed the law) says that Taylor's first premise about the law "on which the entire argument rests is assumed. This shows the limits of his science or at least the mixture of discovery and invention" (O'Connor, 1996, p. 35). In my, 1974, paper on the pig-iron studies I reproduced Carl Barth's December, 1899 curves (as redrawn by his son, Carl Barth, Jr., in 1915 from the original drawings) derived from experiments with two extraordinary workers, but not "assumed" on Taylor's part.

It must be understood that the importance of the "Law of Heavy Laboring" in regard to the development of management thought is questionable. Taylor was not interested in this "Law" in relation to management, but as part of his planned handbook on the time to do work. In this regard our author's concern with this law is misplaced since it was obviously used by Cooke because it was part of Taylor's "Boxly" talks and also because (with some embellishment) it made management a more interesting topic. Although the "science of shoveling" is also part of PSM, our author is not critical of this work (perhaps because no "law" is mentioned); the shoveling results were based on extensive studies by Atherton B. Wadleigh and Sanford Thompson (similar to Barth's curves of the pig-iron data) as shown on page 149 of Thompson's 1902 letter book reproduced in Figure 14.

Although not mentioned by our author, John Hoagland's 1954 dissertation revealed that many writers, between the years 1781 and 1822, had reached conclusions similar to those mentioned by Taylor in respect to the "Law of Heavy Laboring" (Hoagland, 1954, pp. 275, 279). Hoagland's material was also presented as a paper before The Academy of Management in 1955 (Hoagland, 1955).

The conclusions reached by the author concerning Taylor's use of such terms as "experiments, formulas, equations, laws, proofs, and scientific terms of measurement, maximum fraction, foot pounds in a day" (O'Connor, 1996, p. 34) as being used to prove the integrity of his discoveries are erroneous and reveal ignorance about the type of terms found in the engineering and physiological literature of the 1890s and earlier. The use of each term can be traced to Taylor's 1895 plan to publish a handbook on the time to perform work and not merely to enhanced the value of his discoveries as discussed below.

Figure 14.Page 149 of Sanford Thompson Letter Book, 1902, dated "4-21-02" on shoveling. History of Management Theory Collections, Cornell University

The failure of the author to search previous literature made her unaware of the Hoagland research I just mentioned, which Hoagland published in 1955. Hoagland, reviewing much of the engineering literature prior to 1900, discovered many early studies on the "human motor", "prime movers" locating 21 authors who had reported on such work. Unfortunately, Hoagland was unable to document any instance where Taylor may have consulted such material.

In 1977, after some seven years of research, I located the papers of Sanford Thompson (who had worked with Taylor since 1890) in the basement of his daughter's home in Wellsley, Massachusetts. These papers revealed the details of an 1895 contractual arrangement where Thompson was to gather information for "a book" or "books" on the "time required for doing various kinds of work" (Taylor, 1895).

As part of his project, Thompson told Taylor on 1 February 1896, he would begin by studying "what constitutes a day's work and to see what literature I can find on the subject of costs of labor" (Thompson, 1896). Thompson began his study in the Boston Public Library by searching under such titles as "animal strength" and "manpower", and by 10 February 1896, had made some significant findings:

I find that Thurston in the book which I purchased and also Kent, quote their tables from Rankine's "Steam Engine" while the latter apparently quotes them from Poncelet. I found the last edition of his "Mecanique Industrille" (in French) 1880, and find that he quotes from French experiments made still longer ago, several of which I looked up (Thompson, 1896).

Taylor expressed his pleasure at such discoveries and wrote Thompson on 17 February 1896, that his work in this area "will be vastly more thorough than anything which has gone before, and I think we can have the satisfaction of feeling in this respect we are almost pioneers" (Taylor, 1896).

Thompson's discovery of Thurston's book on The Animal as a Machine altered Taylor's conceptualization of how to study the time to perform work (Thurston, 1894). He now recognized that the work of men could be studied on the basis of energy used, and this could be accomplished by using Thurston's concept of "Energetics" and the "Laws of Energetics" and the study of energy used by men through an analysis of "horse-power" and "foot pounds". Our author is critical of the use of these words by Taylor and that he uses the words "experiments", "formulas", "equations", and "laws" (O'Connor, 1996, p. 34), as proof of "the integrity of his discoveries". However, these are the same terms and examples found in Thurston's book as outlined below.

Thurston created the term "Energetics", which he said concerned "the measurement, the transfer, and the transformation of energy" (Thurston, 1894, p. 8). The idea is developed through a series of equations to illustrate the concept of work which was "always performed by the expenditure of energy" and the "unit of work is the product of the units of its factors force and space, as the foot-pound (Thurston, 1894, pp. 11-12). Thurston also projects three laws of Energetics: persistence, dissipation and transformation of energy (Thruston, 1894, p. 24).

In a chapter on "The Animal as a Machine and a Prime Mover", Thurston reviews experiments on men as animals, stating the animal "is in the eye of the engineer a prime mover" (Thurston, 1894, p. 37). He cites the 1856-57 experiments of G.A. Hirn on men engaged in regular work and at rest (Thurston, 1894, pp. 42-3). More important (considering Thompson's letter of 10 February 1896) Thurston republished figures for the work of men and animals "as given by Coulomb, Nevier, Poncelet, Rankine and others: Table A, B. C, D, etc." (Thurston, 1894, p. 53). Rankine's table A and B (from Thurston on page 54) are compared with Rankine's original tables (Rankine, p. 252) in Figure 15.

Thurston discusses the work of men under the "Mechanism of Transmissions" where the power of the animal or man is the vehicle through which power is exerted in the movement of a load:

In some cases the load is directly applied; as where pack-animals are employed; in others a wagon is used; in still other cases the pull on a rope is made effective in raising wrights. A strong man can walk an average of about 31Ž2 miles an hour, 10 hours a day, unloaded; under 80 pounds he can walk at half this, seven or eight hours a day (Thurston, 1894, p. 78). This statement by Thurston is similar to Barth's "Law of Heavy Laboring".

Figure 15.Comparison of Rankine's Tables of 1832, with Rankine's Tables, in Thurston, The Animal as a Machine, 1894

Finally, Thurston remarks that the work of horizontal transport "may be approximately computed by taking it at 0.08 the product of weight carried into distance moved over. Thus measured, we find from the above statement that a man should do about 2,000,000 foot-pounds of work per day (Thurston, 1894, p. 78).

Thurston said that training could double the efficiency of a workman in manual employments (like moving pig-iron or shovelling in Taylor's case) and that the differences "between reputably first-class workman may amount to 15 or 20 per cent" (Thurston, 1894, p. 78). He includes equations connecting the time, effort and work of animals (and men) as shown in Figure 16 (Thurston, 1894, p. 79).

This evidence reveals that the origins of Taylor's use of the terms foot-pounds, formulas, equations, etc., can be found in Thurston's book and not a device used by Taylor to "prove the integrity of his discoveries".

Turning to the author's claim of Taylor's use of value laden terms such as "really", "properly", "best", "full", "first class", "thrive" (O'Connor, 1996, p. 34), we can find very similar expressions in Thurston. He reminds engineers that careful selection and care are necessary in using men and animals, and that "the engineer is compelled to regard them as machines to be selected in careful reference to the exact requirements of the work proposed to be done ... (and) ... in insuring him against overwork and encouraging high spirits ..." (Thurston, 1894, p. 81).

Finally, Thurston suggests the engineer must select men or animals best for a specific purpose, and uses terms similar to PSM:

In the selection of the man or animal for a specified work, the wise and experienced engineer, or his contractor, looks for light, active, spirited creatures for light work, heavy and powerful, though slow, animals for heavy work, and can usually find just that combination of qualities of body, intelligence, and spirit which his experience teaches him are best for the specified purpose ... Neither can satisfactorily do the work of the other; and the same is true of man, whether performing purely manual labor, working at a trade, or taxing his mind in the direction of an industrial army or otherwise. For every sort of task there is to be found a kind of man specially and peculiarly adapted to its successful accomplishment (Thurston, 1894, p. 81).

In addition, men should be provided with suitable clothing and housing and everything within reason that shall conduce to content and cheerfulness, high spirits, ambition, and an inclination to do their best work should be conscientiously provided (Thurston, 1894, p. 83).

Summarizing, Thurston provides both the technical terms (horse-power), foot-pounds, etc., and the so called value laden terms (content, cheerfulness, high spirits, ambition, best work), found in PSM, but written 16 years earlier.

The use of similar views regarding men and work as those in Thurston in the PSM manuscript can be traced either to the engineering education of Taylor, Cooke, Kendall or Barter, or Cook's method of gathering material to produce the original manuscript. In gathering such items Cooke could have readily used portions of Thurston's book which was owned both by Thompson and Taylor.

Figure 16.Equations for work in Thurston, The Animal as a Machine, 1894, p. 79

Conclusion

No careful examination of the words found in the published version of a manuscript can tell us about the author (or other writers who may be unknown) who actually prepared the manuscript, the changes made along the way, and the other elements, behind the scenes (for example, contemporary events that may have influenced the author) that made the final book a reality. Despite the author's painstaking work, the actual story of Taylor's work and the forces that influenced it are not revealed.

I don't believe there are any short cuts to producing accurate management history. Searches of library sources, (in the form of books or articles, etc.,) will not uncover the real events. The historian must search for the contemporary records, diaries, etc., that will provide the needed insight. If they are not accessible in archives, it is the duty of the historian to search for them. I have searched attics, basements, barns and the dusty files of old paper mills, etc., to uncover original documents. The efforts are great and for the most part unrewarding, but along the way the historian has the hope (and sometimes the reward) of finding original material. This is not the cozy realm of the library, or the comfort of an office looking at a computer screen, but the hard "on-location" work that libraries and computer screens cannot provide.

I recognize that despite all the efforts of the historian, the original manuscript of a book may be gone forever, destroyed by fire, water, or by persons who failed to understand the value of the original document. Under these circumstances, the historian is forced to use the published account, but must always keep in mind it is a published one that may have been influenced by the publisher or his editors.

Sincerely,

Chuck Wrege

Notes

1. 1.

   Original records of the Hawthorne Ilumination Tests of the Committee on Industrial Lighting of the National Research Council, 1924-1925, 1926, 1926-1927, and original records of the first relay assembly test group, Hawthorne Works, Western Electric Company, 1927-1932, MTC.

2. 2.

   The Westinghouse-Edison Case: Sawyer and Man vs Edison, Full text of Justice Bradley's opinion in the case of the consolidated company, against the McKeesport Company (Edison Electric Light Company, October 17, 1889), Files of the Edison Historic Site, West Orange, N.J., p. 20.

Annual Catalogue of the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1883-1884.

Bethlehem Steel Company Versus Niles-Bement-Pond Company, case 4641, National Archives, Northeast Region, 1906.

Bowditch, A. to F.W. Taylor, 11 December 1896, FWT.

Cooke, M.L. to F.W. Taylor, 6 September 1907, FWT.

Cooke, M. Letter to F.W. Taylor, October ­ November 1907, History of Management Theory Collections, Cornell University, Kheel Labor-Management Documentation Center and Archives. Hereafter cited MTC.

Copley, F., Frederick W. Taylor: Father of Scientific Management, Harper & Brothers, 1923, Vols. I and II.

Evans, H.A., "Scientific Factory Management", American Machinist, 16 June 1910, pp. 1108-11.

Hathorn, G., to F.W. Taylor, 19 April 1897, FWT.

Hoagland, J.H., "Charles Babbage ­ His Life and Works in The Historical Evolutions of Management Concepts", Ph.D. Dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1954.

Hoagland, J.H., "Management Before Frederick Taylor", Proceedings of the Academy of Management, 1955, pp. 15-24.

Kent, Sherman, Writing History, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1941.

Louis Dembitz Brandeis, The Golden Book of Management: New Expended Edition, American Management Association, 1984.

Majority Report of Sub-Committee on Administration, "The Present State of The Art of Industrial Management", Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1912), Report No. 1378, Appendix 2.

Metcalfe, H., "Report to Major S.C. Lyford", 11 November 1880, Special Collections, West Point Military Academy Archives.

Metcalfe, H., The Cost of Manufactures and the Administration of Workshops, Public and Private, Wiley & Sons, New York, 1885.

Neck, C.P. and Bedeian, A.G., "Frederick W. Taylor, J. Maunsell White III, and the Matthew Effect: The Rest of the Story", Journal of Management History, Vol. 2 No.2, 1996, pp. 20-5.

New York Times, 22 June 1882.

O'Connor, E.S., "Lines of Authority: Reading of Foundational Texts on the Profession of Management", Journal of Management History, Vol. 2 No. 3, 1996, pp. 26-49.

Original records of the Hawthorne Ilumination Tests of the Committee on Industrial Lighting of the National Research Council, 1924-1925, 1926, 1926-1927, and original records of the first relay assembly test group, Hawthorne Works, Western Electric Company, 1927-1932, MTC.

Taylor, F.W. and Sanford Thompson Contract, 30 December 1895, FWT.

Taylor, F.W. to George Hammond, 18 May 1893, FWT.

Taylor, F.W. to Morris L. Cooke, 10 December 1910, F.W. Taylor Collection, Stevens Institute of Technology. Hereafter cited as FWT.

Taylor, F.W. to S. Thompson, 17 February 1896, MTC.

The Westinghouse ­ Edison Case: Sawyer and Man vs. Edison, Full text of Justice Bradley's opinion in the case of the consolidated company, against the McKeesport Company (Edison Electric Light Company, October 17, 1889), Files of the Edison Historic Site, West Orange, NJ, p. 20.

Thompson, D.V., Scientific Management: A Collection of the More Significant Articles Describing the Taylor System of Management, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1914.

Thompson, S. to F.W. Taylor, 10 February 1896, MTC.

Thompson, S. to F.W. Taylor, 7 February 1896, MTC.

Thurston, R.H., "On the Character of Physical Science and on the Philosophic Method of the Advancement of Science", Proceedings of The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol. XXVII, 1878, pp. 3-20.

Thurston, R.H., "The Mission of Science", Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1884.

Thurston, R.H., The Animal as a Machine and a Prime Motor and The Laws of Energetics, J. Wiley & Sons, New York, 1894.

Trombley, K.W., The Life and Times of a Happy Liberal, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1954.

Welden, J., 1899 "History of Several Tools of Self-Hardening Steel". Mark "L" showing results of tests with tools treated in different ways. Tools marked with punch marks 0,00,000,0000" FWT.

White, M. to Robert Davenport, "Invention of the Treatment of Air-Hardened Tool Steel at the Bethlehem Steel Company", January 5, 1900, FWT.

Wrege, C.D. and Perroni, A.G., "Taylor's Pig-Tale: A Historical Analysis of Frederick W. Taylor's Pig-iron Experiments", Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 17 No. 1, 1974, pp. 6-27.

Wrege, C.D. and Greenwood, R.G., "Discovering Some of The Roots of Taylor's Shop Management: Taylor's Secret Six-Year Study of the Building Trades", Proceedings of the Midwest Academy of Management, 1981, pp. 417-28.

Wrege, C.D. and Greenwood, R.G., Frederick W. Taylor, The Father of Scientific Management: Myth and Reality, Business One, Richard D. Irwin, Inc. New York, 1991.

Wrege, C.D. and Greenwood, R.G., "Frederick W. Taylor's Work at Bethlehem Steel, Phase II, the Discovery of High-Speed Tool Steel, 1898: Was it An Accident?", Canal History and Technology Proceedings, 1994, Vol. 8, pp. 115-63.

Wrege, C.D. and Stotka, A., "Cooke Creates a Classic: The Story behind F.W. Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management", Academy of Management Review, Vol. 3 No. 4, 1978, pp. 736-49.

Wrege, C.D., "F.W. Taylor's Lecture on Management, 4 June 1907: An Introduction" and text, Journal of Management History, Vol. 1 No. 1, 1955, pp. 4-32.