became slack, and the task and time-setter was also paid ‘blood money’ to set the times so short that ‘the making of the tasks’ involved an expenditure of more than the greatest reasonable amount of energy.” The Trade Unions got to know of this, with the result that Scientific Management of that sort is now as dead as mutton. Public interest subsides. But in principle it was right—right in the sense that its inventor had a glimpse of something which is ultimately going to prove effective. He made the mistake which probably every inventor makes. He constructed a machine with the power to blow itself up; but this only shows that power is there, and power to be controlled. The mistake, of course, was a natural one to make for people preoccupied with the parallelogram of forces. Another case supplies the necessary comment and indicates a more hopeful line of experiment.

“There was in operation for some years at the leper colony off the Philippine Islands a system of weekly gratuities to each man, woman, and child confined to the island colony. From the women and children no accounting for the subsidy was required. But from the men a certain amount of manual labour about the island was exacted upon penalty of having the pocket-money withheld. From the administrative point of view this had seemed an easy solution for the difficult problem of getting adequate labour in an isolated place inhabited largely by the victims of a dread disease. But the men patients took vigorous exception to this form of compulsory labour, and finally made complaint about it to the Philippine Government. An investigation into the unrest at the leper colony was instituted, and the Secretary of the Interior visited the island and heard all the complaints in person. As a result of his study the system of gratuities for the men was wiped out. And the necessary work on the island was paid for at an agreed rate which, it appeared later, was less than the previous gratuity. Nevertheless, the men found the new system preferable; there was no more complaint, the necessary work was done; the men who were inclined to work received their stipends and the others not. But from that day to the present trouble on this score has been unheard of.”⁠²