In Their Time

[TWO]

1910–1919

Breaking Frontiers

In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first.

This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before.

—Frederick Winslow Taylor

THE FREEWHEELING, unfettered business expansion so characteristic of the first decade continued with earnest in the 1910s. As companies grappled with the size and scale of their organizations, they benefited from the advice of the “father of scientific management,” Frederick Winslow Taylor. From his early studies of coal shoveling techniques ...