Part 23
Such a degree of discipline is entirely feasible on any contract work of long duration, and it should be obtained if economy is desired. It is not possible to institute successfully radical reforms and methods, without first securing good discipline on the work; and when work is badly disorganized, the discipline should be the first point of attack.
It is necessary to have, first, a system of locating responsibility. If a dinkey becomes derailed, if the spacing of drill holes be erroneously made, if a steam shovel be out of line, if the wrong methods of loading be pursued, if a pump be out of order, if necessary material or supplies be wanting, if the pipes freeze up, if, in short, one hundred and one little things happen that cause confusion on the work, it should be possible to find someone who, by some crime of omission or commission, is responsible for the trouble, and who can be made, in some degree at least, to bear the brunt of it. The only man who seems destined to be entirely free from the consequence of his mistakes, is the clerk of the Weather Bureau.
The organization should be laid out from the bottom upward, rather than from the top downward. The laborer is responsible practically for carrying out the instructions of his foreman to the satisfaction of his foreman and of no one else, and for this reason he should not work under the impression that anyone except his own foreman is likely to discharge him, to criticise him, or to praise him. If his foreman be the right sort of man, the laborer, with his dozen associates, will have at heart, besides the interests of the work, a strong feeling of personal loyalty to the foreman; and this feeling will be reciprocated by the foreman. If a foreman be noticed vigorously complaining that the men he has to deal with are inefficient, incompetent, and a disgrace to civilization compared to the men he had to work with some years before, he may as a general thing be put down as a "blow─hard" and of little value to the organization. The most successful are usually the ones who are ordinarily quiet, cool under emergency, and yet of sufficient determination to inspire among the men a wholesome respect for them. A man who loses his temper on the work for any reason, does not, as a general thing, make a good foreman or superintendent.
The relations obtaining between the men and their foreman, should obtain to a more marked degree between the foreman and their superintendent. Briefly stated, every man on the job should have to look for orders from one man and only one man; and he should be responsible to that man for the satisfactory performance of those orders.
Conflicting orders can be avoided only by systematic compliance with the rule just above outlined.
It sometimes happens after periods of financial depression, or as a result of special conditions, that it is feasible to reduce the pay of a good many men on the work. This should always be done with great care and after an intimate knowledge has been obtained of the personalities of the men affected. As a general thing, if you cut down a man's pay 10 per cent, you will cut down the work 20 per cent, at least for a time; and it frequently happens that after such a pay reduction, small, petty depredations on the work are committed. Articles get stolen; machinery is damaged by "sore heads." It is usually unwise to reduce the pay of a few men. As a general policy, where a small percentage of the working force is to be affected, it is better to discharge a few men outright, and endeavor by economic methods to increase the output of the others.
Differential pay is a prolific source of trouble, and it is very common. By this is meant the payment to different men of different rates for the performance of the same work. The men who obtain the less pay think that their pay ought to be raised; and the man who gets the most pay can in no probability appreciate the fact that he may be over─paid. Rather than cut his pay down, it is well, if possible, to put him at some other class of work.
It is often necessary for economical reasons to place men who have been paid by the month, upon an hourly basis; and even when by this they average rather more than they formerly received, it usually causes discontent. Any man likes to know how he is coming out at the end of the month regardless of the weather, and it is an additional source of anxiety to him not to know what his pay envelope will contain. When he keeps his own record of the hours worked, he is likely to disagree with the time─keeper, and this can lead to a good deal of disaffection and dissatisfaction.
A frequent cause of disaffection on work is due to the habit too often indulged in by time─keepers, of gossiping with the men. The time─keeper and the storekeeper necessarily come into contact with a very large percentage of the men every day; and if the time─keeper particularly be disposed to gossip, he has abundant opportunity to gratify his desire, and can produce a great deal of trouble. For this reason the general character of the time─keeper should be carefully scrutinized before employing him; and he should be cautious, when making his rounds, to confine himself strictly to business. If the men on the job know as much about the work as the General Manager, if they know all the ins and outs and ups and downs of the contract, they necessarily discuss it among themselves, and a great deal of restlessness is produced, which is very difficult to stamp out, because, by the time it has reached a pronounced stage, the men have learned so much about the politics, as it were, of the job, as to interfere with the discipline.
If there be dissensions at headquarters, if the parties that control the work are at war, and if the methods and performance of the manager or superintendent be not absolutely satisfactory to every one of the officials, nothing can be worse than to let a suspicion of this matter get around among the men. How a general manager or superintendent can prevent this, if an officer be disposed to talk, is a problem that no attempt will here be made to solve. In reorganization, such a condition is one for which the manager should be continually on the alert, and he is advised to be suspicious of the time─keeper and storekeeper.
=Labor─Saving Devices Involving Plant.= If the men are in a reasonably good state of discipline, it is feasible to make changes in the layout involving special apparatus or plant; and in deciding upon such measures, a question arises as to how much money it is justifiable to spend for a new plant. A piece of work under reorganization is ordinarily a piece of work that is more or less in financial difficulties, and the purchase of plant for the economizing of the work is usually looked upon by the officers as a dangerous move.
## Particularly is this the case when any changes of this kind turn out to
be unsuccessful. A small amount of money wasted on special apparatus is always in sight──at the scrap heap, if nowhere else──whereas a good deal of money wasted in fruitless labor can be easily lost to view.
If the amount of saving on a certain operation by the installation of special material be sufficient to pay for this material in a few weeks, the purchase of the material can be immediately justified, and the cost of the apparatus can be charged as _current expenses_ to be shortly recovered in the economy of the work. Where expensive and heavy machinery is to be installed, however, the matter should be gone into with the greatest care and detail.
A few of the articles which come within the class chargeable to _current expenses_, are:
1. The use of water jets for increasing the speed of drilling in soft rock.
2. The use of hickory wands for stirring up sludge in drill holes, and increasing the speed of drilling.
3. The use of special explosives and good exploding machines, and of loading tubes for blasting.
4. Small grading machines for spreading earth and macadam.
5. Special wheelbarrows or carts for moving material.
6. Special small tools for the blacksmith, including a trough in which he can set his bits to be hardened, with the points in the water.
7. A sufficient supply of picks and shovels.
Some of the items of plant that may be classed in the other category, are:
1. Special wagons and scrapers for hauling earth.
2. Concrete mixers especially adapted to the work in hand.
3. Derricks.
4. Locomotive cranes.
5. Cableways.
6. Bit─sharpening machines.
=Labor─Saving Devices Involving No Plant.= Where the labor preparatory to introducing the improved methods is considered, it should be taken as equivalent to a plant charge as affecting the interest of the contractor. If, for example, it has been the practice to drill and blast immediately in front of a steam shovel on rock excavation, and it is desired to have the drilling and blasting so far ahead of the shovel as to avoid the occasional necessity of holding up the shovel, the money involved in the work done ahead should be considered in the nature of a temporary investment and charged to money expended on plant which will not come back for a period of perhaps one month.
A steam─shovel crew has a good deal more pride in its work, and will continue working under more disagreeable weather conditions, than a drilling gang; and when drilling in front of a shovel, severe weather conditions may cause the drilling work to stop without interrupting the operation of the shovel. If, then, the drills are working too close to the shovel, the shovel may catch them.
On the other hand, it is unwise to blast far ahead of the shovel, for a number of reasons. In the first place, there is no advantage in investing money in drill holes, except to avoid such a contingency as outlined above. In the second place, it is impossible to tell how effective the blasting has been until the shovel has attacked the broken rock; and if the blasting is done far ahead of the shovel, poor blasting may go undetected until an immense amount of financial damage has been done.
To cite a specific instance──On a recent piece of important work, a cut several hundred feet long was drilled to a depth of supposedly fourteen feet, and blasted with more or less unsatisfactory results. The steam shovel was then put in, and excavated to a depth of five or six feet. The subsequent cut of from eight to nine feet deep had to be entirely re─drilled and re─blasted. The drilling in the already partly broken rock was immensely difficult, the drills sticking a great deal and a good many of the holes having to be abandoned; while the blasting was unsatisfactory because of the fissures.
The rapid reorganization of work can be furthered by the issuance of _special instructions to foremen in the field_. This practice has been admirably followed by Frank B. Gilbreth, and is described in his "Field System." As illustrations of such orders, are the following to drill and blasting foremen, issued on some recent work:
INSTRUCTIONS TO FOREMEN
RULES FOR DRILLING──
Drill foremen are requested to do their utmost to enforce the following rules for drilling:
1. Each drill at the beginning of a hole is to be supplied with a complete set of sharp bits and a pump, which will be laid alongside of the drill tripod by the drill tender, under the directions of the foreman.
2. As soon as a hole is finished, one of the muckers at the direction of the foreman will assist the two drill runners to move the tripod; and the mucker under the direction of the foreman will then pump out the hole that has just been completed.
3. The foreman will then personally, with a wooden rod, measure the depth of the hole, and punch said depth on the drillers' card, the mucker placing a well─made round plug in the hole and hammering it home.
4. Foremen will see that the drills are so distributed as to keep them as near as possible to the manifold, from which the steam supply is taken.
5. Pipe connections are to be made by a pipe─fitter who will be assigned to each drill gang, and who may be assisted by the foreman and by a mucker when necessary. No pipe─fitting is to be done by drill runners or helpers unless absolutely necessary.
6. The time for drilling is from 8 A. M. until noon, and from 12.30 until 4.30 P. M.; and the moving of the dinkey supplying the drills with steam is never to be done within those hours, unless absolutely necessary, and when it is necessary, a note to that effect must be made on the quarry card.
7. Whenever for any reason the drills are out of steam, the drill foreman will indicate the time when the steam pressure failed and the time when pressure was again turned on, with a reason why the pressure gave out. This to be written on the quarry card.
8. Foremen will see that each drill is in proper working order, and supplied with an exhaust pipe of the proper length and with a throttle. Whenever for any reason a drill is not in perfect condition, the foreman will immediately report it and make requisition through the storekeeper for the necessary parts and repairs.
The attention of all concerned is particularly called to these rules, the enforcement of which is essential to the economic performance of the work; and all concerned are particularly urged to make a most earnest effort to see that, as far as it is possible, every drill on the work shall be in actual operation for 8 hours on every working day.
By order of,
RICHARD T. DANA, General Manager.
INSTRUCTIONS TO FOREMEN
RULES FOR THE GUIDANCE OF BLASTING FOREMEN──
Blasting foremen are requested to do their utmost to enforce the following rules for the conduct of blasting operations:
1. Attention is called to the fact that dynamite will freeze in about 45° temperature, and that at this temperature, a little above or a little below, dynamite is exceedingly sensitive to shocks, and should be handled accordingly.
2. Whenever a part of the charge in a hole has been exploded, leaving any unexploded dynamite in the hole, do not under any circumstances blow out the unexploded dynamite with a steam jet. You may, however, put a stick of dynamite down into the hole on top of the unexploded powder and endeavor to fire the entire hole in this manner.
3. The blasting foreman will provide himself with a measured wooden rod for tamping, and personally see that every hole that is loaded is down to grade. If he should find any hole that is not down to grade, he will immediately report the fact to the superintendent or assistant superintendent on the work, and make a note of the same on his time─card.
4. The attention of the foreman is called to the fact that dynamite is not as efficient in a hole full of water as it is in a dry hole, and every effort should be made to load the holes as dry as possible.
5. The tamping of the holes should be of the heaviest and stickiest clay that can be obtained, and this tamping should extend the entire length of the hole above the powder.
6. Never thaw dynamite in front of the fire, or on a hot stone removed from a fire, or by piling sticks in a boiler or in an oven.
By order of,
RICHARD T. DANA, General Manager.
In hauling earth, the principal elements of team expense are the time to haul and the standing still to load. This last item can be very materially reduced by the simple expedient of having on the work an extra wagon or two. A team can be changed from one wagon to another in about one and a─half minutes, and the same number of teams on a short haul will do easily 15 per cent more work by this trick.
The same principle applies to the mixing of concrete involving extra wheelbarrows; and here it may be mentioned that the arrangement of the concrete platform is seldom economical. The men, if left to themselves, will usually not have sufficient runways, so that a man with a loaded wheelbarrow will be painfully struggling up a plank, while a man with an empty wheelbarrow is waiting for him to get out of the way. Much can be accomplished by having the men move in procession so that no man with a wheelbarrow will ever have to stand and wait for another man to get out of his way. Of course the ideal method of handling concrete into a mixer is to do it from bins with chutes; but the great majority of this class of work is not done in this manner.
On contract work, the emergency charges for the moving of plant are usually considerably higher than they ought to be, owing to the fact that the work is done by men who are not especially skilful in this kind of work. The direction of these processes should be given to a man who is especially good at it; and the work should be provided with a good supply of gin poles, snatch blocks, tackle, etc.
If a piece of work has been under personal observation for considerable time, a great many sources of improvement in the performance can be detected that are entirely invisible upon casual inspection; and the student of economics is urged to devote a large amount of time to the most careful and complete study of minor and apparently trivial operations. Too much respect is usually given to established methods, just because they are established methods; and the analysis of a process that is apparently simple and of minor importance, but which is repeated scores of times in a day, is nearly always given too little importance as compared with the process that is elaborate and complicated, and which may in itself be of great importance, but which, on the particular work at hand, is dependent upon apparently minor processes. To illustrate──A shovel, loading eight or nine thousand yards of rock per month, was inspected; and the first impression obtained was that the reason the shovel output was so small was because of the inefficient layout of the shovel work itself. It was found, however, that the shovel was actually able to work a good deal faster than the drills and the blasting could provide broken rock for it; and the ultimate solution of the problem was found in the reorganizing of the drilling, in order to do more work with the same number of drills, and in the use of improved methods in blasting. The handling of the shovel took care of itself as soon as the other problems were solved.
The cost of spreading broken macadam on a road, to the average contractor, is not far from 12 cents per cubic yard; and the work is done with shovels and forks. This method is one that has been pursued for a great many years; and there are very few contractors who realize that it is exceedingly expensive. Some contractors, however, are doing work of this kind with the aid of a road machine that requires for its operation two or three men and four horses. A small grader machine that can be operated by one man and two horses for rough spreading, assisted by one man on the ground with a potato hook, has been known to do this work for about 2 cents or less per cubic yard.
In bridge─erecting work, a great deal of money can be saved over ordinary methods by the designing of special tools, such as dolly bars; and a good system of keeping detailed cost on such work will be sure to result advantageously. Much labor is lost in the erecting of roof trusses and in the erection of trusses in general, by crude and old─fashioned methods. The pneumatic riveter which strikes a great many light blows per minute has revolutionized field riveting; but the use of such a machine for cutting rivets has been unsuccessful in competition with hand labor on at least one large piece of work in New York City.
In painting, considerable time is ordinarily lost by the painters in preparing their own staging. Whenever possible, these preparations should be done for them under the direction of a skilled man; and the use of small winches on the staging whereby the painters can quickly raise and lower themselves, has been found of great value.
On contract work, the blacksmith is in a position peculiar to himself. He is classed as an expert, paid by the month, and is supposed somehow to get all the work done that comes to him. He has general charge of his department, and he gets very few orders and practically no instruction from the superintendent or manager. He is nearly always an interesting personality, and, outside of a very limited field, extraordinarily ignorant. The excuse on a great deal of uneconomical work is that it is impossible to get a competent blacksmith who knows how to do the work that he is called upon to perform. Tools will not hold their edge, or they break. Upon the matter being referred to the blacksmith, he will usually come back with a complaint about his coal, or the grade of steel with which he is supplied, or his tempering solution, or the condition of his forge. He should be provided with a thoroughly good set of tools, and the superintendent should know that his tools are of the best. He should next be carefully and thoroughly instructed as to how to harden and temper steel. A convenient shop for the blacksmith, and proper methods of forging and tempering, will add incalculable value to the organization.
=Introduction of New Methods.= It should be adopted as a cardinal principle, that there are no methods in the field which are not capable of improvement along the line of economy; and it should be remembered that a very small improvement in any one method is invariably worth a great deal of thought and time in arriving at it. The systematic perusal of the proceedings of the engineering societies and the engineering press, will result in the suggestion of new and improved methods and of a good many bad and unimproved methods; and the trained expert should be able to sift the wheat from the chaff, and apply only such as will fit his special needs.
The literature of shop development and shop economics is rich in illustrations and suggestions that can be adapted to field work, and should be gone over very carefully for this purpose. In this connection it should be urged that it is a duty of a professional man to publish new methods. There is no room for argument on the proposition that the principle of free trade, showing the other fellow two blades of grass growing where one grew before, is an advantage to all concerned.