Doug Henwood wrote:
> Wasn't F.W. Taylor trying to get the workers to part with their
> trade secrets a century ago?
Montgomery, David. 1987. ”The Fall of the House of Labor: The workplace, the state•, and American labor activism, 1865-1925 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).230: Taylor's art of cutting metal. 1906. Taylor's initial fame came from work he reported in this paper. He and fellow engineers experimented on hardening of metal for cutting tools. Machinists had long known from experience that metal should be heated until it turns "cherry red", then cool it quickly. Further heating would destroy its temper. Taylor and White used the best available steel to temperatures far beyond the range of practical experience. At 225 degrees higher than cherry red, hardness begins to increase once more until maximum hardness was reached just below melting point. Bethlehem steel used this technique by 1900, introduced to world in Taylor's 1906 paper. What is noteworthy is that its creation had required laboratory experiments as well as a violation of trained workers common sense knowledge. Made traditional knowledge obsolete. --
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901