The tentering machines used to run slowly. This slowness enhanced the
natural monotony and wearisomeness of the work. The girls used to receive
wages of $6 a week, and to rest three-quarters of an hour in the morning
and three-quarters of an hour in the afternoon, with the same period for
dinner at noon in the middle of a ten-and-one-half hour day. After
Scientific Management was introduced, the girls sat at the machine only
an hour and twenty minutes at a time. They then had a twenty-minute rest,
and these intervals of work and rest were continued throughout the day by
an arrangement of spelling with "spare hands." The machines were run at a
more rapid rate than before. The girl's task was set at watching 32,000
yards in a day; and if she achieved the bonus, as she did without any
difficulty, she could earn $9 a week. The output of the tentering
machines was increased about sixty per cent.
The girls at the tentering machines praised the bonus system eagerly.
They said they could not bear to return to the former method of work;
that now the work was easier and more interesting than before, and the
payment and the hours were better. One of the "spare hands" showed me, as
a memento of a new era at tenter-hooking machines, the written slip of
paper the efficiency engineer had given to her, explaining to her how to
arrange the intervals of rest, and to start the "rest" with a different
girl on each Saturday--a five-hour day--so that the same girls would not
have three intervals of rest every Saturday.
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