A History of Personnel Administration 1890-1910

Oscar W. Nestor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780415786751
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351850926
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This study, first published in 1986, examines and evaluates the personnel techniques and activities that were characteristic of one period in American industrial life. In later years these techniques and activities came to be known as personnel management or personnel administration. By these terms is meant the policies, procedures, and programs that were introduced by companies for the purpose of bringing about constructive and harmonious relationships between management and its own employees. This title will be of interest to students of business studies and human resource management.

CHAPTER VI

SELECTION, TRAINING, SAFETY, AND MEDICAL WORK

In this chapter are brought together the remaining activities and programs which today are associated with the term personnel administration or personnel management. In this group of activities fall selection, training and education, and safety and medical work.

Selection

Writing in System in 1905, Herbert J. Hapgood commented:¹

Man hunting is becoming a broad and vital work; and it is becoming a common work. For not only are those engaged in it who make this their sole work— employment experts and agencies—but every large corporation, every school which turns men and women out into the working world, labor unions that have men to place, employers’ associations having places to fill—all these are developing more or less complete and independent departments for hunting the right men or supplying the right men.

The information available for this period does not support this enthusiastic observation. Certainly as far as industry was concerned, there were few centralized employment departments. Moreover, little discussion of employment policies and procedures were uncovered in the literature of the period. Only toward the end of the first decade of the twentieth century did firms single out this function for special treatment. As a general rule, the selection function in the larger companies was carried out by the line officers and in smaller organizations, the chief executive assumed the task of hiring. In larger organizations, it was frequently delegated to lower level supervisors. The centralization of the employment function and the development of more effective ways of hiring did not receive significant attention until World War I when immigration virtually ceased and labor became very scarce.²

About 1899, the B. F. Goodrich Company organized what is considered to be the first employment department. “This Department was known as the Employment Bureau, and its function was and always has been the hiring of employees for the company, with the things necessarily incident to pure hiring. Mr. Schwartz was known as the Manager of the Employment Bureau, not as Employment Manager, and this was before the mechanics or the technique of employment was invented or known.”³ The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company at East Pittsburgh also organized an employment department about this time.⁴ In 1910, Meyer Bloomfield organized the first local association of employment managers in Boston, but the scope of activity of this group was broader than employment alone since it placed considerable emphasis upon vocational guidance.⁵

The first public employment office was created by the State of Ohio as early as 1890 and by 1915 some twenty-three states had established similar offices in eighty cities. These facilities were not used extensively by industrial employers.⁶ Private employment agencies existed also but in many cases their motives were suspect. The amount of business done by such agencies was very small.⁷

Selection Techniques

The value of proper selection techniques was recognized in isolated instances but prevailing techniques appear crude and unrefined in light of modern methods of hiring. After 1900, the literature includes articles on the importance of selection, selection techniques and forms, including the use of an application blank, interviews, and references. In 1904, C. M. Jones wrote:⁸

The hiring of the employe is the first point of contact between him and his employer, and to the latter it is a matter most vital and far-reaching. Upon the hiring of the right workmen more than on any other one point depends the efficiency of a working force, especially when these are unskilled laborers. A good employee can be trained and developed up to almost any plane; a poor workman is always a sore spot.

Selection techniques, however, were not generally in use and most articles discussing their use frequently ended with a plea for greater acceptance. Armour and Company had worked out a system for the selection of office employees. Phillip D. Armour personally interviewed each applicant. This company did not. regard the selection of factory workers as an important function. One of the executives stated that “the employees in the plant do not need to be hired so carefully. The common workmen are hired and discharged by the carload.”⁹

Harlow N. Higinbotham, President of the National Grocery Company, described the method of selection he favored in the following words:¹⁰

I would first look into the home conditions of an applicant. If the applicant is a boy, I would inquire whether he lived with his parents; this would be in his favor. If he is a country boy he may live with a relative, but if he lives at a cheap boarding house it is against him, for it may undermine his health in after life. If a boy came to me seeking employment and owned that he used cigarettes I would tell him to go and stop it —- not to stop when he entered my employ, but before ever applying. This is only one incident showing how the general health of the employe is considered, when he is first selected. His education and general adaptability are the last to be considered.

The attitude and approach to hiring described above appears to have been typical of employers in this area.

Promotions

Systematic promotion as part of an overall personnel program apparently received little, if any, attention. The explicit purpose of some training programs was to prepare people for promotion, and a few companies seemed to grasp the importance of fair promotional policies. The Tide Water Oil Company, for example, announced that its policy would be to promote men from the ranks to supervisory positions.¹¹ Seniority was undoubtedly an important factor governing promotions and individual supervisors exercised a great deal of influence over the promotions of their people.¹²

Training and Education

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, employers were beginning to experience some difficulty in finding skilled workmen to satisfy their ever-expanding needs. This problem, which became critical during World War I, led to the introduction of apprentice training programs after 1900. In 1909, Magnus Alexander, a leading student of industrial problems, wrote: The recent period of unprecedented industrial prosperity has revealed in a striking manner to the American people that the supply of skilled workmen in this country is utterly inadequate…. Thoughtful and far-sighted men should, therefore, give close and careful consideration to this matter in order to avoid a future check on the industrial development of the country.”¹³ As a testimony of the concern over the inadequacy or training, the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Training was founded in November, 1906. The purpose of this group was to assist in marshalling public opinion in favor of a public educational system that would train young boys and girls to assume responsible positions in the factory. Other groups which expressed alarm over the lack of training facilities included the American Federation of Labor, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Education Association, the National League for Industrial Education, the Southern Industrial Education Association, the National Metal Trades Association, the International Typographical Union, and the Young Men’s Christian Association.¹⁴ In addition to the interest manifested by private groups, governmental bodies at the state and municipal levels were directing their attention to this matter. By 1909, seven states had created commissions by legislative enactment to conduct investigations and recommend proper measures for obtaining effectual training.¹⁵

Reasons for the Decline of Training

In the United States a system of apprenticeship had been utilized until after the Civil War, when the advent of the larger contractor brought an increase in the number of low paid “helpers“ who took the place of apprentices.¹⁶ Employers found it more expedient to use cheap immigrant labor for more menial jobs and to hire skilled foreign workmen rather than train workers over a protracted period. Changing industrial conditions, accompanied by an influx of immigrants, thus led to a gradual decline of the existing apprentice system.

The development of larger and more highly mechanized firms with jobs demanding less skill was a major factor contributing to this breakdown. The United States Commissioner of Labor stated in his Annual Report in 1910:¹⁷

The old-time apprenticeship system was never formally given up, but as a matter of fact it almost disappeared during the latter part of the last century. In many cases apprentices were not taken, and even where the name was still used there was a strong tendency in the interest of a large output to keep the so-called apprentice at one operation or on one machine long after he was thoroughly familiar with it and should have been advanced to something else. Consequently when he had finished his term he might know one or two parts of his trade thoroughly, but he was but little better qualified as an all-around skilled worker than when he began.

As a result of this condition employers have found themselves confronted with such a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• I. ECONOMIC SETTING
• II. IMPROVEMENT OF PLANT AND WORKING CONDITIONS
• III. DINING FACILITIES
• IV. RECREATION AND EMPLOYEE BENEFITS
• V. HOURS, INCENTIVE WAGE PLANS, AND SUPPLEMENTARY COMPENSATION
• VI. SELECTION, TRAINING, SAFETY, AND MEDICAL WORK
• VII. ADMINISTRATION OF PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES
• VIII. AN APPRAISAL