RELATION OF DISCOVERY AND INVENTION

opportunities. There had been business depression in1920-1921. Herbert Hoover ’s engineering committee onElimination of Waste in Industry reported some of thecauses of that depression. The committee had foundthroughout industry a faulty control of material anddesign, as well as of production and costs. For example,the loss from idleness in shoemaking occasioned by wait-ing for work and material amounted to about 35 percent of the time. It was found that standardization ofthe thickness of certain walls might mean a saving ofsome six hundred dollars in the cost of the average house.There were six thousand brands of paper, of which halfwere more or less inactive, and the duplication of brandstied up money in unnecessary stock. A shoe factory withcapacity of twenty-four hundred pairs a day had shortageof needed racks, reducing output to nineteen hundredpairs daily. Most plants were found with no cost systems,or with incomplete knowledge of general costs, and forthis reason most of them lost money. A multitude ofshops lacked modern personnel relations with their em-ployees ; the workers had no unbiased means of approachto employers, while employers lacked the means of treat-ing with their own men. Few plants had effective em-ployment records; the turnover of labor was high andexpensive. Sales policies were defective. There were can-cellations of purchases on long-term contracts rangingup to 14 per cent, and returns of goods up to 11 per centin so-called normal years. Lack of scientific managementand of scientific forms of organization found productionrestricted by both employers and men. Maintenance ofhigh prices, collusion in bidding, and unfair practicescontributed to limit output, as well as did the practice of“ca’ canny” by workers and the restrictive rules of the

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