. Railway and locomotive engineering : a practical journal of railway motive power and rolling stock . INC. MACHINE. mechani.^ni is adaptable to the use ofsplices if it is desired. The device has been found to be bothreliable and economical, and is easy ofconstruction. The classic illustration of cfificiency isthe carpenter driving nails. It must betwenty years ago that I learned theastounding fact that it does not pay a car-penter to pick up the nails he drops, be-cause the time spent in the stooping isworth more than the nails. Any consci- expert who first perceived the wasteful
. Railway and locomotive engineering : a practical journal of railway motive power and rolling stock . INC. MACHINE. mechani.^ni is adaptable to the use ofsplices if it is desired. The device has been found to be bothreliable and economical, and is easy ofconstruction. The classic illustration of cfificiency isthe carpenter driving nails. It must betwenty years ago that I learned theastounding fact that it does not pay a car-penter to pick up the nails he drops, be-cause the time spent in the stooping isworth more than the nails. Any consci- expert who first perceived the wasteful-ness of picking up nails, and the self-con-trol of the carpenter who could restrainhis natural impulse to pick up a nailespecially one that so deserved to bepounded good and hard. But soon I be-gan to have doubts. Whose time, I nowasked myself, would this devoted crafts-man waste, if he should so far forget him-self as to pick iip a nail—his own, or hisemployers? Surely, from his own pointof view, whether the time was wastedwould depend on whether he was paidby the piece or by tlie day. I had a. AIR HOSE FITTINC, APPARATUS, DELAWARE & HUDSON SHOPS. entious carpenter, said my informant,will wish to be efficient. A mistakenconscientiousness will prompt him to godown on his knees and find the lost nailand straighten it, if it is bent, even if he plumber in last week w-ho (from my pointof view) wasted three hours, conversingentertainingly with any one who wouldlisten, for one hour that he worked; butwhen I came to pay his bill for four hours work I realized that in the art of stretch-ing a job, he had attained a finishedefficiency. The only man, 1 concluded, who cansafely make a hobby of efficiency is theefficiency expert. lie does not have tofollow his own theories, but only to writebooks about them. No one can begrudgehim that pleasure; it is only when, witha Samuel Smilesian optimism, he falls toexiiorting the laboring man to make ahobby of his work—a stamping-machine orbut
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