efficiency

Examples of efficiency in the following topics:

• Modern Management

  • The mechanization of the manufacturing process allowed workers to be more productive in less time and factories to operate more efficiently.
  • Businesses searched for cheaper and more efficient ways to create products.
  • Corporate officials used various techniques, such as timing their workers with stopwatches and using stop-motion photography, to study the production process and improve efficiency.
  • Frederick Winslow Taylor observed that the use of more advanced machinery could improve efficiency in steel production by requiring workers to make fewer motions in less time.
  • Frederick Winslow Taylor, a mechanical engineer by training, is often credited with inventing scientific management and improving industrial efficiency.

• Progressive Government: City and State

  • Progressives took on local governments in attempts to improve efficiency and destroy political corruption.
  • The Progressives were very active in reforming local government to introduce efficiency and weed out corruption.

• Efficiency

  • The progressives' quest for efficiency was sometimes at odds with the progressives' quest for democracy.
  • Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois showed a "passion for efficiency" as he streamlined state government.
  • A major influence on this efficient style of governing was the "Scientific Management" movement.
  • The focus of this movement was to run organizations in an objective, scientific fashion to maximize efficiency, among other things.
  • Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity.

• The Progressive Stake in the War

  • The Progressive Movement influenced U.S. policy in World War I through its ideals of morality, efficiency and democracy.
  • Morality, liberal democracy and self-determination fueled Progressivism and its goals of eliminating government corruption and increasing efficiency and expertise in areas such as education and social justice.
  • There was a high level of confusion regarding the needs of a wartime nation in the first 12 months of America’s involvement, but then efficiency took root in a systematic mobilization of the entire population and economy that produced the soldiers, food supplies, munitions, and money needed to win the war.
  • The Progressive Movement was well suited to this effort, as many of its core values involved efficiency in all areas of society.

• The Factory System

  • The development of machine tools greatly increased the efficiency and productivity of factories and mills in the early 19th century.
  • Between 1800 and 1820, specialized machinery replaced hand tools, and new industrial tools that rapidly increased the quality and efficiency of manufacturing emerged.

• Roosevelt and Conservation

  • In May 1908, Roosevelt sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use.
  • In effect, Roosevelt's conservationism embodied the Progressive ideal of efficiency: to protect nature in order to render it serviceable to the needs and uses of man for successive generations.

• Americanization and Pluralism

  • In 1916 Kellor proposed combining efficiency and patriotism in the NAC’s programs.
  • It would be more efficient, she argued, if factory workers all understood direction given in English in order to avoid accidents.

• Coercive Patriotism

  • Kellor, speaking for the NAC in 1916, proposed to combine efficiency and patriotism in her Americanization programs.
  • It would be more efficient, she argued, once the factory workers could all understand English and therefore better understand orders and avoid accidents.

• Commercial Farmers

  • Agriculture in the West also became increasingly commercial after the 1830s, when Cyrus McCormick invented a mechanical mower-reaper that drastically increased the efficiency of wheat farming.
  • John Deere's horse-drawn steel plow also led to more efficient farming practices, replacing the difficult oxen-driven wooden plows that farmers had employed for centuries.

• The Retreat from Progressivism

  • Another theme for Progressives was trying to achieve efficiency in every sector by identifying old ways that needed modernizing, and emphasizing scientific, medical and engineering solutions.
  • "Business progressivism," with its emphasis on efficiency and typified by Henry Ford and Herbert Hoover, reached its climax in the 1920s .
  • Others stress the continuing importance of the Progressive movement in the South in the 1920s which involved increased democracy, efficient government, corporate regulation, social justice, and governmental public service.