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838 ILLUSTRATED WORLD
scientific shipper. He divides his warehouse and wharves into departments and
assigns each space to each class of goods. He has departments for merchandise,
machinery, bulky goods, crated goods, and so on. Each department, he designates
by a color. The plans work this way. We will assume that the color of
the machinery section is green. As the factory ships a machine to the Martens
warehouse, a green paper label is pasted on. When the clock workers see that
color, they know, without detailed instruction, just where to put the machine.
When the ship arrives, the goods are loaded according to this color scheme;
certain colors invariably take certain places in the hold. The heavier materials,
for example, always are on the lower decks.
By following this orderly plan, the Martens organization can load a ship in a
clay. While using the more cumbersome plan, Gulf docks use up a week or more
in loading one.
I have seen within a few weeks in some of even the better railroad depots in
Chicago, freight handlers still using the old hand trucks while unloading and
loading cars. It is the slowest way possible and wastes space, effort and men.
A better way to do the same work is that used in the Curtis Bay warehouse
of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad at Baltimore. It has an overhead railway on
which run many small locomotives. From each is hung a pair of chains with
grappling hooks at the lower end. One man in his locomotive cab and one on the
floor cause that locomotive to pick up the heaviest package and carry it to any
part of the warehouse or into the car or ship.
Such methods as those used by Martens and the Baltimore & Ohio speed up
the routine of merchandise distribution. If we speed up production, we also
must expedite distribution, else the flood of production will dam itself. Therefore,
these methods are not only advisable. They are necessary.
As important as these improved methods are. we cannot adopt them until
both capital and labor have consented to look at things from a new point of
view. To be specific, labor has refused to use either modern inventions or efficient
ways of working lest it cut itself out of employment. Two incidents illustrate
the labor attitude.
During the coal shortage last winter, my dealer could deliver me only a' ton
at a time. The driver of the coal wagon said he was glad of it because making
many small deliveries instead of a few big ones, gave him steady work.
Again, an electrician was wiring a house recently.
I noticed that he still cut the insulation from the wire
with his penknife and asked him why he did not use
the new device wdiich strips such wire in a second.
He replied that that would save too much time and
cut him and other electrical workers out of jobs.
The superintendent of a coal mine says that
if his miners would use certain time saving
devices, he could get out twenty-five per cent
more coal and cut the cost of production fifteen
cents a ton. But, the men will not work faster
lest they have to lie idle more days in a year
than now and lest the mines should decide
to use fewer men.
Capital has been and still is afraid to
use some of the newer and faster machines.
It has large sums of money tied
If You See Him Sitting Around Like This. ,„ . . „,„
Brand Him as a Slacker! He Deserves H {Continued on Page 944)