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154 TAYLOR, Frederick Winslow. The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1911 A near-fine copy of the privately printed issue First edition, the scarce privately printed issue, of the first and most influential book on business and industrial management. It was printed in February 1911 for “confidential circulation” among the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; the first trade edition followed the same year. This copy has the bookplate and ownership signature of R. L. Rowley, dated 27 March 1911. In the Society’s journal for that year a “R. L. Rowley” is listed as having been elected a new member on 1 June 1911, and is likely the first or one of the earliest owners of this copy. “F. W. Taylor, an engineer in the Bethlehem Steel Works in Philadelphia, was the originator of what he called ‘scientific management’, now known as ‘time and motion study’ . . . The main lines of approach to increased efficiency were standardising processes and machines, time and motion study, and payment by results, all of which have been welcomed in the USSR, where ‘Stakhanovism’ is virtually ‘Taylorism’ renamed, and in Germany, where the Principles was translated and achieved a wide circulation (31,000 copies sold by 1922). The adoption of his methods there contributed notably to the speedy recovery of German production after the First World War. His methods were anathema to trade unionists almost everywhere else” ( PMM ). Octavo. Original dark green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, front cover with single fillet border in blind. From the library of esteemed collector Victor Niederhoffer. Spine slanted and light rubbing to extremities, some offset from bookplate residue to front pastedown,
contents evenly toned, a near-fine copy. ¶ Downs, Books That Changed America , 17; Norman 2059; Printing and the Mind of Man 403. £2,250 [134761] 155 THOMPSON, William. Labor Rewarded. London: printed for Hunt and Clarke, 1827 The most eminent founder of scientific socialism First edition of Thompson’s emphatic rejection of the competitive market economy, written in answer to Thomas Hodgskin’s Labour Defended (1825). One of the first social critics to emphasize that the trade cycle was an inevitable malady of capitalism, Thompson asserted that, as long as the existing system remained, “crisis will succeed to crisis at intervals more or less distant”. William Thompson (1785–1833), a substantial landowner and a theorist of some distinction who was strongly influenced by Owen and Bentham, was considered by many to be the “chief champion” of the co-operative cause. Labor Rewarded “criticized the importance given by Hodgskin to ‘mental labourers, literati, men of science’ and other ‘non-productive’ labourers, whom the latter had classified as ‘productive’ on the ground that they earned their upkeep . . . Thompson’s analysis of the economic system did not, however, differ radically from that of Hodgskin, who was in fact largely following the path he had himself laid down. Both writers attacked the exaction of landlords and capitalists, but while [Thompson] proposed the replacement of capitalism by Co-operative Communism, Hodgskin sought to render the existing system completely competitive in the hope that this would enable the labourer to receive the full fruit of his toil. Thompson applauded this goal, but thought the means totally unrealistic” (Pankhurst).
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