Many Progressives such as Louis Brandeis hoped to make American governments better able to serve the people's needs by making governmental operations and services more efficient and rational. Rather than making legal arguments against 10-hour workdays for women, he used "scientific principles" and data produced by social scientists documenting the high costs of long working hours for both individuals and society.
The Progressives' quest for efficiency was sometimes at odds with their quest for democracy. Taking power out of the hands of elected officials, and placing it in the hands of professional administrators reduced the voice of the politicians, and in turn reduced the voice of the people. Centralized decision-making by trained experts and reduced power for local wards made government less corrupt but more distant and isolated from the people it served. Progressives who emphasized the need for efficiency typically argued that trained independent experts could make better decisions than local politicians. Thus, Walter Lippmann in his influential Drift and Mastery (1914), which stressed the "scientific spirit" the "discipline of democracy," called for a strong central government guided by experts rather than by public opinion.
Examples
One example of Progressive reform was the rise of the city-manager system, in which paid, professional engineers ran the day-to-day affairs of city governments under guidelines established by elected city councils. Many cities created municipal "reference bureaus," which did expert surveys of government departments looking for waste and inefficiency. After in-depth surveys, local and even state governments were reorganized to reduce the number of officials and to eliminate overlapping areas of authority among departments. City governments were reorganized to reduce the power of local ward bosses, and to increase the powers of the city council. Governments at every level began developing budgets to help them plan their expenditures (rather than spending money haphazardly as needs arose and revenue became available). Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois showed a, "passion for efficiency" as he streamlined state government.
This system is part of the council-manager style of government. Under the council–manager form of government for municipalities, the elected governing body (commonly called a "city council," "city commission," "board of aldermen," or "board of selectmen") is responsible for the legislative function of the municipality such as establishing policy, passing local ordinances, determining voting appropriations, and developing an overall vision. County and other types of local government follow the same pattern, with governing body members receiving a title that matches the title of the body.
The legislative body, which is voted into office by public elections, appoints a professional manager to oversee the administrative operations, implement its policies, and advise it. The position of “mayor” present in this type of legislative body is a largely ceremonial title, and may be selected by the council from among its members or elected as an at-large council member with no executive functions.
Corruption also represented a source of waste and inefficiency in government. William U'Ren in Oregon and Robert M. La Follette in Wisconsin, as well as others, worked to clean up state and local governments by passing laws to weaken the power of machine politicians and political bosses. The Oregon System, which included a "Corrupt Practices Act," a public referendum, and a state-funded voter's pamphlet among other reforms, was exported to other states in the Northwest and Midwest. Its high point was in 1912, after which they detoured into a disastrous third party status.
Influences
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. Scientific management, also called "Taylorism," was a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management. Its development began with Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and 1890s within the manufacturing industries. Its peak of influence occurred in the 1910s; by the 1920s, it was still influential but had begun an era of competition and syncretism with opposing or complementary ideas.
Another system of efficiency during the Progressive Era was Fordism, "the eponymous manufacturing system designed to spew out standardized, low-cost goods and afford its workers decent enough wages to buy them." It has also been described as, "a model of economic expansion and technological progress based on mass production: the manufacture of standardized products in huge volumes using special purpose machinery and unskilled labor." Although Fordism was a method used to improve productivity in the automotive industry, the principle could be applied to any kind of manufacturing process. Henry Ford and his senior managers did not use the word "Fordism" themselves to describe their motivations or worldview; however, many contemporaries framed their worldview as an "ism" and applied that name to it. Fordism's major success stemmed from the following three principles:
- The standardization of the product (nothing is handmade: everything is made through machines and molds by unskilled workers)
- The employment of assembly lines, which use special-purpose tools and/or equipment to allow unskilled workers to contribute to the finished product
- The payment of higher "living" wages to workers, so they can afford to purchase the products they make
These principles, coupled with a technological revolution during Henry Ford's time, allowed for this form of labor to flourish. It is true that his assembly line was revolutionary, but it was in no way original. His most original contribution to the modern world was breaking down complex tasks into simpler ones with the help of specialized tools. Simpler tasks created interchangeable parts that could be used the same way every time. This allowed for flexibility and created a very adaptable assembly line that could change its constituent components to meet the needs of the product being assembled.
Assembly line
A Ford assembly line in 1913.