Management musings from 1880: Chordal's Letters

"System is not work, but is simply a law of action for reducing work.  It does not require special executors, but permits few to accomplish much.  It loads no man with labor, but lightens the labor of each by rigidly defining it.  Hard work begins when system relaxes.  System never, under any circumstances, interferes with variations in human action, but includes them.  Elasticity is not a quality of the system.  Comprehensiveness is.  In many shops half the things are everybody's business and never done; the others are nobody's business and half done.

Law without execution is no law, and in the shop we find empty law adds to illegal work."

Extracts from Chordal's letters, which appeared in The American Machinist, 1880