THE MEASURE OF COMPARATIVE PRODUCTIVENESS 307 
obtaining a workman’s character from his superior and 
will at the same time remove the ground for mutual 
suspicion and distrust which exists between the worker and 
his employers. 
Granting that relative productiveness is the one most 
important factor about an employee, how can this factor 
be accurately measured? And how can the method of 
measuring it be standardized so as to permit comparing 
one worker with another? Frankly, there are many 
human pursuits in which productiveness can not and 
probably never will be mathematically measured. This 
will be taken up more fully in the following chapter. But 
there is a vast and ever growing field of industry in which 
such a measurement is possible. It has been made possible 
by the tremendous development of the division of labor 
and by the application of the principle of piece-work 
earnings. These are conditions which already exist and 
which provide the broad basis upon which the productive 
ness of individuals can be measured and compared. The 
actual application of this measure, however, must be 
guided by certain practical principles. 
In the first place, the productiveness of one man can be 
compared with that of another if both men are engaged in 
the same kind of work, but not otherwise. For example, 
if Jones assembles eight motors a day and Brown repairs 
eleven, it would be obviously unfair to say that Brown is 
more productive than Jones. If both men are doing the 
same work and Jones assembles eight motors while Brown 
assembles six, then Jones may be called the more produc 
tive in that kind of work. However, it would be false to 
infer that because Jones is the more productive of the 
two men in assembling, that he would be the more pro 
ductive in repairing. Such an inference would violate