THE MEASURE OF COMPARATIVE PRODUCTIVENESS 309 
of work. As soon as they are paid a bonus or piece-work 
rate, individual differences begin to increase and it be 
comes possible to compare employees on the basis of 
production. There are numerous conditions which arise 
to defeat the purposes of the piece-work rate and to hinder 
the free development of the individual. These conditions 
are known to most managers and we may therefore include 
them by suggestion in the following law: 
Two or more employees can be compared on the basis of 
productiveness only when they are allowed to produce 
under conditions which will encourage them to develop to 
their fullest capacity. 
It may be objected that the three conditions outlined 
here as essential to a comparison of individuals are too 
idealistic, too theoretical, too far in the future for imme 
diate application. As a matter of fact, they have already 
been realized. They are not theories but actualities. The 
great industrial development of the age has been the 
division and standardization of productive processes. All 
operations are being broken down into their elements, and 
instead of one man performing a hundred different opera 
tions on a single product, as in time past, we now have one 
hundred men performing exactly the same operation on a 
single part of the product. In this phenomenon, we have 
the fulfillment of the conditions indicated in the first two 
laws. The third condition is fulfilled in the generally 
accepted piece-work principle. These three conditions, 
namely, the standardization of operations, tools, and 
rates—already carried out to an enormous extent—are 
likely to be realized still more extensively. There is no 
prophesying what their scope will be in the coming in 
dustrial period.