Factory systems changed drastically around the turn of the 19th to 20th century in the Western countries. In the United States many researchers have analyzed the rise of the new factory system, but in Europe on the contrary there are many issues still unsolved. Not a few researchers still believe that the German factory system at that time was far behind that of America. Actually, however, many contemporary scientists and engineers devoted themselves to solving problems related to machinery, industrial psychology, management and so on. In this paper the historical change of the classic factory system to the new one will be examined in the German machine building industry.
The first section deals with the new factory system from the view points of architecture, machinery and administration focusing on the great rolls of engineers. Through their activities traditional workshop management was substituted by a kind of “scientific management”. The second section describes the reduction tendency of working hours from the middle of the 19th century to WW1 and then points out the importance of new time management through introducing the American time-recorder. The third section analyzes the relations between the mass production system and the reduction of working hours by using two survey reports of the German metal workers union in 1911 and 1912. Results of these surveys suggest that there were intimate relations between the two.
Factory science was well developed in Germany at that time, and it is reasonable enough to consider those engineers who led efforts before WW1 as forerunners of the German rationalization movement of the 1920s.

View full abstract

This paper dealt with a history about the occurrence and the fixation of the blanket recruitment that was peculiar to big busiess in Japan.
The employment practices in Mitsui Bussan Kaisha have a long history and it includes most kinds of the recruit methods that had appeared in the big business in modern Japan. This paper intends to make clear main hu-man resources in the early stages of foundation depended not on college graduates but on the staffs who were developed through the apprenticeship. This way to get human resources faced with unexpected problems soon. The business extension to the foreign countries after Chino-Japanese war caused the need of another sorts of human resources. Since then, the training-up of talent in Mitsui Bussan Kaisha was mainly developed through teaching the Chinese word and Chinese business customs study in each China branch. However, within 10 years this system lost its utilities. With the rapid progress of the high and middle educational organizations, the graduates substituted for it. In the first World War, Mitsui Bussan Kaisha set up the personnel department and could meet the demand for all kinds of talent only by employing these graduates. In this case, we must pay attention to following two points. First, the radical change of demand structure for i.e. remarkable decrease of the demand from the government offices was took place in the labor market of the new graduate persons at this time. Second, the supply structure also experienced the change, for the high educational organizations started making reasonable modifications to get the jobs for their own graduates. In it, the most remarkable modification can be found in the academic year, which was changed into the April to March Form from the September to July Form prevailing in Europe and US at present. By corresponding the academic year to the recruiting schedule of the government office, the private business could easily look forward to getting the talent from new graduate's labor market. In this way the junction between the business recruit calendar and academic year was accomplished and the blanket recruitment was fixed.

View full abstract