Otherwise stated, the modern idea of efficiency involves saving of time, energy, and money, in production and distribution. It means closer connection between departments, hence more unity in the system as a whole. It calls for experts at every important point, and has room for expert service in every department. The system has not been introduced without opposition, and long experimentation, as Mr. Taylor and others have shown in recent periodical literature. But such is the history of every idea of real value.

The objection to such a system is that it seems to be one more scheme for the benefit of the capitalist. Under its use the manual labourer would appear to be an instrument whose energies are to be employed to the full while they last. To drive oneself to accomplish as much as possible in a given length of time, with a time-schedule ever before the eye, would apparently be to draw upon one's reserves to the limit, presently to be as useless as the locomotive that once drew the fastest express but now is not even serviceable on the leisurely schedule of the milk-train. These objections are serious enough, and the problem of the right use of our energies is one that must be considered in a separate chapter, but everything depends upon one's understanding of the system and the extent to which the principle is carried.

The term "efficiency" is in the largest sense a