His mother's ancestor, Edward Winslow, was one of the fifteen original Mayflower Pilgrims who brought servants or children, and one of eight who had the honorable distinction of Mister.

Educated early by his mother, Taylor studied for two years in France and Germany and traveled Europe for 18 months.

However, due allegedly to rapidly deteriorating eyesight caused by night study, Taylor chose quite a different path.

Taylor's fast promotions reflected both his talent and his family's relationship with Edward Clark, part owner of Midvale Steel.

[7] While Taylor worked at Midvale, he and Clarence Clark won the first tennis doubles tournament in the 1881 US National Championships, the precursor of the US Open.

[1] Taylor became a student of Stevens Institute of Technology, studying via correspondence[8] and obtaining a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1883.

Now a wealthy man, Taylor focused the remainder of his career promoting his management and machining methods through lecturing, writing, and consulting.

In 1910, owing to the Eastern Rate Case, Frederick Winslow Taylor and his Scientific Management methodologies became famous worldwide.

[bolding added] -- Peter Drucker, The Rise of the Knowledge Society Wilson Quarterly (Spring 1993) p.63-65[19] Taylor's crime, in the eyes of the unions, was his assertion that there is no "skilled work."

[bolding added] -- Peter Drucker, The Rise of the Knowledge Society Wilson Quarterly (Spring 1993) p.61-62[20] Taylor was a mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency.

In Peter Drucker's description, Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study.

On Taylor's 'scientific management' rests, above all, the tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do.

Brandeis argued that railroads, when governed according to Taylor's principles, did not need to raise rates to increase wages.

One of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type.

To underscore this idea, Taylor fashioned the myth that 'there has never been a strike of men working under scientific management', trying to give it credibility by constant repetition.

In similar fashion he incessantly linked his proposals to shorter hours of work, without bothering to produce evidence of "Taylorized" firms that reduced working hours, and he revised his famous tale of Schmidt carrying pig iron at Bethlehem Steel at least three times, obscuring some aspects of his study and stressing others, so that each successive version made Schmidt's exertions more impressive, more voluntary and more rewarding to him than the last.

Unlike [Harrington] Emerson, Taylor was not a charlatan, but his ideological message required the suppression of all evidence of worker's dissent, of coercion, or of any human motives or aspirations other than those his vision of progress could encompass.

One 2009 study supports assertions Taylor made about the quite substantial increase in productivity, for even the most basic task of picking up, carrying and dropping pigs of iron.

[32][33] In France, Le Chatelier translated Taylor's work and introduced scientific management throughout government owned plants during World War I.

This influenced the French theorist Henri Fayol, whose 1916 Administration Industrielle et Générale emphasized organizational structure in management.

In the classic General and Industrial Management, Fayol wrote that "Taylor's approach differs from the one we have outlined in that he examines the firm from the 'bottom up.'

He starts with the most elemental units of activity – the workers' actions – then studies the effects of their actions on productivity, devises new methods for making them more efficient, and applies what he learns at lower levels to the hierarchy ... "[35] He suggests that Taylor has staff analysts and advisors working with individuals at lower levels of the organization to identify the ways to improve efficiency.

[40] The Comité national de l'organisation française (CNOF) was founded in 1925 by a group of journalists and consulting engineers who saw Taylorism as a way to expand their client base.

[41] Older historical accounts used to suggest that British industry had less interest in Taylor's teachings than in similarly sized countries.

When Joseph Stalin took power in the 1920s, he championed the theory of "Socialism in one country" which denied that the Soviet economy needed foreign help to develop, and open advocates of Western management techniques fell into disfavor.

[49]"The easy availability of replacement labor, which allowed Taylor to choose only 'first-class men,' was an important condition for his system's success.

Because of the continuing labor shortage, managers are happy to pay needed workers more than the norm, either by issuing false job orders, assigning them to higher skill grades than they deserve on merit criteria, giving them 'loose' piece rates, or making what is supposed to be 'incentive' pay, premia for good work, effectively part of the normal wage.

As Mary McAuley has suggested under these circumstances piece rates are not an incentive wage, but a way of justifying giving workers whatever they 'should' be getting, no matter what their pay is supposed to be according to the official norms.

[52] With the prevalence of US branch plants in Canada and close economic and cultural ties between the two countries, the sharing of business practices, including Taylorism, has been common.

Business, we know, is now so complex and difficult, the survival of firms so hazardous in an environment increasingly unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilization of every ounce of intelligence.