ドイツにおける「新工場制度」の成立と労働時間短縮

Abstract

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.