d in books by their dozen children, such as Cheaper By the Dozen. In 1883, Taylor earned a degree by night study from Stevens Institute of Technology, an institution which today archives his papers and has announced plans to put them online soon. Taylor became general manager of Manufacturing Investment Company in 1890, and he was then made a consulting engineer to management.
Taylor wrote about his ideas and was influential as a result. However, though his ideas were clearly enunciated in his writings, they were also widely misinterpreted as employers did such things as use time and motion studies simply to extract more work from employees at less pay. Unions condemned such practices and noted the lack of voice in they had in their work, blaming what they called "Taylorism" for this. Quality and productivity declined when Taylor's principles were simplistically implemented in this fashion. His influence, though, has been evident in the discipline. Modern management theorists such as Edward Deming often credit Taylor with creating the principles upon which they act to this day. There are others, though, such as Juran, who continue to denigrate Taylor's work. For one thing, modern theorists generally place more emphasis on worker input and teamwork than was usual in much of Taylor's time. A more careful reading of Taylor's work, though, shows that he placed the worker's interest as high as the employer's in his studies and that he recognized the importance of such things as the suggestion box in a machine shop to increase worker participation ("Frederick W. Taylor" eldred.ne.mediaone.net).
The beginnings of Taylor's ideas can be found in stories he tells in his writings about his period at Exeter. He cites George A. Wentworth, a professor of mathematics, and Taylor wondered at the time how Wentworth could give a lesson that always took Taylor two hours to get. He finally discovered how Wentworth did it: "Mr. Wentwort...