Industrial Leadership: Addresses Delivered in the Page Lecture Series, 1915, Before the Senior Class of the Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University.

GANTT, H.L. [Henry Laurence].

$2,250.00

Item Number: 142852

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916.

First edition of Gantt’s classic work on the principles of industrial leadership and vocational training, one of 1500 copies printed. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper in the year of publication, “Mr. J. P. Frey compliments of HL Gantt Feb 8/16.” The recipient, John Philip Frey was a labor activist and president of the American Federation of Labor’s Metal Trades Department during a crucial period in American labor history. In 1918, Frey became chairman of the National Bureau of Economic Research, helping to raise money and incorporate the organization in 1920. He remained chairman of the board of directors until 1927. During the presidency of AFL president William Green, Frey was one of the most influential men in the American labor movement. Frey, long with Matthew Woll, president of the International Photo-Engravers Union of North America, worked behind the scenes of the AFL executive council to craft AFL policies and positions, heavily influencing the passive Green. Green’s rabid anti-Communism, his apolitical views, his refusal to consider governmental action as relief for working people’s problems, and unwavering support for craft unionism all came from Frey and Woll. In near fine condition with Frey’s library stamp to the front free endpaper.

American mechanical engineer and management consultant Henry Gantt remains best known for his work in the development of scientific management, his most popular legacy to the field being the Gantt Chart. Accepted as a commonplace project management tool today, the Gantt Chart was an innovation of worldwide importance in the 1920s. Gantt charts were employed on major infrastructure projects including the Hoover Dam and Interstate highway system and continue to be an important tool in project management and program management. In his later career as an industrial consultant and following the invention of the Gantt chart, he designed the 'task and bonus' system of wage payment and additional measurement methods worker efficiency and productivity.