Cheaper by the Dozen

helper."
    "I'll do my best to find a good bricklayer to help," Dad grinned.
    If Grandma thought Dad was going to be a good helper, his new foreman thought he was the worst he had encountered in forty years, man and boy, of bricklaying.
    During Dad's first week at work he made so many suggestions about how bride could be laid faster and better that the foreman threatened repeatedly to fire him.
    "You're the one who came here to learn," the foreman hollered at him. "For Christ's sake don't try to learn us."
    Subtle innuendoes like that never worried Dad. Besides, he already knew that motion study was his element; and he had discovered something that apparently had never attracted the attention of industry before. He tried to explain it to the foreman.
    "Did you ever notice that no two men use exactly the same way of laying bricks?" he asked. "That's important, and do you know why?"
    "I know that if you open your mouth about bricklaying again, I'll lay a brick in it."
    "It's important because if one bricklayer is doing the job the right way, then all the others are doing the job the wrong way. Now if I had your job, I'd find who's laying brick the right way, and make all the others copy him."
    "If you had my job," shouted the livid-faced foreman, "the first thing you'd do is fire the red-headed unprintable son of a ruptured deleted who tried to get your job. And that's what I think you're trying to do."
    He picked up a brick and waved it menacingly.
    "I may not be smart enough to know who my best brick-layer is, but I know who my worst hod-carrier is. I'm warning you, stop bothering me or this brick goes in your mouth— edgewise."
    Within a year, Dad designed a scaffold that made him the fastest bricklayer on the job. The principle of the scaffold was that loose bricks and mortar always were at the level of the top of the wall being built. The other bricklayers had to lean over to get their materials. Dad didn't.
    "You ain't smart," the foreman scoffed. "You're just too Goddamned lazy to squat."
    But the foreman had identical scaffolds built for all the men on the job, and even suggested that Dad send the original to the Mechanics Institute, where it won a prize. Later, on the foreman's recommendation, Dad was made foreman of a crew of his own. He achieved such astonishing speed records that he was promoted to superintendent, and then went into the contracting business for himself, building bridges, canals, industrial towns, and factories. Sometimes, after the contract work was finished, he was asked to remain on the job to install his motion study methods within the factory itself.
    By the time he was twenty-seven, he had offices in New York, Boston, and London. He had a yacht, smoked cigars, and had a reputation as a snappy dresser.

    Mother came from a well-to-do family in Oakland, California. She had met Dad in Boston while she was en route to Europe on one of those well-chaperoned tours for fashionable young ladies of the 'nineties.
    Mother was a Phi Beta Kappa and a psychology graduate of the University of California. In those days women who were scholars were viewed with some suspicion. When Mother and Dad were married, the Oakland paper said:
    "Although a graduate of the University of California, the bride is nonetheless an extremely attractive young woman."
    Indeed she was.
    So it was Mother the psychologist and Dad the motion study man and general contractor, who decided to look into the new field of the psychology of management, and the old field of psychologically managing a houseful of children. They believed that what would work in the home would work in the factory, and what would work in the factory would work in the home.
    Dad put the theory to a test shortly after we moved to Montclair. The house was too big for Tom Grieves, the handyman, and Mrs. Cunningham, the cook, to keep in order. Dad decided we were going to have to help them, and he wanted us to offer the help of our own accord. He had found that the best way to get cooperation out of employees in a factory was to set up a joint employer-employee board, which would make work assignments on a basis of personal choice and aptitude. He and Mother set up a Family Council, patterned after an employer-employee board. The council met every Sunday afternoon, immediately after dinner.
    At the first session, Dad got to his feet formally, poured a glass of ice water, and began a speech.
    "You will notice," he said, "that I am installed here as your