ABSTRACT
By the twentieth century the scale of industrial production and the level of technological innovation that had been achieved within the United States had spawned a new movement for organizing labor: scientific management. A synthesis in the drive to discipline labor and control the labor process, scientific management, or the attempt to apply the methods of science to the control of labor, was brought to the canal works in the ideological orientation of the military men and engineers who directed them. Because it was a precarious, arduous, and unpredictable endeavor, building the canal could not be rationalized as easily as, say, plant manufacture of finished goods. Therefore, it was necessary for the commission to concentrate on those aspects of building that could be planned for: use of machine technology where possible, care in selection of the work force, cost-cutting, and minimization of labor organization and strikes.
