Charles Eugène Bedaux (10 October 1886 – 18 February 1944) was a French-American millionaire who made his fortune developing and implementing the work measurement aspect of scientific management, notably the Bedaux System. Bedaux was friends with British royalty and Nazis alike, and was a management consultant, big game hunter and explorer. In 1934, he was the fifth wealthiest man in the United States.
Early years Charles Bedaux was born in the Charenton-le-Pont commune, suburb of Paris, France.Steven Kreis, 'Charles E. Bedaux' in American National Biography online He was one of five children. His father worked for the French railroad system, and though his two brothers Daniel and Gaston became engineers, Charles became a school dropout. Charles worked a series of menial jobs before befriending Henri Ledoux, a successful pimp from the infamous Pigalle district. The mysterious Ledoux apparently taught Bedaux lessons on proper dress, confidence and street-fighting, but was murdered in 1906.Gaston Bedaux, La Vie Ardente de Charles Bedaux (1959)
On 14 February 1906, Charles moved to the United States, where in 1917 he became a United States citizen. In 1908, Bedaux married Blanche de Kressier Allen, and in 1909, their son, Charles Emile Bedaux (1909–1993) was born. He would later claim in interviews to have worked as a restaurant bottle-washer, a sandhog,'Duke's Guide Here had Vivid Rise; Industrialist Began as Laborer' New York Times, 24 October 1937. New York Times online archive and at the New Jersey Worsted Mills in Hoboken.
In 1908, he started working for Mallinckrodt Chemical in St. Louis, then in 1912, for McKesson & Robbins in New York City. He then worked as an interpreter for A.M. Morrini, an Italian industrial engineering firm studying efficiency measurements. Bedaux accompanied Morrini to Europe, where Bedaux started working for Louis Duez's consulting company in 1913.
In August 1914, Bedaux enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, but was soon discharged for medical reasons. Bedaux returned to the US, settling his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 1917, Bedaux divorced Blanche, and married Fern Lombard on 2 July.
Bedaux B
Bedaux was one of the leading contributors in the field of work measurement or labor measurement, one aspect of the scientific management movement. In this, he was strongly influenced by F. W. Taylor's book Shop Management,See F. W. Taylor, Shop Management (Harper & Brothers, 1911). Online at Archive.org particularly Taylor's time-study practices, and Charles E. Knoeppel's writings on industrial layout and routing.Edward Francis Leopold Brech, Productivity in Perspective, 1914–1974 (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002).Michael R. Weatherburn, Scientific Management at Work: the Bedaux System, Management Consulting, and Worker Efficiency in British Industry, 1914–48 (Imperial College PhD thesis, 2014). Building on their work, he introduced the concept of rating assessment, which led to improvements in the comparability of employee and departmental efficiency. He named this the "Bedaux System of Human Power Measurement".
The distinguishing feature of the Bedaux System was its use of the Bedaux Unit or B, a universal measure for all manual work.Craig R. Littler, Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies: a Comparative Study of the Transformation of Work Organization in Britain, Japan and the USA (London: Heinemann, 1982) entry on Google Books The "B" was defined as fractions of a minute allocated to work or rest. Productivity goals were set for so many B's per hour, and bonuses were paid for exceeding that goal. This method of standardization replaced piece work payment, increasing productivity and reducing costs. Bedaux also mimicked Frank Gilbreth by introducing a motion study Kodascope package which he propagated with an early Bedaux client, Kodak.Steven Kreis, The Diffusion of an Idea: A History of Scientific Management in Britain, 1890–1945 (PhD thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1990) entry on WorldCat
Management consultancy Bedaux became associated with one of Taylor's circles, Harrington Emerson, whose management consultancy firm, The Emerson Institute,William F. Muhs, 'The Emerson Engineers: A Look at One of the First Management Consulting Firms in the U.S' Academy of Management Proceedings Vol. 1986, No. 1 (1986). Academy of Management Proceedings James Quigel, 'The Business of Selling Efficiency: Harrington Emerson and the Emerson Efficiency Engineers, 1900–1930 (PhD thesis, Pennsylvania State University, 1992). entry on WorldCat Bedaux emulated in engineering and other sectors of modern industrial economies.Steven Kreis, 'The Diffusion of Scientific Management: the Bedaux Company in America and Britain, 1926–1945' in A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management Since Taylor (1992) Kenneth Hopper and William Hopper, The Puritan Gift: Reclaiming the American Dream Amidst Global Financial Chaos (I B Tauris, 2009) IB Tauris link
In 1916 he established a consulting firm in Grand Rapids, and in 1918 moved his headquarters to Cleveland. In 1924, the Bedaux "B System" was adopted by Eastman Kodak at its facilities in the U.K., and in 1926, Charles E. Bedaux Ltd. was established in London. Offices in Italy and Germany followed in 1927, and in France in 1929. In 1932, Bedaux International was founded in Amsterdam. By 1934, the Bedaux System was being used in 21 countries. Early U.S. clients were in the furniture assembly and rubber industries of Grand Rapids, Michigan. His firm's slogan was Bedaux Measures Labor and its logo incorporated an egg timer motif.
The Bedaux consultancy firm was one of the first of its kind, and within a decade its success led to the creation of a series of consultancy firms throughout the United States, Europe, and eventually Africa,Jon Lewis, Industrialisation and Trade Union Organisation in South Africa, 1924–55: the Rise and Fall of the South African Trades and Labour Council (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) India,Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, 'Workers' Resistance and the Rationalization of Work in Bombay Between the Wars' in Douglas E. Haynes and Gyan Prakash (eds), Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in India (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1992)Anthony Cox, Empire, Industry and Class: The Imperial Nexus of Jute, 1840–1940 (London: Routledge, 2013). Australia, and the Orient administered by the parent company, Bedaux Internationale.
Major Bedaux clients included DuPont,John C. Rumm, 'Scientific Management and Industrial Engineering at Du Pont' in A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management Since Taylor (1992). Imperial Chemical Industries, Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP),Matthias Kipping, 'Consultancy and Conflicts: Bedaux at Lukens Steel and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company' Entreprises et Histoire Vol. 25 (2000), pp.9–25. Fiat,Stefano Musso, 'Production Methods and Industrial Relations at Fiat (1930– 90)' in Haruhito Shiomi and Kazuo Wada (eds.), Fordism Transformed: The Development of Production Methods in the Automobile Industry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Google Books online and Campbell's.Daniel Sidorick, Condensed Capitalism Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century (2009)
Labor resistance The Bedaux system was introduced at Campbell's in 1927, where B standards were 'the cause of the majority of the shop floor battles between management and labor' for years. In 1929, the Taylor Society supported Southern textile workers in their strike against the Bedaux System, which textile workers believed was 'even worse than the old "Taylor Stop-Watch System"'.Milton Nadworny, Scientific Management and the Unions: 1900– 1932. A Historical Analysis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955) There were also a long series of labor disputes regarding the Bedaux system within the U.S. lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest region from 1931 to 1935 involving the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen (4L)Jeremy Egolf, 'Labor Control in Crisis: the 4L and the Bedaux System in the U.S. Northwest Lumber Industry, 1931–1935' (University of British Columbia MA thesis, 1980)
Bedaux Britain had several labor issues: in 1929, there was a strike over the Bedaux System at the Rover plant in Coventry.Laura Lee Downs, 'Industrial Decline, Rationalization and Equal Pay: The Bedaux Strike at Rover Automobile Company' Social History Vol. 15, No. 1 (1990) In winter 1931–2, women workers struck over the introduction of the Bedaux System at Wolsey in Leicester.''The Bedaux strike': Oral history study from BBCSelina Todd, The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class (London: John Murray, 2014) Additionally, in 1934 the introduction of the Bedaux System at Richard Johnson and Nephew in Manchester precipitated a strike which lasted for months.Mick Jenkins, 'Time and Motion Strike: Manchester 1934-7' Our History Vol. 60 (Autumn 1974) In this case, the wiredrawers' union took their employers to court over the Bedaux System but eventually lost their case.
One of Bedaux's principal operations in Italy was at the iconic Fiat plant in Turin, whose founder Giovanni Agnelli was also director of the Società Italiana Bedaux. These management interventions were later publicized by the founder of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci, whose Prison Notebooks analyzed the ramifications of Taylorism at the plant. The Bedaux System also met with resistance at the Pertusola mines in Sardinia.Maria Stella Rollandi, ʻIl sistema Bedaux nelle miniere sarde della "Pertusola" (1927–1935)' Studi Storici, No. 26, Vol. 1, (1985), pp. 69–106.http://www.minesofsardinia.com/StoriaMiniereIng.php?IdS=12&IdCSM=9&PHPSESSID=
Bedaux Britain Ltd. Of Bedaux's business empire, Bedaux Britain was particularly lucrative. Here, the Bedaux Unit was so successful that it was copied by industrial firms such as Rowntree's of York (a corporate member of the Taylor Society), Mander Brothers of Wolverhampton, and influential consultancies including Urwick, Orr & Partners.
Bedaux Britain formed the basis for all four of the 'Big Four' European consultancies in the postwar period: Associated Industrial Consultants (AIC), Urwick, Orr & Partners (UOP), Production-Engineering (P-E) and PA Consulting (PA).Patricia Tisdall, Agents of Change: The Development and Practice of Management Consultancy (London: Heinemann, 1982).Matthias Kipping, 'Consultancies, Institutions and the Diffusion of Taylorism in Britain, Germany and France, 1920s to 1950s', Business History (1997) PDF from Taylor & Francis onlineMichael Ferguson, The Rise of Management Consulting in Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002)
In focusing on factory floor and office efficiency issues, the 'Big Four' Bedauxist consultancies were successful across Western Europe until the 1960s, when they were largely overtaken by U.S. consultancies such as McKinsey & Company, whose efforts were in higher-value activities such as strategy and restructuring.'Christopher D. McKenna, The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: CUP, 2010). Cambridge University Press
Bedaux Canadian Sub-Arctic Expedition The Bedaux Canadian Sub-Arctic Expedition was the grand title Bedaux gave to the expedition he organized to cross the wilderness of northern British Columbia, Canada in 1934. Mostly, the expedition was a publicity stunt, but it was also undertaken to test the new Citroën half-track cars that were being developed by Bedaux's friend André Citroën.