Gilbreth, Lillian Moller (1878–1972)

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Gilbreth, Lillian Moller (1878–1972)

American engineer, industrial psychologist, household efficiency expert, pioneer in management theory, inventor of the field of scientific management, and mother of 12 children. Born Lillian Evelyn Moller on May 24, 1878, in Oakland, California; died of a stroke in Scottsdale, Arizona, on January 2, 1972; oldest daughter of nine children of William Moller (a partner in a successful retail hardware business) and Annie (Delger) Moller (daughter of a wealthy Oakland real-estate developer); University of California at Berkeley, B.A. in literature, 1900; University of California at Berkeley, M.A. in English, 1902; Brown University, Ph.D. in psychology, 1915; earned 13 additional master's and doctoral degrees in science, engineering, letters, and psychology at Rutgers, Brown, Michigan, Syracuse, and Temple, 1928–52; married Frank Bunker Gilbreth, on October 19, 1904 (died 1924); children (all have middle names of Bunker or Moller): Anne Gilbreth Barney (who married Robert E. Barney); Mary Elizabeth (died at a young age); Ernestine Gilbreth Carey (who married Charles E. Carey); Martha Gilbreth Tallman (who married Richard E. Tallman); Frank Gilbreth, Jr.; William Gilbreth; Lillian Gilbreth Johnson (who married Donald D. Johnson); Frederick Gilbreth; Daniel Gilbreth; John (known as Jack) Gilbreth; Robert Gilbreth; Jane Gilbreth Heppes (who married G. Paul Heppes, Jr.).

Was the first to introduce the concept of the psychology of scientific management (1911); with her husband, established the consulting engineering firm, Gilbreth, Inc., in Providence, Rhode Island, and later in Montclair, New Jersey, where a laboratory and school of scientific management for managers, educators, and other professionals was located in their home (1910–20); named honorary member of Society of Industrial Engineers (women were not admitted at that time); following husband's death (1924), headed Gilbreth, Inc., and became lecturer at Purdue University, then full professor of management in School of Mechanical Engineering (1935–48), the first woman in that position; served as a member of the President's Emergency Committee for Unemployment Relief (1930); honored by American Women as one of ten outstanding women of the year (1936); replaced Amelia Earhart as consultant at Purdue on careers for women (1939); made an honorary life member of the Engineering Woman's Club (1940); was head of the Department of Personnel Relations at Newark School of Engineering (1941–43); served as educational advisor to the Office of War Information during World War II and member of the Civil Defense AdvisoryCommission (1951); awarded Gantt Medal by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1944); given the American Women's Association Award for Eminent Achievement (1948); appointed visiting professor of management at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (1955); was the first woman to receive the Hoover Medal for distinguished public service by an engineer; honored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers with the Gilbreth Medal, awarded during the Gilbreth Centennial marking the 100th anniversary of Frank Gilbreth's birth (1968). Honorary degrees awarded throughout her life from such institutions as the University of California, Smith College, Brown University, and Rutgers; she was also an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Selected writings:

The Psychology of Management (1914); books co-authored with her husband include Motion Study, A Primer of Scientific Management (1912), Motion Models (1915), Fatigue Study (1916), Applied Motion Study (1917), and Motion Study for the Handicapped (1920); other writings include The Quest for the One Best Way: A Sketch of the Life of Frank Bunker Gilbreth (1926), The Home-Maker and Her Job (1927), Living with Our Children (1928), (with Edna Yost) Normal Lives for the Disabled (1944), Management in the Home (1954); contributed chapter on "Women in Industry" to American Women: The Changing Image (1962), and many articles in popular magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens and Good Housekeeping.

Lillian Moller Gilbreth's life was remarkable. Following her marriage, a shy Lillian was encouraged by her husband Frank to work with him as a partner in their innovative consulting business that sought to change attitudes towards workers and increase their productivity. By 1921, at her induction as an honorary member of the Society of Industrial Engineers, she was cited as "the first to recognize that management is a problem of psychology, and her book, The Psychology of Management, was the first to show this fact to both the managers and the psychologists." Seven years previous, the same ground-breaking book had been attributed to "L.M. Gilbreth," because the publisher feared using a woman's name on such subject matter. When Frank Gilbreth died in 1924, Lillian stepped out of her socially defined role as "Frank's helpmate" and, for the next 50 years, became a pioneer in industrial engineering and management in her own right. She also raised their 12 children.

The first-born of nine siblings, Lillian Evelyn Moller was the daughter of William and Annie Delger Moller , a wealthy couple of German heritage who were leading citizens of Oakland, California. Because she was an extremely introverted child, Lillian was tutored at home until she was nine, then attended public schools. The Mollers encouraged her early interest in poetry and music; as a high school student, Lillian studied with composer John Metcalfe and wrote the lyrics for "Sunrise," one of his popular melodies of the 1890s. Annie Moller, who was prone to illness, entrusted the upbringing of her youngest daughter Josephine to Lillian, who soon learned to schedule her time carefully.

After overcoming her father's initial objections to women attending college, Lillian entered the University of California at Berkeley and excelled. "I had decided very young that since I couldn't be pretty, I had to be smart," wrote Gilbreth. By the time she graduated in 1900 with a major in English and a minor in psychology, she managed to set aside her diffidence long enough to become the first female commencement

speaker at the college. She then traveled to New York, having been advised to study at Columbia University for a master's in English with Professor Brander Matthews. Upon enrollment, however, she was told that he, and many other male professors, refused to accept female graduate students.

Before long, sick with pleurisy, she returned to California to pursue her master's degree, then a Ph.D. In 1903, Lillian interrupted her doctoral work to accompany friends on a trip to Europe. En route, the travelers stopped in Boston where their chaperon Minnie Bunker introduced Lillian to her cousin, an up-and-coming builder named Frank Bunker Gilbreth who had "a yacht, smoked cigars, and had a reputation as a snappy dresser," wrote Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey in their bestseller Cheaper by the Dozen. He also had a reputation for being fast. Frank was a speed builder who had earned international recognition for designing techniques to maximize productivity, and he had offices in New York, Boston, and London. Starting as an apprentice bricklayer, he had worked his way up in the construction business. As industries developed, businesses valued the speed and quality in building that Frank Gilbreth could deliver.

Age needn't determine what one is able to do. It's really a matter of marshaling your resources, using time sensibly and well.
—Lillian Moller Gilbreth

That November, when 25-year-old Lillian returned from Europe, 36-year-old Frank met the boat and followed her back to Oakland where he proposed, promising a partnership in career and family. When they married on October 19, 1904, the Oakland paper reported the event: "Although a graduate of the University of California, the bride is nonetheless an extremely attractive young woman." Biographer Edna Yost assessed the marriage as "primarily of the husband's inception and the wife's creative acquiescence." Frank had "almost no sense of personal limitations and living with him helped [Lillian] discover her own limitations were sometimes of self-imposed origins."

At the time, although there was no formalized science of management, Frank had already invented work systems and labor-saving devices, for what he termed time-and-motion study, that anticipated the pioneering work that he would pursue with Lillian Gilbreth. Immediately, Lillian began learning management techniques of business and technology. Frank took her along on construction jobs, where she climbed scaffolding and inspected brickwork. She even learned how to run a small steam engine. As a bricklayer, Frank had invented a rising scaffold that held the loose bricks and mortar level with the top of the emerging wall so workers did not waste time bending down for bricks. The Gilbreths would study a worker's motion, cut down on the amount of motion, and redesign machinery to cut down even further.

Lillian wanted a large family, but it was Frank who settled on the number 12. When Lillian cheerfully inquired as to how she could have so many children and a career, Frank replied that as a team they could do anything and do it successfully. "We teach management," he said, "so we shall have to practice it." Over the next 17 years, Lillian Gilbreth would give birth to six girls and six boys.

With their first four girls—Anne, Mary (who would die of diphtheria in 1912), Ernestine, and Martha—the Gilbreths moved to Plainfield, New Jersey, where Frank, Jr., was born. Although Frank Sr., continued to work in the construction business through 1911, Lillian saw her husband as an engineer, not a contractor. Frank encouraged Lillian to pursue psychology rather than English for her doctorate. When Brown University agreed to let her do original research for her thesis on the application of psychology to industry, the Gilbreths moved to Providence, Rhode Island, in 1912, to accommodate Lillian's studies.

In the summer of 1913, the Gilbreths launched the first of four summer schools of scientific management for professors of psychology, engineering, economics, and other allied fields. (The summer schools would continue at Pennsylvania State College.) By 1915, Lillian had earned her doctorate in Applied Management and given birth to her sixth child William. Young Lillian, Fred, Dan, and Jack would also be born in Providence.

As outlined in Cheaper by the Dozen, the Gilbreths managed their household with their own techniques. They instituted a Family Council which organized work and made decisions. For extra pocket money, children put in sealed bids for jobs that went to the lowest bidder. Purchasing committees were responsible for food, clothes, furniture, and athletic equipment, even making a deal with one store for wholesale rates; a gift buyer bought the presents for everyone's birthday. "When it came to apportioning work on an aptitude basis, the smaller girls were assigned to dust the legs and lower shelves of furniture; the older girls to dust table tops and upper shelves." The older boys would push the lawn-mowers, the younger ones would do the weeding.

A projects committee monitored work schedules, and a utilities committee fined those who wasted water and electricity. When one brother discovered that a dripping faucet had filled the bathtub, he roused the sleeping culprit and insisted that he take a second bath so as not to waste the water. The children soon learned that council meetings could be used for their own advantage and once moved to spend five dollars they had saved to buy a puppy. Though Frank was horrified, convinced that any animal that did not lay eggs was a luxury, Lillian seconded the motion.

Frank and Lillian founded and worked as partners in the consulting engineering firm of Gilbreth, Inc. Their first contract was with the New England Butt Company. Their goal: to increase productivity and eliminate workers' fatigue. Workers were more important than the tools they used, maintained the Gilbreths, and they should not be slaves to them. The benefits: more efficient workers, more profitable businesses, and industrial harmony. Using motion pictures, Frank illustrated how workers' motions could be simplified. Lillian pointed out that fatigue on the job was not only physical but psychological.

They demonstrated the "one best way" of doing work. "Multiplying the number of bricks laid in constructing one large building alone," writes Yost, "the waste motions of the workmen were tremendous. But multiplied by the number of bricks used everywhere year after year, the number of waste motions, costing human strength and human fatigue, became almost astronomical." Motion-study expert Frank could "always find the most efficient work plan that would use the fewest and easiest motions, but psychologist Lillian was quick to understand whether those so-called 'best' motions gave also the happiest results for the people who used them; for nothing could really be 'best' that did

not take into account the way those who used them felt about them." Their consulting practice became international, and American clients included Eastman Kodak and U.S. Rubber. From 1910 to 1920, the Gilbreths promoted their concepts through lectures, professional association meetings, and publications.

Frank Gilbreth could charge high fees for consulting jobs because clients saw quick results in profitability. The fees supported not only the family but the Gilbreths' research which became a family affair. While Lillian held the stopwatch, Frank buttoned his vest from the bottom up, rather than top down: bottom-up took three seconds while top down took seven. When the Remington Company hired Gilbreth, Inc., to help develop the world's fastest typist through motion-study techniques, the Gilbreths enlisted the children to learn to touch type in two weeks, using incentives such as a white typewriter with blind keys to spur them on. Frank color coordinated the children's fingers to the correct typewriter keys and documented their movements on film. On all these experiments, Lillian would take her turn with the children to see if the effects were salutary for the workers.

Though they had a business staff, Lillian was Frank's only partner. The true dimension of her contribution to modern industrial engineering, according to G. Kass-Simon and Patricia Farnes , has "not been understood or widely discussed by historians or by engineers." Her expertise focused on the integration of psychology and mental processes with time-and-motion study, but historians only refer to her contributions to domestic engineering, the design of kitchens and appliances. On consulting jobs, she would visit each plant at least once, preferably when the initial survey was to be conducted. She would observe all aspects of the operation and talk to the workers, seeking their advice for better efficiency, eliciting their level of satisfaction.

At the Dartmouth College Conference on Scientific Management, Lillian Gilbreth was the first to publicly introduce the psychology of management. Though workers were the most essential part of industry, she told the group, they were receiving scant attention. But, writes Yost, while Frank was alive, Lillian "would never lay claim to being anything more than her husband's pupil and helper though partner she certainly became." Despite close collaboration, publications reporting on their work for the construction aspect of their business, including Field Systems, Concrete System, and Bricklaying System, only indicate Frank Gilbreth as author. Other collaborations with her husband included management classics: Motion Study, A Primer of Scientific Management, Motion Models, Fatigue Study, Applied Motion Study, and Motion Study for the Handicapped.

Based on her Ph.D. research, Lillian's The Psychology of Management (1914) is considered a major contribution to the field. Although others were studying industrial psychology, Lillian Gilbreth consolidated the basic components of management theory—knowledge of individual behavior, the theory of groups, the theory of communication, and a rational basis of decisionmaking. She succeeded in translating time-and-motion study into fundamental modern management practices. Frank and Frederick Taylor, who was also a major proponent of scientific management, were not professionally trained in psychology to analyze connections between psychology, management, and work. Her sensitivity to the human aspects of work differed from Taylor and was a harbinger of sensitivity training popular in management circles in the 1960s.

Enlisting in the army during World War I, Frank was commissioned a major in the Engineers Officers Reserve Corps and soon became involved in revamping jobs and redesigning machinery to meet the needs of disabled soldiers. At Fort Sill, in Oklahoma, his assignment was to make films for new recruits in an effort to shorten their training. When Frank became ill with rheumatism and severe uremic poisoning, he worked long-distance with Lillian, sending his film to her and consulting with her on how to hold the interest of the recruits. After taking her own children to the movies, watching their reaction and questioning them, she wrote back to Frank with some suggestions.

Even when family crises, like Frank's illness, occurred, and uncertainty over Frank's bad heart became a part of her life, Lillian Gilbreth resorted to Frank's work philosophy: she would survey the situation, lay out the job, and decide on the "one best" way to handle it. During his long convalescence at The Shoe, their new summer house in Nantucket, he worked jointly with Lillian, selecting clients carefully to reduce the strain. By the time they moved to a 14-room house in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1920, they were both overworked; there were papers to write, children's education to monitor, some financial problems, and new babies. Bob had just been born in Nantucket. (Jane, the last child, would be born in the Nantucket Cottage Hospital in June 1922, the only child not born at home.)

Motion study had its detractors in the Taylor camp which rankled Frank. His paper, "Time Study and Motion Study as Fundamental Factors in Planning and Control: An Indictment of Stop-Watch Time Study," created controversy; conflict made Lillian uncomfortable, and the lack of recognition hurt them both. Some vindication came with Lillian's honorary membership in the Society of Industrial Engineers.

Frank, enjoying renown abroad, traveled constantly around the world on consulting jobs and promoted motion study with missionary zeal. But, on June 14, 1924, days before he and Lillian were to sail to Europe for several important conferences, Frank Gilbreth dropped dead of a heart attack. "There was a change in mother," wrote the Gilbreth siblings:

A change in looks and a change in manner. Before her marriage, all Mother's decisions had been made by her parents. After the marriage, the decisions were made by Dad.… While Dad lived, Mother was afraid of fast driving, of airplanes, of walking alone at night. When there was lightning, she went in a dark closet and held her ears. When things went wrong at dinner, she sometimes burst into tears and had to leave the table. She made public speeches, but she dreaded them. Now, suddenly, she wasn't afraid any more, because there was nothing to be afraid of. Now nothing could upset her because the thing that mattered most had been upset. None of us ever saw her weep again.

With her eldest child only 18 and all her children still living at home, Lillian Gilbreth called a Family Council. There was little money, she told them, because most had gone back into the business. Therefore, they could move back to Oakland to live with their grandmother or they could stay in Montclair with the children running the house while she would continue Frank's work. The children voted to stay in Montclair, and Lillian set out for Europe, despite her shyness, to give Frank's speeches to the World Power Conference in London and the First International Congress of Scientific Management (created at Frank's suggestion) at the Masaryk Academy in Prague.

Although the large corporations canceled consulting contracts with her when Frank died, convinced that a woman could not command the respect needed from shop foremen to handle the job, Lillian Gilbreth was determined to keep her husband's work alive. She would remain in business and promote research projects, spread his ideas and techniques to new generations, and seek new clients. She would also see to it that her 11 children went to college. "The speech in Chicago will go for Martha's new overcoat," she'd say. "The one in Detroit will be for Ernestine's college wardrobe."

Johnson & Johnson suggested that she start a school in the Montclair home to offer Gilbreth-style training, which she did for six years. She addressed fatigue problems for Macy's department store through micromotion techniques. She reconnected with her husband's international contacts and presided over the first summer school of an international association created to study human relations. According to Yost, Gilbreth had a talent for mediating, viewing work as "the constructive channel of cooperation between management and the worker."

Lillian had to work hard to counteract the critics. A textbook Scientific Management since Taylor was published with no mention of the Gilbreths' motion studies, and misstatements of Frederick Taylor about the Gilbreths' motion-study work, which had been made 14 years earlier, were reprinted. She lectured frequently, emphasizing motion study as an essential part of industrial engineering curricula, and spurred the establishment by 1930 of motion-study laboratories at several colleges. The Engineering Index finally included "motion study" as an independent classification. Lillian continued to write. The Quest of the One Best Way: A Sketch of the Life of Frank Bunker Gilbreth was published in America as well as Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1925 and 1926. As a management consultant, she measured and observed 4,000 homemakers to evaluate their movements doing chores in the home, resulting in her 1927 book, The Home-Maker and Her Job.

The stock-market crash in 1929 stimulated the acceptance of improved management; economic opportunity meant survival. In the 1930s, Dr. Gilbreth served on the President's Emergency Committee for Employment, organizing a "Share the Work" program that involved women's club members around the country. From 1929 to 1933, she served on the New Jersey State Board of Regents.

In 1935, at age 57, having originally replaced Frank as a lecturer at Purdue, Lillian returned there as the first woman professor of management on an engineering school faculty. For 13 years, until she retired from Purdue in 1948, she not only taught but also researched diverse disciplines; the motion-and-time-study lab she helped create served students in the School of Agriculture and students in the School of Home Economics. She also replaced Amelia Earhart as career advisor to women students after Earhart's disappearance. As a student, Gilbreth earned another 13 master's and doctoral degrees in various arts and sciences at universities around the country between 1928 and 1952. She was head of the Department of Personnel Relations at the Newark College of Engineering from 1941 to 1943, which developed students' aptitudes and taught them how to handle personnel problems. Gilbreth also lectured at Bryn Mawr and was a professor of management at Rutgers.

World War II was yet another spur toward modern management. Wartime industries sought easier ways to do work, and the Gilbreth technique applied to everything from training films to process charts. At 65, Lillian Gilbreth worked as a consultant for rehabilitation of disabled war veterans, and Normal Lives for the Disabled, written with Edna Yost, was published in 1944. As a consultant to New York University Medical Center's Institute for Rehabilitative Medicine in 1950 when she was almost 80, Lillian designed features that could ease the lives of disabled homemakers, enabling them to use one hand to break an egg, open a can, or peel a potato. "Mother really loved work," one of her daughters recalled; she was not just working to support her family.

Gilbreth received numerous honors. In 1940, she was made an honorary life member of the Engineering Women's Club. In 1944, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Management Association had jointly awarded the Gilbreths the Gantt Medal "in recognition of their pioneer work in management and their development of the principles and techniques of motion study." The Wallace Clark Award in 1951 recognized "thirty years of service in applications of scientific management principles in industry." American Women chose her in 1936 as one of the ten outstanding women of the year, and the American Women's Association chose her as Woman of the Year in 1948. During the Gilbreth Centennial, sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in December 1968 to mark Frank Gilbreth's birth, Dr. Howard Rusk, director of the Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, called the Gilbreths' contribution to rehabilitation of the disabled "a phenomenal one both in concept and substance."

Lillian Gilbreth, who died of a stroke in 1972 in Scottsdale, Arizona, at age 93, also left a personal legacy—her family of 12 children and their numerous offspring. Three of her children were engineers, several were homemakers, and there was a journalist, a schoolteacher, an exporter, and a department store buyer. Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes became bestsellers and then popular films, both starring Myrna Loy . Lillian Gilbreth, wrote Yost, was a "management engineer who understands that industry's most important problem is the human being who works in it."

sources:

Gilbreth, Frank B., Jr. Time Out for Happiness. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1970.

——, and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. Cheaper by the Dozen. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1948.

Kass-Simon, G., and Patricia Farnes, eds. Women of Science: Righting the Record. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Krebs, Albin. The New York Times, January 3, 1972, p. 30.

Rothe, Ann, ed. Current Biography. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1951.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press-Harvard University, 1980.

Stoddard, Hope. Famous American Women. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1970.

Yost, Edna. Frank and Lillian Gilbreth: Partners for Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1949.

related media:

Belles on Their Toes (89 mins.), starring Myrna Loy, Jeanne Crain, Debra Paget , Jeffrey Hunter, Edward Arnold, Hoagy Carmichael, Barbara Bates , Robert Arthur, Verna Felton , and Martin Milner, directed by Henry Levin, 1952 (sequel to Cheaper by the Dozen).

Cheaper by the Dozen (85 min.), starring Clifton Webb, Myrna Loy, Jeanne Crain, Mildred Natwick , Edgar Buchanan, directed by Walter Lang, 1950.

collections:

Lillian Gilbreth Collection, Department of Special Collections and Archives, Purdue University Library, contains professional and personal correspondence, films, photographs and other visual media, newspaper clippings, and conference records. (The Frank Gilbreth Collection also is located at Purdue.)

Laurie Norris , intercultural relations consultant and freelance writer, New York, New York

Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia