Seeking quote on how adding boys to a task decreases amount of work done

July 31, 2016 9:42 AM

Don't know who wrote it, though Mark Twain and Robert Heinlein came to mind. It's about boys working on a task, possibly in a frontier or rural setting. It goes something like: 1 boy is worth 1 boy, 2 boys are worth 1/2 a boy and 3 boys don't get any work done.
posted by Homer42 to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

It sounds similar to one of the essays in Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man Month, where he establishes that adding manpower to a late project makes it later (because lines of communication increase exponentially as people increase linearly).
posted by teatime at 10:00 AM on July 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

The earliest use I could find was from 1992. None of the uses I found gave any source, beyond "something my grandfather used to say".
posted by dilaudid at 10:13 AM on July 31, 2016

Best answer: "My father used to say when young boys were working together: "One boy is worth about one boy and two boys are worth about a half a boy. Three boys ain't worth having around." The Watermen of the Chesapeake Bay

A local farmer wasn't quite so polite and he used to say

One boy is worth half a man
Two boys are worth half a boy
And three boys are no bl**dy good at all

From the Black Hills and Dan O'Brien.

My grandfather (Bill Marshall) had two brothers, and his father
also had two two brothers. The following maxim sprang up somewhere
along the way:

One boy is worth half a man
Two boys are worth half a boy
Three boys are no help at all.

Seems to be a dad/grandpa thing.
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:44 AM on July 31, 2016 [6 favorites]

And on more searching:

A Dictionary of Proverbs gives a 1930 origin, F. Thompson's Country Calendar.

Here's one from 1850, from Boys' and Girls' Magazine and Fireside Companion: "...and one boy _being_ a boy, two boys half a boy, and three boys no boy at all..."
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:14 AM on July 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yeah, that last is how I heard it, 'three boys are no boy at all' and I read it recently but can't recall where.
posted by Rash at 8:05 PM on July 31, 2016

My family has always said it like MonkeyToes's citation: A boy is a boy, two boys are half a boy, and three boys are no boy at all.
posted by CheeseLouise at 7:45 AM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

(I've never heard this before, but I have two sons and it really resonates with me. *wince*)
posted by wenestvedt at 10:03 AM on August 1, 2016

My dad used to say it the way @Rash put it. No idea where he heard it.
posted by trinity8-director at 4:13 PM on August 1, 2016