 Owney's death made public that a gap existed between the workplace attitudes of U.S. postal clerks and their management, with the deceased dog serving as a focus of this gap.The 1890s were a foundational decade for the new discipline of scientific management, with consultants like Frederick Winslow Taylor seeking to help managers reduce what they saw as industrial inefficiencies by examining workers' "wasted time" and "slacking".Postal clerks used Owney's death, and the expressions of sadness contained in press obituaries in honor of the dog, to make a statement