248 BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 



but their maximum effort must be so controlled that 

 it does not reduce their health. Directly they begin 

 to get over-fatigued, their efficiency diminishes, and 

 their output goes down. Fatigue is defined by The 

 Health of Munition Workers Committee 1 as "the 

 sum of the results of activity which show themselves 

 in a diminished capacity for doing work". Hence 

 the essential condition of all efficient labour is that 

 it avoids this condition of fatigue which produces a 

 diminished capacity for work. It might be thought 

 that it is a simple matter to recognize such a condi- 

 tion, but this is by no means the case. Extreme fatigue 

 can, of course, be readily identified, but the moderate 

 condition of fatigue which is sufficient to cause some 

 reduction of efficiency is difficult to distinguish from 

 the normal condition of fatigue which almost every 

 genuine worker ought to experience at the end of his 

 day's work. Such fatigue should be recovered from 

 completely, or very nearly completely, as the result 

 of good food and a good night's rest, or the worker 

 ought to be able to begin each day's work in a state 

 of full and normal vigour, with the exception that he 

 generally gets a little more tired towards the end of 

 the week than he is at the beginning, that is, he ex- 

 periences a slight accumulation of fatigue which he is 

 able to get rid of during his Sunday rest from work. 



Over-fatigue in Women. For reasons which will 

 appear shortly, the condition of over-fatigue is very 

 seldom observed in men, and not very frequently in 

 women. I observed one very striking instance of its 

 occurrence in the women who were employed at a large 

 fuse factory, where there were about nine thousand 

 workers. In the earlier months of the war the usual 

 hours of labour were 77 J a week, or ran for 12 hours a 

 day, five days a week, but for somewhat less on Saturday 



1 Memorandum No. 7. 1916. (Cd. 8213.) 



