EFFICIENCY AND FATIGUE 249 



and Sunday. Sunday work was intermitted once a 

 month, or on an average the workers put in about 

 75 hours a week of actual work, exclusive of meal- 

 times. The women were undoubtedly in a state of 

 chronic fatigue, from which they never had a chance 

 of recovering unless they voluntarily took a holiday 

 from their work. This fatigued condition was shown 

 most clearly in their accident records. I tabulated 

 their accidents for three months when these very long 

 hours were being worked, and for the subsequent two 

 years during which the hours of work were first 

 reduced to about 64^ a week, then to 58^ hours, 

 and then to 54^ hours. 1 Small accidents, especially 

 cuts to fingers and thumbs, are very frequent in 

 women who are turning or drilling various fuse parts, 

 and in fig. i is shown the hourly incidence of cuts, 

 calculated per ten thousand workers per week. In 

 1915, or what may be termed the fatigue period, there 

 were 17 cuts treated in the first full hour of work, but 

 the number rapidly increased from hour to hour till 

 in the last full hour of work of the morning spell 90 

 cuts were treated, or more than five times as many. 

 This rapid increase was due largely to fatigue, for in 

 1916 and 1917, when the shorter hours were worked, 

 the cuts increased only threefold in the course of the 

 morning spell. It is true that a part of this increase 

 was due to fatigue likewise, though most of it was 

 due to a speeding up of production, coupled with in- 

 creasing carelessness and inattention of the workers, 

 owing to thoughts of the approaching dinner break. 

 In the afternoon spell the accidents during the fatigue 

 period were twice as numerous as subsequently, but 

 they fell away rapidly between 6.15 and 8.30 p.m., as 

 the women were so tired that many of them slacked 



1 Cf. Memorandum 21, published by The Health of Munition Workers 

 Committee. 1918. (Cd. 9046.) 



