EFFICIENCY AND FATIGUE 261 



when necessary. Still, it remains evident that the 

 thoroughly conscientious and hard-working munition 

 worker cannot as a rule do any overtime work at all, 

 except under wasteful and unphysiological conditions. 

 He may produce a small temporary increase of output, 

 but his total output, over a period of several weeks, is 

 reduced rather than increased ; or again, he can pro- 

 duce a small increase of output for a few days before 

 a holiday, as he knows that he will be able to recover 

 his full vigour again during the period of rest from 

 work. 



Limitation of Output. In all of the operations re- 

 ferred to the workers were on a piece rate, or were 

 paid so much per 100 articles produced. A piece-rate 

 system is essential if one wishes to get the best results 

 in repetition work. The work is of so dull and mono- 

 tonous a character that if it were paid at a time rate 

 the workers would inevitably relax their efforts as 

 much as they could without incurring the resentment 

 of the management. The importance of the piece- 

 rate system is generally recognized, and it is adopted 

 in some form or other in all of the munition factories 

 with which I am acquainted, in such operations as 

 lend themselves to it. However, I came across one 

 operation in which two groups of workers, in different 

 blocks of the same factory, were engaged on the same 

 operation, one group being paid at a time rate and 

 the other group at a piece rate. The operation con- 

 sisted in sorting the brass cartridge cases of rifle 

 ammunition, and picking out the buckled and abnor- 

 mal cases. In a group of 18 women working for 25 

 weeks I found that in only 2 per cent of all the weekly 

 outputs did the relative hourly output lie between 42 

 and 52: in 28 per cent of them it lay between 52 

 and 62, whilst the most frequent output of 62 to 72 

 occurred in 46 per cent of all cases., A better output 



