

NOTES 315 



it . . . the elimination of almost all causes for dispute and disagreement between 

 them. What constitutes a fair day's work will be a question for scientific in- 

 vestigation, instead of a subject to be bargained and haggled over." 



The author of " The Six Hours' Day," published in the same periodical as in 

 the foregoing paragraph (April 14), brings forward Lord Leverhulme's proposition 

 " that on an average six hours ought to be given each day to private business and 

 two hours to the State," and he suggests that two shifts of men working six hours 

 each would meet the employers' needs. He also maintains " that each reduction 

 of the daily hours of labour has invariably resulted in increase of production, 

 improvement in quality of product, and higher wages." The same conclusion is 

 reached by Dr. Vernon in his Report on the Health of Munition Workers. Lord 

 Leverhulme also treats of the subject of Labour and Capital's Co-partnership in 

 a series of three articles in the Sunday Times (July 22, 29, August 5). The first 

 revises the position of Labour from the Middle Ages to the present and attributes 

 the wearisomeness and monotony of the work of the modern operative to the vast 

 scale on which industry is now conducted, which renders contact with employer 

 and employed impossible, while the increased use of machinery robs of all variety 

 the daily task of the workman. The remedy suggested is that of allowing time off 

 for the men to go through the factories and see the different processes and the 

 completion of the article of which they undertake only a small part — a plan which 

 has, he says, been adopted in some iron and steel works and resulted in increased 

 interest in the work. The second article draws attention to the disintegrating 

 factor of distrust between capital and labour, resulting in the workman refusing to 

 give intelligent thought to his work, and emphasises the fact that at all costs the 

 workman's interest in his work must be aroused. Lord Leverhulme doubts 

 whether this can be done with the middle-aged man, inured as he now is to his 

 mill round and an absence of the right kind of ambition, but he hopes much for 

 and from the younger generation. The general trend of present-day thought on 

 this subject seems to be that, if the conditions could be so adjusted that the work 

 itself would be of as much importance to a man as the wages derived from it, the 

 root of the difficulty between capital and labour would have some chance of being 

 destroyed. The third article, besides restating the necessity of copartnership 

 between employer and employed together with a six hours' day for men engaged 

 in monotonous work, advocates that two hours daily should be devoted by such 

 men to education between the ages of fourteen and thirty. These two hours 

 should include military training in early manhood and, in later years, work in their 

 own gardens. " So," says Lord Leverhulme, " we shall be opening up fresh 

 resources for the good of the nation. The precious plant of inventiveness is not 

 grown in a close atmosphere of prolonged labour; it is the product of leisure 

 hours, when a man's mind is free from task-work." 



The Report of the Committee on the Neglect of Science for 1916-17 states 

 that, since its meeting in May 1916, the Government has acceded to its request 

 and has appointed a Committee on the subject of scientific education in Secondary 

 Schools, and that representatives of the Committee on the Neglect of Science 

 should attend on October 14, 191 6, to state its views. In November 1916 another 

 Government Committee was appointed to consider the revision of the existing 

 scheme of examinations for the Home Civil Service. 



The first number of a quarterly called the Journal of the Society of Glass 

 Technology appeared in May. The secretary of the Society informs us that " The 

 issue is of some interest as the Journal is the only one of its type, just as the 

 Society of Glass Technology is the first Society to be formed to study glass 



