YOUNG WOMEN DOING LIGHT HOUSEHOLD WORK. 95 



To throw some light upon the additional energy requirements 

 necessary for maintaining the standing position, one experiment 

 with twenty women with one period was made in which it was found 

 that the extra metabolism required for standing was 9 per cent, 

 above the standard sitting resting metabolism. This agrees reason- 

 ably well with values found in this laboratory for subjects in the 

 post-absorptive condition for the differences between sitting and 

 standing. 



As a typical household occupation, involving moderate muscular 

 exercise, the metabolism during sweeping was studied in two ex- 

 periments with fifteen women and covering in all four periods. 

 The increments noted were 139 and 161 per cent., respectively, with 

 an average of 150 per cent. This is somewhat less than the increase 

 due to moderate walking found in the Nutrition Laboratory, which 

 was approximately 250 per cent, above the metabolism with the sub- 

 jects in the standing position. 



Another household occupation studied, involving rather moderate 

 muscular effort, was that of dusting. In these experiments the sub- 

 jects were required to dust chairs, wiping the rounds and seat, and 

 at a given signal change to the next chair in rotation. One minute 

 was allowed for dusting each chair. Three experiments with four 

 periods with fifteen and nineteen women gave increments above the 

 basal value of 126, 121, and 156 per cent., respectively, with an 

 average of 134 per cent., an increase only slightly less than that 

 noted in the sweeping experiments, namely, 150 per cent. 



The increment in energy with two other muscular activities was 

 studied in this series of experiments but the results are not included 

 in Table II. The muscular work of standing up and sitting down 

 enters into a relatively large number of the daily activities and a 

 special study of this operation was made in that the subjects while 

 sitting quietly in a chair were, on a given signal, required to stand 

 up, remain standing one second, and then immediately seat them- 

 selves. This routine was carried out approximately once every 

 minute during the period. In this particular series, it seemed best to 

 compute the increments not as a percentage above basal but as the 

 actual increase in energy for standing up and sitting down per move- 



