THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[October 



can certainly be accomplished here. Of this nuniher the 

 British declare that fully 60 per cent of injured men had 

 been reinstated in their old positions. The results of re- 

 habilitation are declared to have been satisfactory in 



most mstances. 



"it is to discover this man in each plant, to develop 

 him where known, to create an interest in his job and to 

 retain that interest, both in it and in his employes, that 

 this educational movement has been specially prepared 

 and ofifered as something new and necessary at this epoch 

 in our industrial history." 



SENDING THE FOREMAN TO SCHOOL. 



A TIMELY AND 1NV.\LUABLE SUGGESTION for the im- 

 provement of the human factor in large manufac- 

 turing plants has been made by John Calder, M.E., in 

 an address before a editorial conference in New York 

 City. In brief, Mr. Calder advocates a systematic course 

 of instruction for foremen, and supports his suggestion 

 with logic that should appeal to every thinking em- 

 ployer. He said in part : 



"We now know that human engineering, tackled in 

 spots only, such as safety, welfare and employment, has 

 been, as a whole, neglected in industry where it counts 

 most. . . . The foreman's education has been sadly 

 neglected and yet he is the man, and the only man in 

 authority, who makes contact with our workmen through 

 half of their walking hours. . . . Not only must we 

 cultivate more intensively in every plant and industry 

 the modern production methods now highly elaborated, 

 but we must set about to greatly enlarge the intelligence 

 of those who must carry out these methods, namely, the 

 foremen, the non-commissioned officers of industry. This 

 is of great importance. No ideas are of much lasting 

 benefit in any plant unless they are well told to the fore- 

 men and only a mere fraction of the present-day liter- 

 ature on how to analyze and handle the human factors 

 in industry is intelligible to the foreman who must do 

 this work in detail." 



Mr. Calder then relates how courses of instruction for 

 foremen and heads of departments begun a few months 

 ago now number several thousand men, devoting them- 

 selves to this class of study for three months at a time. 



"Sending the foreman back to school at the expense 

 of the employer is a new idea to most owners, who have 

 been willing to spend money on things much less worth 

 while," he says. "But if that school is held in an em- 

 ployer's own plant, aims at a definite objective and makes 

 a family party of the occasion it is found to be a most 

 fruitful source of enlightenment and enhanced good will. 

 . . . The art of management and supervision has been 

 well worked out to date, so far as the chief executives 

 are concerned, and it calls for an ever-increasing and 

 high order of ability. It has sometimes been inclined to 

 belittle the foreman and at other times to ignore him. 

 Yet we have a fair supply of good managers to-day and 

 are calling loudly not for them or for advisory engineers, 

 but for competent foremen, not merely to criticize but 

 to supervise successfully and to 'deliver the goods,' with 

 the only kind of help now available, at a cost that makes 

 good business and with due regard to the aspirations 

 and interests of labor. 



BRITISH INSTITUTE OF PATENTEES. 



TnKOUGii THE ORGANIZATION of s. body to be known 

 as the Imperial Institute of Patentees, British paten- 

 tees and patent owners hope better to guard their inter- 

 ests and to effect desirable modifications in existing 

 patent law. Among its objects are to procure an exten- 

 sion of the life of those patents which have been held 

 up during the war by controlled firms ; to assist patentees 

 who have failed to find other support, and to reduce the 

 high cost of a British patent, which is $500 for a term of 

 fourteen years as contrasted with $35 for a 17-year patent 

 in the United States. 



The new organization has the support of the National 

 Union of Manufacturers, the Federation of British In- 

 dustries, the Associated Chambers of Commerce, and 

 others interested in better patent laws, and would seem 

 to be in a position to accomplish much in the interests of 

 British manufacturers that will facilitate reconstruction 

 in Great Britain. 



FOREIGN TRADE-MARKS SAFEGUARDED IN 

 JAPAN. 



A DECISION OF GREAT IMPORTANCE to exporters every- 

 where is that of the Supreme Court of Japan, in 

 a suit instituted by a Philadelphia manufacturing com- 

 pany for the protection of its trade-mark rights, which 

 upholds in every essential and without qualification the 

 validity of American trade-marks properly registered as 

 guaranteed under Japan's treaty with the United States. 

 It also protects trade-mark owners in every country hav- 

 ing similar treaty agreements with Japan against native 

 infringement. 



This decision, epochal in world trade and exemplifying 

 international fair play, places the spirit of Japanese law 

 on the highest plane and favorably affects manufacturers 

 whose annual product runs into billions of dollars. By 

 this act Japan has benefited herself immeasurably, for 

 safeguards against the forgery and plagiarism of trade- 

 marks have great significance in international trade. 

 Good-will has a higher commercial value today than ever 

 before in history. 



\\'e.'\RERS of rubber shoes IN MOSCOW, RUSSIA, MUST 



pay to the local Soviet a tax of 20 rubles ($10.30) per 

 pair. The shoes cost the victim 300 to 400 rubles 

 ($154.50 to $206). No doubt there is a law compelling 

 the bourgeois to wear them, else there would be small tax 

 returns from this item. 



