FACTORY SANITATION — WINSLOW. 



615 



or 29 per cent, exceeded 79°. Relative humidity exceeded 70 per 

 cent in 39, or 18 per cent of the workrooms. In tabulating these 

 analyses I have excluded all cases where the outdoor temperature 

 was over 70°. 



Temperature and humidity in New York factories. 

 [Reports of the Commissioner of Labor for 1908, 1909, and 1910.] 



In the report on the sanitary condition of factories and workshops, 

 made by the Massachusetts State Board of Health in 1907, is the 

 following comment upon the boot and shoe industry: 



In the majority of factories visited the ventilation was found to be poor, and in 

 many of them distinctly bad. Of the rooms not especially dusty, 102 were badly 

 ventilated and 26 were overcrowded. In the rooms in which large amounts of dusts 

 are evolved, the number of machines with means for efficient or fairly efficient removal 

 of dust was found to be 1,630; the number either inefficiently equipped or devoid of 

 equipment was 2,769. 



Of 84 of the many dusty rooms reported, 40 were also overcrowded, 35 were dark, 

 21 were overheated, and 18 were overcrowded, dark, and overheated. In more than 

 one-third of the factories visited, the conditions of water-closets were not commend- 

 able; most of them were dark and dirty to very dirty. 



There is plenty of evidence, though of a scattered and ill-digested 

 sort, that the elimination of such conditions as these brings a direct 

 return in increased efficiency of production. The classic case of the 

 United States Pension Bureau is .always quoted in this connection. 

 The removal of the offices of the department from scattered and 

 poorly ventilated buildings to new and well-ventilated quarters 

 reduced the number of days of absence due to illness from 18,736, 

 in the neighborhood of which figure it had been for several successive 

 years, to 10,114. 



In an investigation of my own of conditions in the operating room 

 of the New England Telephone & Telegraph Co., at Cambridge, 

 Mass., I found that before the installation of a ventilating sys- 

 tem, 4.9 per cent of the force (50 to 60 girls) were absent during the 

 winter months of 1906 and 4.5 per cent in 1907. The ventilating 

 duct which was put in was a simple one and cost only $75 to install, 



