l62 



NATURE 



[April 20, 1916 



quite appreciable sparks during the period of activity. 

 The charges took fifteen or twenty seconds to build 

 up after discharge, and the experiment was repeated 

 very frequently. 



The second thundercloud produced two peals of 

 thunder and a slight shower, soon after which the 

 abnormal electrical conditions ceased to manifest them- 

 selves, about three-quarters of an hour after they were 

 first noticed. R. A. Watson Watt. 



Meteorological Office, South' Farnborough, 

 Hants, April 15. 



The Influence of Tides on Wells. 



Referring to Mr. J as. Kewley's letter in Nature 

 of April 13, it is not unusual for the water in wells to 

 rise and fall with the tides when such wells are near 

 the sea. But is it necessary to assume that the 

 phenomenon is due to the weight of the incoming tide 

 compressing the underlying strata, as suggested by 

 Mr. Kewley? Surely it may be sufficiently explained 

 on the assumption that as the rising tide is a rising 

 head of water it, without necessarily compressing the 

 rocks beneath, tends to compress the air and replace 

 the less dense fresh water included in the interstices 

 and fissures, thus affecting the water-level of any 

 contiguous well. In this connection may I direct 

 attention to a letter of niine on "Tidal Action of the 

 Earth's Crust," published in the English Mechanic, 

 June II, 1909? Cecil Carus-WilsOn. 



PHYSIOLOGY IN THE WORKSHOP. 



IN the never-ending- struggle between capital 

 and labour, or rather between employers and 

 workmen, the points of dispute have been largely 

 concerned with the hours of labour and wages, 

 the employers trying to obtain as long hours for 

 as low wages as possible, while labour has struck 

 for a shortening of hours with increased wages. 

 Labour is thus regarded as a commodity, to be 

 bought as cheaply and sold as dearly as possible. 

 In most of these disputes it would seem that 

 both sides have lost sight of the fundamental 

 conditions of their own prosperity. It is, after all, 

 of little account to the employer that he should 

 be able to buy cheaply so many hours of other 

 men's lives. The only factor which really con- 

 cerns him is that he should be able to produce 

 as large a quantity of his goods as possible at as 

 small a price as possible, reckoning both rent of 

 capital and cost of labour. An implicit assump- 

 tion seems always to be made that the more 

 hours of a man's life the employer can buy for a 

 certain sum, the cheaper will be his cost of pro- 

 duction. But labour also is concerned in the cost 

 of output. It is a truism that when business is 

 slack, i.e. when the profits are small, strikes are 

 few and far between, the workers recognising that 

 it would be better in many cases to close down 

 works than to give them increased wages. Both 

 employers and workmen are therefore concerned 

 that the industry in which they are engaged 

 should be as prosperous as possible, i.e. that pro- 

 duction should be as cheap and rapid as possible. 

 To this end both parties should co-operate. The 

 only divergence of view which is reasonable 

 should occur later when the question arises of 

 the division of the profits, i.e. as to how much 



should be assigned to labour and how much fo 

 management and rent of capital." 



Both sides are therefore interested in th 

 efficiency of labour and its use to the best possibl 

 advantage — the employer in order that he ma 

 obtain as great a production at as small a pric 

 as possible ; the workman that he may be abl 

 to earn enough to keep himself in comfort, whil 

 allowing some time in the day or week for recrez 

 tion and the enjoyment of life. 



It is remarkable how little attention has bee 

 paid in this country to the problem of how t 

 use labour to the best possible advantage. Th 

 appearance of a Memorandum on " Industrie 

 Fatigue and its Causes" (Cd. 8213, Wyman an 

 Sons, Ltd., price i^d.), which has been draw 

 up and issued by the Health of Munition Worker 

 Committee, is therefore of extreme importance i 

 the present time, since its object is to point ol 

 the only method by which increased efficiency c 

 production can be attained. 



In this pamphlet it is shown that the problei 

 of scientific industrial management is fundi 

 mentally a problem in industrial fatigue. Fc 

 the continued efficiency of an animal or man, re« 

 must alternate with work, and the periods of res 

 and work must vary with the type of work ir 

 volved. This elementary principle is acted upo 

 generally in our management of horses. Th 

 report is a plea for its application also to th 

 case of man. We cannot get the utmost possib! 

 work out of man' or horse unless this principle 

 taken into account. We have thus to determir 

 in the case of man w^hat are the maximal efficienc 

 rhythms for various types of work and worker 

 For work in which severe muscular efTort 

 required it seems probable that the maximal c 

 put over a day's work and the best conditii 

 for the workers' comfort and maintained hea 

 will be secured by giving short spells of strenu* 

 activity broken by longer spells of rest, the rt 

 tive amount of time devoted to resting be' 

 greater than in employments in which nerve 

 activity is more prominent or more complicate' 



The truth of this statement is well illustrai 

 by an anecdote recorded in the Memorandi 

 before us. Two officers at the front competed 

 making equal lengths of a certain trench e£ 

 with an equal squad of men. One allowed 

 men to work as they pleased but as hard as p' 

 sible. Ihe other divided his men into three s 

 to work in rotation, each set digging their hard 

 for five minutes only, and then resting for 

 until their turn came to dig again. The lat 

 team won easily. Another instance is that o 

 munitions factory, where men engaged in ,; 

 severe work of moulding were required to ti 

 fifteen minutes in every hour of work. The m 

 objected to this long spell of rest in each h ' 

 because the work was piecework, so that 

 manager had to make the hourly rest compuls 

 and appoint a foreman to see that the regulal" 

 was complied with. As a result of this the out"' 

 per hour was found to be actually increased. 



It is evident that the optimum working rhym 

 for each kind of work can only be determined^^ 



