292 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.— 1915. 



a complete absence, due to factory or economic organisation, of intelli- 

 gibility or purposiveness in the work. 



These unpleasant and ultimately fatiguing affections vary for 

 different people, and some can be overcome by certain adaptations. 

 Thus the sense of being driven can be overcome if the worker can fall 

 into the rhythm of the machine (cf. Biicher, ' Arbeit und Ehythmus,' 

 and Max Weber's ' Psychophysik ' (Index D8). Again, seemingly 

 uniform and frequently recurring work is pleasant to some workers, 

 though it would cause monotonous feelings to others, according vo 

 Miinsterberg (' Fatigue and Efficiency,' pp. 190 ff.), and nearly all indi- 

 viduals can to a certain extent automatise uniform and frequently 

 recurring action, and by thus enabling themselves to keep their minds 

 off their work can prevent monotonous feelings. This at any rate 

 is the case with such proficient knitters as the Hausfrau, who can 

 work and read simultaneously, and girls in the factory who can work 

 and talk. How far so-called monotonous work will really evoke feelings 

 of monotony — i.e., of ' boredom '• — would seem to depend very largely 

 on individual tastes and individual powers, and at the same time it may 

 be observed that uniformity prevents all anxiety, responsibility, or 

 worry on the part of the worker, since there are never any new decisions 

 to make or old decisions to regret. The question whether uniformity 

 tends, therefore, to ' build character ' or the reverse is, unfortunately, 

 outside our scope. 



Section I.b. — Ventilation, Humidity and Temperature, and other 

 ' Conditions of Factory Hygiene.' 



The latest research has resolved different ' degrees of Ventilation ' as 

 simply different degrees of Heat and Moisture combined. To quote 

 Professor Lee : ^ 



' Much experimentation has shown that the evil results of confine- 

 ment in improperly ventilated rooms are caused not by the presence 

 of toxic products of respiration, but by the heat and the humidity 

 combined. Paul found that with human beings enclosed in a hot and 

 humid experimental chamber, the unpleasant symptoms began to appear 

 within a few minutes, and before there was time for the accumulation 

 of supposed poisonous gases. When the air of the chamber was put 

 into motion the temperature of the skin fell, the unpleasant symptoms 

 disappeared very quickly, and the subject felt as if fresh air had been 

 supplied. When the subject had been confined for a considerable time, 

 and the symptoms had become well developed, the breathing of pure 

 air through a tube passing from the subject's face through the wall of 

 the chamber to the outside brought no relief. When, on the other 

 hand, an outsider with his body surrounded by fresh air breathed from 

 a tube the vitiated air of the chamber, no unpleasant symptoms 

 appeared. Such facts make it clear that the symptoms are due to the 

 action of the vitiated air, not on the lungs but in the skin.' 



We may therefore concentrate our attention on the effect of tem- 

 perature and humidity. Prof. Lee thus summarises the effect of 



* Journal of Iniustrial cind LJngineering Cherrkistry, vol. 6, 1914, p. 245, 



