322 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. — 1915. 



oppositely, however, and thus more or less cancel out, it would 

 be worth while giving the rate of accident per 1,000 employed for two 

 or three separate decades respectively if only it were certain that the 

 standard of reporting were the same in each case. The Home Of&ce 

 Committee (Index Bl) appointed in 1909 ' to inquire into the causes 

 and circumstances of the increase in the niunber of reported accidents, ' 

 collected many such statistics as suggested above, but found ' an almost 

 unanimous expression of opinion from witnesses of all kinds that the 

 fuller reporting which has taken place during recent years accounts 

 for a very large portion of the increase ' (p. 9). But though the Acci- 

 dent Committee was thus unable to secure statistical confirmation they 

 report that ' much of the increase (of accidents) was attributed to a 

 general raising of the standard of effort in all spheres of life ' (p. 13). 



The new school of ' scientific management ' in America has also 

 devoted some thought to the fatiguing effect of ' intense ' work. Mr. 

 Knoeppel, for instance, in his book ' InstaUing Efficiency Methods,' 

 carefully distinguishes ' strenuousness ' from efficiency and holds that 

 ' any standard determined should be one that a man can attain day in 

 and day out without injury to his health of body or mind ' (p. 109). 

 This ' Standard Time ' is reckoned at about the mean of a man's 

 average and highest speed under unimproved conditions, with pro- 

 vision for rest often amounting to 16 per cent, or 20 per cent, of the 

 whole time and enforced by clock at intervals varying for different kinds 

 of work. A familiar example of the efficiency of such a system occurs 

 in P. W. Taylor's ' Principles of Scientific Management.' For ' heavy 

 labour ' where the man's strength is exerted by either lifting or pushing 

 something which he grasps in his hands, it was discovered that for 

 each given pull or push on the man's arms it is possible for the 

 workman to be under load for only a definite percentage of the day. 

 For example, when pig iron is being handled (each pig weighing 92 lb.) 

 a first-class workman can only be under load 43 per cent, of the 

 day (p. 6). This scientific ' law ' was then applied at the Bethlehem 

 Steel Works, and result-ed in the men's earnings (at a constant piece 

 rate of 3^% cents a ton) jumping from $1.15 to $1.86 a day. 



To this now classical case of the pig iron may be added that of a 

 machinist in the employ of the New England Butt Company, who was 

 unable to complete his standard task per hour at a lathe turning metals 

 till a notice was posted up bidding him rest twelve minutes after every 

 forty -eight minutes' work. 



Outside these indi^''idual studies, Scientific Management has perhaps 

 not spent enough time searching scientifically for the laws of fatigue 

 before setting its standard intensity of work ; yet, if once these laws are 

 discovered, then it is only to a really scientific management that we 

 can look for the application of the discovery. In the hope of this con- 

 summation to our labours the significance to industrial organisation 

 of the researches chronicled above may be sketched roughly in the 

 following sequence : 



1st. The importance of the rdle played by fatigue and other inner 

 states of the individual worker. It is not a monopoly of mental work 

 to be influenced in quantity and quality by the human disposition. For 



