TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 809 



output was found to be only 10 per cent, greater in the latter instance than 

 in the former. In the iron and steel industry a reduction of shift from twelve 

 to eight hours caused no increase of hourly output from blast furnaces and 

 rolling mills, but 2 to 9 per cent, increase from open-hearth steel furnaces. In 

 the cotton-spinning mills of the United States a reduction of two or three 

 hours in the weekly hours of work cause<l an almost proportional decrease of 

 output. However, very different results were observed in certain munition 

 industries. Men engaged in the somewhat heavy operation of sizing fuse bodies 

 increased their hourly output 39 per cent, when their nominal hours were 

 reduced from si.xty-seven to fifty-six i>er week, and their actual hours of work 

 from 58.2 per week to 50.6 per week, or their total weekly output went up 21 per 

 cent. Women engaged in turning aluminium fuse bodies on capstan lathes 

 improved their hourly output 56 per cent., and their total weekly output 15 per 

 cent., when their hours of actual work were reduced from 66.0 per week to 

 48.6 per week. The reason why reduction of hours causes euch different effects 

 in different industries is because of the various degrees to which the work is 

 controlled by the personal element, and by machinery. In sizing fuse bodies, 

 the men are not dependent on any machinery whatever, and can speed up to 

 any extent they wish. In turning fuse bodies, the women are to some extent 

 limited by the speed of the machinery. In another operation known as boring 

 top caps, the youths employed fed the caps into semi-automatic machines 

 which could not be speeded up. Consequently their output could only be im- 

 proved by their keeping more closely to their work, and it was found that when 

 their hours of actual work were reduced from 72.5 per week to 53.1 per week, 

 their hourly output increased only 27 per cent., or was insufficient to balance 

 the reduction of hours, and in consequence their total weekly output fell off 

 7 per cent. 



It is probable that in most industries the eight-hour day does not cause 

 more than a moderate amount of physical fatigue. The workers suffer rather 

 from monotony and boredom, as many of them are engaged on the same task 

 day after day and year after year. Especially on these grounds it is to be 

 hoped that some such scheme as Lord Leverhulme's will gradually be adopted 

 in the industrial world, but it cannot come suddenly, as it might render us 

 unable to compete in the open markets of the world with other comitries which 

 adopted, for instance, two seven-and-a-half-hour shifts per day, instead of two 

 six-hour shifts. 



Lord Leverhulme suggests that, in addition to six hours' factory labour, the 

 workers should spend two hours daily in educational and physical training. 

 There is much to be said for this plan. 



2. Physiological Fatigue and Village Meeting Halls. 

 By Miss C. Smitii-Rossie, Diplomate Royal Sanitary Institute. 



Educational fatigue is always coincident with nerve exhaustion This is 

 one reason why, Adult Evening Continuation Schools have not much success. 

 To make them successful the surroundings where they are held must be as toni'c 

 as possible. In British villages this is difficult— hence reconstruction of the 

 British countryside is delayed. The best nerve tonic is to make the student 

 really desire to learn. 



In Denmark after her disastrous war in 1848 things were everywhere on the 

 point of ruin— thriftlessness, drink, and an apathetic peasantry were sending the 

 country drifting. Continuation Schools had no chance of success, the students 

 I were always 'too tired' to learn. They had their eyes blind by ignorance 

 ot cause and effect like the present state of Russia. Bolshevism might have been 

 the end. But a small band of men under Bishop Grundvig undertook the task 

 of popularising countryside education and spreading the nerve tonic against 

 educational fatigue. In an abstract like this it is impossible to describe their 

 modus operandi, but in order to make their work permanent almost every Danish 

 village to-day has its own meeting hall built on popular lines for the stimulation 

 )f Adult Evening Continuation Schools— schools not run on dry and hard lines, 

 out adapted to give tonic stimulation to the hard-worked students. And the 



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