I.— PHYSIOLOGY. 165 



all probability due to the fact that the maximum value of efficiency 

 i-emains more or less constant over a fairly wide variation in the mode 

 of the performance of the work. The work referred to here is wholly 

 concerned with muscle activity. The other type of efficiency is that 

 which is called industrial or productive efficiency, where the capacity 

 of the individual to perform effective work is dealt with, judging the 

 capacity of the individual by, for example, his output in unit time. 

 So far as the worker himself is concerned, the whole object in industrial 

 efficiency is undoubtedly to get the greatest output with the minimum 

 of effort. The determination of the mechanical efficiency is fairly 

 readily canied out, but it is very difficult to get an accurate gauge of 

 the industrial efficiency. At bottom they are closely related, a.nd both 

 are physiological problems. 



The leaders of industry have not been slow to accept and utilise the 

 gains of science in the realm of inanimate things, but they have been 

 slow to recognise the fact that there is a science of physiology which 

 deals with the man who controls the productive machinery. New 

 inventions may completely revolutionise shop equipment, good machines 

 may be replaced by better, and better by still better, but man remains 

 almost as immutable as the ages. Physiological evolution is infinitely 

 slow. As Lee puts it, ' Try as we will we cannot get away from the 

 fact that so long as machines need men, physiological laws must be 

 reckoned with as a factor in industrialism.' Butler in ' Erewhon ' satir- 

 ised in his inimitable way this very problem of the industrial world as 

 follows : ' So that even now the machines will only serve on condition 

 of being served, and that upon their own terms ; the moment their terms 

 are not complied with they jib, and either smash both themselves and 

 all whom they can reach, or turn churlish and refuse to work at all. 

 How many men at this hour are living in a state of bondage to the 

 machines? How many spend their whole lives, from the cradle to the 

 grave, in tending them night and day ? Is it not plain that the machines 

 are gaining ground upon us, when we reflect on the increasing number 

 of those who are bound down to them as slaves and of those who devote 

 their whole souls to the advancement of the mechanical kingdom ? . . . 

 May not man himself become a sort of parasite upon the machines? 

 An affectionate machine-tickling aphid? 



It is a clever picture, and if one looks back on the rise of indus- 

 trialism it is not so very far-fetched. It is but a little more than a 

 hundred years since this country was industrialised, and we are still 

 reaping the aftermath of the terrible conditions which then reigned, 

 when the great centres of industry were swamped with country dwellers 

 who poured into the towns in the race for wealth. Few realise the hope- 

 lessly unphysiological conditions which developed in the methods of 

 work, the hours and conditions of work, the housing. Many talk now 

 of the hardship of the eight hours' day under conditions which are 

 relatively civilised, where the place of labour and the methods and 

 machinery used are supervised by skilled and honest Home Office in- 

 spectors, where child labour is firmly controlled, and where practically 

 all abuses are checked. The following citation from Robert Owen, 

 that shrewd, gullible, high-minded, wrong-headed, illustrious and 



