November 24, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



731 



laborers has thereby been benefited is 

 testified to by many observers, and this is 

 equivalent, in other words, to an improved 

 physiological status among them. 



The economic argument, that industry 

 can thrive only with a long working-day 

 and that any curtailment of it would be de- 

 structive, is perennial and has often been 

 potent in discussion. This argument can 

 be met very effectively by pointing to the 

 effects of shortening the working-period on 

 the quantity and quality of output in man- 

 ufacture. These effects are so uniform that 

 it may be stated as a general law that upon 

 reduction of the daily hours of labor the 

 average quantity of the output of the in- 

 dividual worker undergoes a preliminary 

 decrease, then a return to the original 

 amount, and finally a permanent increase. 

 This augmentation of output occurs, not 

 only with a reduction to ten, but even to 

 eight, hours. Instances of this are nu- 

 merous. Thus, the very careful study by 

 Professor Abbe of the effects of reducing 

 the working-day in the Zeiss Optical "Works 

 in Jena from nine to eight hours shows an 

 average increase of about three per cent, in 

 the daily output of the employees. A cer- 

 tain steel works in England reports that 

 each of its machines turns out in eight 

 hours the same amount of work formerly 

 produced in nine hours. In the steel-sheet 

 and tin-plate trades of South "Wales it is 

 stated that after the change from the 

 twelve- to the eight-hour day the increase 

 of output in the rolling-mills amounted to 

 twenty, and in the open-hearth melting 

 process to twelve and one-half, per cent. 

 In the year following the introduction of 

 the eight-hour day into some of the coal 

 mines of South Yorkshire it was reported 

 that the production was "greatly in excess 

 of what was ever produced by an equal 

 number of men when the men worked 

 twelve or thirteen hours." In the mining 

 of bituminous coal in the state of Illinois 



during the three years previous to a re- 

 duction, in 1897, of the working-day from 

 ten to eight hours the average amount of 

 coal turned out daily by each individual 

 was 2.72 tons and during the subsequent 

 three years 3.16 tons, an increase of 16 per 

 cent. The president of a granite-cutting 

 company which had kept for many years a 

 careful record of each employee's work, 

 writes in 1912 that the system 



shows that the same man under identically the 

 same conditions, accomplished more, of exactly the 

 same kind of work when he was working nine hours, 

 than he did when he was working ten hours, and 

 again when the hours were reduced to eight hours 

 this same man accomplished still more in an eight- 

 hour day than he did in a nine-hour day, or a con- 

 siderable amount more than he did when the day 

 was ten hours long. 



A German proprietor of glass-works re- 

 ports that in a very short time after the re- 

 duction of the working-day from twelve and 

 eleven to eight hours "there was produced, 

 without increase of staff, as much as before 

 the reduction"; and a proprietor of glass 

 works in the north of France says : 



I must acknowledge that the men produce just 

 as much, if not more, in their seven and a half 

 hours ' actual work than during the ten-hour day 

 that preceded it. 



At the Engis Chemical "Works near 

 Liege, where a very exact study was made 

 of the results of introducing the eight-hour 

 day, it was reported that 



In an eight-hours' day (seven and one half 

 hours' actual work) the same men at the same fur- 

 naces with the same tools and raw material have 

 produced as much as before in a twelve-hour day 

 (ten hours' actual work). 



A very significant comparison of the ef- 

 fects of long and short hours was made in 

 connection with the building in the same 

 years of two of our battleships, the Louisi- 

 ana and the Connecticut. The Louisiana 

 was built at Newport News by a private 

 company working its men ten hours a day ; 

 the Connecticut was built at the Brooklyn 



