December 1, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



783 



Ohio State University, November 16. Among 

 the speakers were Professor Horace Judd and 

 Professor F. W. Marquis, both of the depart- 

 ment of mechanical engineering of this uni- 

 versity. 



The Electrical World states that this year 

 America's Electrical Week will be inaugurated 

 by the first permanent flood-lighting of the 

 Statue of Liberty on the evening of December 

 2. President Wilson and a distinguished 

 gathering of diplomats and industrial leaders 

 will officiate at a program of ceremonies start- 

 ing in lower New York harbor and concluding 

 at a banquet to the nation's executive in the 

 Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Mayor Mitchel, of 

 New York City, has named a committee of 

 some two hundred representative men in the 

 electrical industry and in business and civic 

 life, who will escort President Wilson. and his 

 party during the inaugural. A committee on 

 arrangement has charge of an electric vehicle 

 parade starting from the Battery and pass- 

 ing up Broadway to Lafayette Street, over 

 Fifth Avenue to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. 

 The official ceremony of rededicating the statue 

 will take place at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. 

 Ambassador Jusserand, who will present a 

 special message from the President of France, 

 and ex-Senator Chauncey M. Depew, who de- 

 livered the main oration of the statue thirty 

 years ago on October 28, will deliver orations, 

 to which it is expected the President will reply 

 briefly. 



A government investigation of industrial 

 fatigue by physiologic methods has just been 

 made by Dr. Stanley Kent, the physiologist, 

 and is summarized in the Journal of the 

 American Medical Association. The report is 

 divided into three sections. The first deals 

 with fatigue as a result of overtime. It is 

 stated that when the week-end rest is sus- 

 pended, fatigue will persist; residual fatigue 

 resulting from inadequate rest leads to lowered 

 efficiency and lessened output. Overtime pe- 

 riods worked on consecutive days produce more 

 fatigue than if separated by days of ordinary 

 length. Overtime induces more fatigue late 

 in the week than it does early in the week. 

 Overtime is physiologically and economically 

 extravagant. It frequently fails in achieving 



its object, as the following case shows: A girl 

 in one of the works frequently did not attend 

 during overtime. She also habitually began 

 work at 8 :30 instead of 6 a.m. Thus she usu- 

 ally worked only eight hours a day, instead of 

 twelve. When asked the reason, she replied 

 that the extra rest enabled her to work so much 

 more quickly that she was able easily to make 

 up for the lost time. The second section of 

 the report deals with the influence of fatigue 

 and of overtime on output. The total daily 

 output may be diminished by the introduction 

 of overtime, for the rate of working and total 

 output are limited by fatigue rather than by 

 other conditions. A group of piece workers 

 increased their earnings considerably as a re- 

 sult of a diminution in the length of the work- 

 ing day. In the third section it is stated that 

 the total output of a factory is a question of 

 adjustment of the factors concerned, the prin- 

 cipal of these being the actual time worked and 

 the actual rate of working. Reduction of the 

 latter will soon counterbalance increase of the 

 former, and thus overtime frequently leads 

 to a diminution of total output. The health 

 of the worker, on which his rate of working 

 and his endurance depends, is prejudiced by 

 overtime and to a less extent by work in the 

 early morning hours. The suspension of over- 

 time was followed in every case by an improve- 

 ment in conditions of the worker, and was 

 found to effect a saving of 4.5 per cent. The 

 experiments on which the foregoing conclu- 

 sions are based were carried out with great 

 care and by means of all kinds of ingenious 

 apparatus for testing attention and working 

 power. Both male and female labor was em- 

 ployed in the factories concerned. Dr. Kent 

 also points out that the evidence is against 

 Sunday labor, which is liable to prove " dis- 

 astrous." As a result, the minister of muni- 

 tions has stopped all Sunday work in the fac- 

 tories producing munitions. 



In a lecture before the Boyal Society of 

 Arts on November 3, Professor William Stir- 

 ling, of the University of Manchester, said 

 that the insatiable demand for shells, guns 

 and other munitions of war had made the prob- 

 lem of industrial fatigue suddenly acute. The 

 problem to be solved, and it was being solved, 



