The Press Saturday, January 7, 1928. The Human Side of Industry.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19202, 7 January 1928, Page 12

The Press Saturday, January 7, 1928. The Human Side of Industry.

Lord Balfour has always presented a happy blend of the abstract philosopher and the practical statesman, and it is this combination which renders his continued Presidency of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology so fruitful for the operations of that body. In its early stages the Institute was regarded with suspicion as a group of faddists, who were applying their philosophic theories in departments which had no relation to them, and, in consequence, were spreading disturbance and discontent among industrial workers. But, as Lord Balfour pointed out at the last meeting of the Institute, precisely similar objections were raised a few generations ago to the application of scientific discovery and the laws of Nature to the business of manufacture. If we examine the most approved text-books of that period, we shall find very little reference to the bearing of advanced scientific discovery either on the technical processes ! of manufacture or on the economic processes of the creation of wealth. Now the application of science to industry is being promoted, not only by scientific enthusiasts, but by industrial magnates, who have an eye mainly to their own interest. So far so good for the machine. But we have now to advance a stage further, and bring the same intelligence, sympathy, and open-minded-ness to bear on the most complex of all machines, the human machine. After all, this is not so much of a startling novelty as it appears. A great deal has been done already in the way of alleviating the lot of the workman by provision against sickness, against accidents, against unemployment, against old age.

And, in addition to all this, the British Government has, in regular operation, a Committee on Industrial Fatigue; but that is only a branch of a larger organisation, -which occupies itself with medical research in general. The machinery for this organisation is supplied by Government, and it carries on its operations under Government supervision. But one important difference must be noted. The Government organisation concerns itself with workers in bulk: with men as men, with women as women, with children as children. It does not, except incidentally, investigate the cases of individuals, or the suitability of specific individuals for the specific.occupations in which they are respectively engaged. Here is where an independent body, like the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, comes in. It aims at supplementing the Government operations, not competing with them, and it has a much freer hand in pursuing its investigations. It carries with it no taint of possible political designs. It arouses no suspicions of sinister motives or underhand interference. It inspires confidence from the. outset, and the result is that employers of labour, so far from resenting its intervention, welcome it. The extent to which the initiative in inviting examination comes from the employers is increasing with increasing confidence. The personal touch is the vital nerve-centre of the Institute's operations; and it is just the element which a Government Committee is ill adapted to reach. To paraphrase Lord Balfour: the Departments of Government connected with research (with which he himself is closely associated) are concerned with (too often) costly fundamental investigations, which apply equally to a vast number of wholly different and disparate industries, and'may be of equal use to all of them, simply because they depend on the same fundamental laws . of Nature, which it is the business of the Committee or Department to investigate. Individual fluctuations and aberrations do not come within their ken. The functions of the National Institute in the problem are not a mere matter of psychological curiosity; they arc a matter of immense practical importance—to employers, employed, and the community at large. Instead of joining in the parrot-cry, "output must be "increased," the Institute's investigators set themselves to get at the bedrock of the causes and conditions which militate against increase of output, and which even tend to diminish it. Working on two lines of investigation, they find these causes to be, in some cases, temperamental—that is, to have their roots in the nervous or mental conditions of the workers; in other cases to be due to the environment, tone, or I ways and methods of the shop or factory in which they work. In the former group of cases the chief obstacle to production is found to be a want of elasticity or buoyancy on the part of the worker. And when this is probed still further, it is found to rest either on a constitutional repugnance or antipathy to the work itself, or on a dislike and discontent towards supervisors and employers and towards the ways and methods of the factory generally. So that the want of elasticity or buoyancy, which at first sight appeared to be temperamental, is often found on closer investigation to have its roots really in distaste for environment, even though the worker himself may have no vivid, distinct consciousness of such distaste. Even a limited amount of psychology is enough to teach us that surroundings may have a depressing effect without our recognising any conscious association between them. And so it is with true psychologic instinct that the investigators direct their attention first of all to the conditions under which the operatives work, the spirit in which they are treated, the provision made for their comfort, relaxation, and mental development, the measures taken for their safety, and so on. But their ultimate goal is the individual worker himself or herself. And their ultimate problem is this: by what processes or modifications can this man (or this woman) be made to produce a larger output, with greater spontaneity and a smaller expenditure of nervous force and physical strain! It is a problem that demands for its solution the best that science can give, supported by tie enlightened sympathy

of humanity at large. We may remark in conclusion that for the purposes of this article deliberate limitation of output at the behest of an external body is excluded from consideration.