TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXII, Issue 3211, 9 May 1932, Page 2

TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

Making Things Easier for the Worker. Grumbles—and often justifiable grumbles—are continually heard from those -who, like Adam, earn their bread by the sweat ot their brows. But even the most disgruntled laborer is forced to admit that things are not by any means so bad as they once were. Here is a paragraph which appeared in a London paper in November, 1828: “Strike of the workmen at the New Palace: Mr. Nash having expressed his determination that the plumbers employed at the New Palace should be allowed only 20 minutes for breakfast and half an hour for dinner, on Wednesday they all struck and declared they would not return to their work unless they were allowed their usual times, viz., half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner.” Can anyone nowadays imagine an employer attempting to alter the plumbers’ mealtimes without even the shadow of a pretence of consulting their representatives? Fines used to be imposed on women workers for such trumped-up charges as “wearing curl-papers” or “dancing to a Jew’s harp during the dinner hour.” When such fines could be enforced it was quite unnecessary to “cut” the workers’ wages. There is a case on record where a woman, after earning sixpence for stitching a pair of trousers, was fined six and sixpence on one pretext and another. She had no wages left to cut! To-day, in most jobs, it has been found not only more humane, but more profitable, to make the worker’s task as pleasant as may be. Welfare work, rest rooms and sports grounds almost go without saying in nearly every large modern industrial undertaking. Moreover, the value of pauses in work is recognised by practically all employers now. Recent researches have proved that the heaviest physical labor is compensated by the longest rest pauses. For example, the men engaged in rolling tin-plates—a very laborious task —rest from fourteen to twenty-eight minutes in every hour! The greatest problem which is being tackled now is how to counteract the deadening monotony of machineminding. In an English factory there are men who have sat on the same bench, cutting off lengths of steel with the same machine, for over 30 years. There is no need for such men to think —their arms make mechanical motions as the machine does, to the time set by the machine. Some men don’t mind this. Others do. It is for the benefit of these others that research is being made. It is urged by the researchers that machinery is creating a finer type of workman than the man who handled a pick or a shovel. They say it takes more brains to watch a machine than to dig or delve. The problem is, therefore, how to'keep the worker alert and awake at his job. One method which is being tried is to design machinery which signals the need for attention by sound instead of by sight. With this machine the worker will be able to read at his work so long as his “Edgar Wallace” doesn’t absorb him to the point of deafness! Another plan, not so attractive, is that a regular stimulus should be given to the machine-minder in the form of a periodic vibration of the platform on which he stands. Music also is being commandeered to make montonous work, such as soap-packing, cigar-making, and so forth, more tolerable, without loss of speed and efficiency. In the cigar factories of Havana readers are employed, who occupy a rostrum in the centre of the workroom and read to the workers from books and newspapers. In at least one English factory a gramophone keeps the girls lively and busy. Even Japanese coolies will not work unless they are permitted to enjoy their shanty music. As in the old days of shell-backs and windjammers, the coolies have a regular shantyman, who sets the time for the swing of their picks, which rise and fall to the tune. The psychological effect on the men’s energy and power of endurance is undeniable. There is hope ever for clerks, it seems, for the Japanese clerk, too, employs a shantyman whenever there is a large number of objects to be counted or documents checked! In another curious occupation the only way to keep the worker up to the required standard is to send her out for a walk! This occupation is tomato grading, which is such a delicate business that no machine yet invented can do it satisfactorily without bruising the fruit. The women who actually do the grading have by long practice acquired the knack of estimating weight of a tomato at sight. Like lightning their busy hands flash from one case to another, selecting and distributing the different grades. But when they have been at their delicate task for some hours there comes a time when the overseer notices faults in the grading. The worker has become weight-blind! She is sent out for a walk, and invariably returns with this elusive quality in full working order again.