THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1915. FATIGUE AND ECONOMIC LOSS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16545, 19 November 1915, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1915. FATIGUE AND ECONOMIC LOSS.

We have been able of late to read gratifying accounts of the gigantic organisation of the munition industry in the Old Country and of the immense activity that is being displayed in the output of war material. More cheering testimony to what is being done to-day in the workshops of Great Britain the soldiers at the front could hardly desire than has been supplied by the party of press representatives who visited the munition factories. And it is specially encouraging because it is not so very long since Mr Lloyd George was appealing to the trade unions tb relax their hampering regulations that were causing a restriction of output. One of the difficulties the Minister mentioned was the employment of a large additional body of unskilled workers in face of the objections that were raised by members of certain unions. That difficulty has apparently been overcome. If the objection had been persisted in, the effect would have been to hamper a national undertaking ana also to prejudice the interests of the munition workers as a community. Manifestly the greater the number of workers available to produce the war material that was urgently required the less hardly would the call for an exceptional display of energy fall upon any particular section of them. The strain imposed upon the artisans of a nation in war-time can

I be made too in which case ' the results may be distinctly unfortunate. This point was %vell brought out recently in a discussion in the Economic Science and Statistics Section of the British Association at its meeting at Manchester. The matter was introduced in the report of a committee, presided over by Professor Muirhead, which dealt with the question of fatigue from the economic standpoint. The subject was discussed comprehensively in the light of the number of accidents and the amount of output at various hours of the day, and stress was laid on the importance of rest pauses in the day's work. Apart from individual studies, it was suggested that scientific management had not perhaps spent enough time in searching for the laws of fatigue before setting its standard of intensity of work. The members of the British Association emphatically disclaimed, be it noted, any tolerance for the " ca' canny" policy, framed in the inter ests of a class against which the Minister of Munitions has had to raise his voice. They spoke in the interests of workers who show a different kind of spirit and have offered a highly creditable response to the exceptional call that is being made upon their energies. The general view expressed by the economists was that as there are limits to what workers can do, care should be taken not to exceed these limits, lest in the long run there be a deterioration of capacity and a diminution of output. Dr T. M. Legge, Medical Inspector of Factories for the Government, paid a tribute to the wonderful spirit shown by the workers—especially the women workers—in the tasks which they were at present called upon to perform. Professor Muirhead's somewhat arresting declaration was that statistics showed that fatigue meant " a vast economic loss to the country," and that there were symptoms which showed that there was an immense accumulation of fatigue going on in the country. He argued that it was not a mere academic affair but a matter of plain common sense, that a scientific management should realise the importance of arranging for adequate pauses and rests in the day's work. It is worth noting that in an interview published in the Daily Telegraph Mr Alexander Carlisle, for many years a director of the shij» building firm of Harland and.Wolff, after referring to the report of Professor Muirhead's Committee as "'a timely warning," observes that during forty years' connection with engineering and shipbuilding he had practical experience and proof that continuous overtime, instead of increasing, actually decreased, output. '' There is a lot of overtime going on at the present time in many directions," Mr Carlisle said, "which I look upon as an absolute loss." All this is in contrast to the cry of which we heard much some months ago that a serious source of national anxiety was the difficulty, not of preventing workers from incurring fatigue, but of bringing them as a whole qlass to realise the need for a speeding-up process at a time of great emergency.' But this criticism was applied, it is to be remembered, to a section only of the workers and we cannot doubt that the- British Association has done service in emphasising the importance of taking account of and studying fatigue, and of adapting accordingly the hours of labour in each kind oi work. Those interested in the consideration of various aspects of fatigue and its effects in producing a diminution of muscular force will find much instruction in a translation that has just appeared of a book dealing with the whole subject by Professor Mosso, who occupies the Chair of Physiology at the University of Turin. In his chapter on "The Law of Exhaustion " the author, in discussing the demand modern machinery makes upon the powers of those that tend it, thus depicts what the strain may involve: " One very quickly perceives that these machines are not made to lessen human fatigue, as poets were wont to dream. The velocity of the flying wheels, the whirling of the hammers, and the furious speed at which everything moves, these things tell us that time is an important factor in the progress of industry, and that here in the factory the activity of the workers must conquer the forces of nature. Beside these roaring machines are half-naked men, covered with sweat, hurriedly pursuing enormous weights, which whirl round as if a mysterious hand were raising them. The hiss of the steam, the rattling of the pulleys, the shaking of the joints, the snorting of these gigantic automata, all warn us that they are inexorable in their motion, that man is condemned to follow them without a moment's rest, because every minute wasted consumes time which is worth money, seeing that it renders useless the fuel and movement of these colossi. The least distraction, the least mistake, may drag the workers beneath the grinding teeth of the wheels, and the imagination recoils horror-struck before the mutilations, the deaths, with which these monsters punish the slightest carelessness, the slightest hesitation, on the part of those who direct them." It is iirpossible to assume that in relation to certain industries the pictui-e is overdrawn.