Effect on Health and Output Employers particularly and social welfare workers at Home generally found much to interest them in the omnual report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops for the year 1919. Among a multiplicity of subjects dealt with are those of the shorter hours now worked, and their effect on health and output. The general fleet of the reports conveys an impression somewhat at variance with popular ideas on the subject.
These reports from inspectors show that the shortening of the hours has had a beneficial effect on the operatives, perhaps more so than any other recent improvement in industrial conditions. Better time-keeping has been the result of discontinuing work before breakfast. There is also less absence' for sickness and other reasons. In one large factory the average daily absentees numbered some years ago 40; now, with a 44-hour week, the average number of daily absentees has dropped to 10. In a large laundry the inspector reports there was a marked improvement in attendance, not only less sickness, but fewer cases of absence for general reasons, such as attending to home affairs, the worker being better able to cope with these under the new hours of work. Less fatigue and overstrain are found in factories, and although more men are employed in engineering and allied trades the. ac~ cident list has not increased. Increased leisure has been utilized by many workers for the purposes of educationa] advancement.
Sou. Statistics.
Ab is not surprising to read that. the reports of the various inspectors disclose wide differences of experience as to the effect on production of the shorter hours, When the production depended almost entirely on the speed of machinery—as in cotton or woollen spinning—the output was said to be reduced in a proportion nearly, if not fully, corresponding to the reduction in hours. In other machine operations which cal] for constant alertness on the part of the operator (@g., weaving), output had not suffered to this extent, and in exceptional cases had scarcely been affected at all. In a third class of process, where output was largely or entirely dependent upon the exertion of the worker, there was frequently no loss in proditetion; indeed, in one wholesale tailoring establishment an increase of 40 per cent, was reported (partly due to reorganization); while in a boot factory, where the hours of work were reduced from 52 to 48 per week, there was a considerable increase in output. Unfortunately a few of the reports indicated an extremely unfavourable result in some works, where the shortening of hours had been followed by a reduction in the hourly rate of production, and for this result no adequate explanation had, as a rule, been given, Some attention is devoted to the institution of the shift system, to which employers were driven' by the reduction in output caused by reduced hours: coupled with an urgent demand for goods, Factories could not be immediately expanded, hence resort to relays of workers in order to utilize the plant to its fullest extent.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.