SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
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Industrial Fatigue. By Lord Henry Bentinck. (P. S. King. 6d. net.)—This valuable little pamphlet deals with the relation between hours of work and output, and shows very conclusively that long hours and overtime do not pay the workmen or the em- ployer. The cases cited are most instructive. In a Yorkshire mill, a reduction of the working week from fifty-five and a half to forty-five hours caused an immediate reduction of output by ten per cent., but after a few weeks the output was only five per cent. less than before; when the hours were increased to fifty the output was larger than it had ever been in a week of fifty-five and a half hours. In a surgical dressing factory, the women em- ployed produced far more in an eight-hour day than they had done in a twelve-hour day. In an engineering works, a reduction of the week from fifty-four to forty-eight hours saved a great deal of lost time, and only four out of two hundred and three women on piece-work failed to earn as much as before. Lord Henry Bentinck points out also that sickness, occasioned by long hours and over- strain, is a far more serious factor in industry than is generally realized. Employers would do well to read his pamphlet.
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