ther if they assume that progress can be made and do their part in the necessary experimentation to find the means. The familiar straw man, the European competitor, comes at an inauspicious time now that Europe is sending commissions here to study our mechanical progress and to find the "secret of high wages". Methods that have led to progress in the past should not be denied another trial.

The American Federation of Labor resolved to work for the shorter work week, fully conscious that all industries are not equally prepared to introduce the forty hour week. Because we believe that the shorter work week is industrially practicable and expedient and socially wise, organized labor offers its coöperation in developing technical changes and conditions under which the shorter work week can go into effect and usher in a period in which the workers shall find new and greater opportunities for growth and service both as workers and as citizens. The joint efforts of management and those who use the tools and machinery to carry out work orders, will put all past experience to work to find the way to the next big change.

There are industries that should now consider plans for the five day week: these are mining, construction, automobiles, garmentmaking and textiles.

A part of this higher gearing of industry to maintain output can be expected to grow out of the five day week as its natural effect upon the human part of the industrial mechanism. Experience has proved that the effect of shortening hours is to increase output per hour, and this has not only been demonstrated once or twice but has been the general experience. Allowing a period of one or two months for adjustment, reductions from a twelve hour to an eight hour shift, and from a ten hour to an eight hour shift, in a shell manufacturing operation and glass manufacturing, respectively, have given a nineteen and a half per cent. and a ten per cent. increase in hours of production, and in the Minnegua steel plant of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company the change from the twelve hour to the eight hour day has resulted in a greater hourly production in every department, according to Mr. Weldon, president of the company. Even where the operation is machine controlled, shorter hours have produced a greater hourly

output. Studies of women turning fuse bodies in a munition plant show the following results: when working 66 hours a week they turned out 100 units of production an hour; when working 54 hours, 134 units; and when reduced to 45 hours per week, 158 units. When the hours are reduced below eight a day the increase continues. In the tinplate industry in South Wales reductions from eight to six hours a day brought increases of 4.7 per cent., 8.5 per cent. and 10.6 per cent. in hourly production in three factories investigated. In another factory where hours were reduced from eight to four the increase was 11.5 per cent. Over a period of time the effect of shorter hours is cumulative, the greater physical capacity of the men being reflected in continually rising production curves over a period of several months and sometimes a year or more following the reduction in hours.

All this goes to show that the element of fatigue is an important factor in industrial waste and that the maximum efficiency of the human machine can be had only when rest periods allow ample time for recuperation. The time needed for complete recuperation must be greater where specialization and mechanical devices reduce the workman's part to the constant repetition of a few motions at a high rate of speed. Here monotony and nervous tension produce a greater strain than in work involving greater variety. Certain scientific investigations in England have placed the work time which under existing conditions give the maximum efficiency of the human machine, at forty hours a week.

Another means of maintaining output under a shortened work week schedule is that of stabilizing the industry to prevent seasonal rush and slack periods. Many of our industries are now operating only two-thirds or three-fourths of the working year, owing to seasonal fluctuations and other controllable elements. By eliminating as far as possible seasonal ups and downs, the operation period can be regularized and a larger total yearly output be produced. In the boot and shoe industry, an industry much affected by changes in style and seasonal fluctuations, certain firms have made an intensive study of sales and markets, and through special efforts came twenty per cent. nearer to running full time. This was done by interweaving the manufacture of staples and novelties so as to make up stock in staples during

slack periods, by working up advance information on sales, and by coöperation between different manufacturing plants and allied trades. In the building industry seasonal depression has been overcome through winter building programmes, which have equalized constructions through the year and resulted in larger yearly output and saving in overhead expenses due to idle equip

ment.

W. J. Lynch, vice-president of the Thompson Starrett Company of Chicago, made a careful survey of the unit costs of concrete work, form work and brick work on five large jobs, which clearly showed that the average unit costs of winter operations are as favorable, if not more so, than summer work. He asserted that winter construction is not only practical but desirable, with direct benefit to owner, builder and labor and to the community at large.

Similar experiments have been found successful in other industries, notably in the garment industry, where the five day week is now in effect in larger markets, and in the repair shops of some railroads where a system of union management coöperation has been in effect. These results are suggestive of what may be accomplished by scientific handling of fluctuation problems and of the possibility of spreading output over a longer period, with consequent savings and increases, of using our present industrial equipment to more nearly its full capacity and taking care of unemployment by week and holidays throughout the year, rather than by resorting to seasonal lay-offs.

One of the phases of the shorter work week planning which must be treated most seriously, is that of costs involved. However, we know that increasing the costs of any one element entering into production does not need to increase the production cost unit. Production involves dynamic forces. If any one operates under changed conditions, change may be expected in the performance of other factors.

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In considering the costs of the shorter work period as compared with costs under former conditions, we are handicapped by the inadequacy of the records kept by industry. The National Industrial Conference Board has issued a few research reports based on questionnaires without checking up to find out whether deductions were based upon similar or comparable bases. The

importance of such checking up is evident when we consider under what diverse conditions the shorter workday has been introduced in different industries. In some instances there was no adjustment of wage rates; in others, particularly in a time of increases in wages, rates were increased; sometimes management planned to make the shorter workday more efficient; sometimes management failed to assume this responsibility; sometimes management asked the coöperation of labor, sometimes not. All of these factors affect labor costs under the shorter work period. This explains also the diverse opinions on output and costs resulting from shorter work period proposals.

However, it is plain that from the standpoint of national and social progress, the shorter work period is a desirable goal. It is also plain that planning, invention and persistence can find increasingly better ways of doing the same job. This makes it practical to set a definite goal such as the American Federation of Labor adopted at its Detroit convention, and then mobilize all the agencies that can contribute to the realization of this ideal.

The organized labor movement is the standard making agency for all labor in America. It is the only agency that can speak for those that work for wages and it is the custodian of industrial experience and craft skill, as well as the welfare of those who use the tools and handle the materials of production.

Labor power is an indispensable factor in production. However powerful and efficient machinery becomes, there is always need for human control and human judgment in its use. Labor knows that if the area it controls is widened by power and machinery, it needs more vitality and resourcefulness of mind and body in order to keep pace with progress and remain master of the production process instead of being controlled by it.

For these reasons Labor through its trade unions offers its cöoperation in working out the production problems necessary to continued progress. With Labor's coöperation, management can make quicker and greater progress than without. Labor cannot enter into such agreements except through its own agencies which it controls.

The offer of trade unions awaits the decision of industries.

ECONOMIC SANITY IN EUROPE

BY HARTLEY WITHERS

Former Editor of The London Economist

It has been well said that though man cannot live by bread alone, he cannot live, even a good life, very long, unless he is provided with a certain amount of sustenance; and there is little need in these days to insist that the enjoyment of a reasonable supply of ease and comfort has a most beneficial effect on the state of mind of the average human being.

Material progress in a war-shattered world has thus an importance which is beginning to be recognized by the most convinced idealists; and signs of improvement in this respect are eagerly looked for by those who want to see the nations living together in friendship, working in unison for the great victories that are possible over the evils that still stain our civilization, instead of continually quarrelling, if not actually fighting, about matters which seem, to the next generation, to be quite irrelevant bugbears.

Cynical folk find it easy to raise a laugh over the dreams of worldwide betterment which most of us dreamed when the War was ended-dreams which ended, or seemed to end, in a trade boom which was based on miscalculations, followed by a disastrous collapse from the effects of which only the United States have so far succeeded in freeing themselves. But those laugh best who laugh last, and it has yet to be seen whether those dreams may not come true, and whether mankind is not, even in this year which has been marked by so much progress backward in Europe, England and elsewhere, awakening to a saner outlook on the tasks that face it and on the mistakes which have foiled its efforts to deal with them.

That progress has been, in many respects, backward on the Old World's side of the Atlantic during the early part of 1926 is only too evident. In March of this year Mr. Walter Leaf,