THE SCIENCE OF BEING TIRED.

There is a story, venerable for its antiquity, concerning a workingman who sought counsel of his medical adviser. “It’s this way, doctor,” said the sufferer ; “I eats well, I drinks well, and I sleeps well; but directly I try to do a stroke of work I come over all of a tremble.” The distressing complaint is not uncommon, especially in its milder manifestations. “That tired feeling,” which assails the manual worker has often been noticed. They have paid particular attention to it in America, where the hustle comes from. Employers there wish to save their men from excessive fatigue, partly from kindness of heart, partly from the national passion for efficiency. A tired workman is evidently not so efficient as one who is fresh; the maximum output cannot be got from him when the strain is too great. So Science, the attentive handmaiden of Commerce, has been instructed to go into the matter. Physiologists, anthropometrists, nerve specialists have weighed and measured and tested and analysed the causes and conditions of industrial fatigue. They have worked out the “Taylor system,” which is much esteemed, in the United States, and is being rather widely adopted. Many enlightened employers are Taylorising their establishments. They are endeavouring to ascertain how many hours of labour daily yield the maximum results, and how far the allowance should be varied in different occupations. Minute researches have been undertaken to discover what is the most economical mode of dividing the labour day, and how often it should be broken by intervals of rest. These are merely elementary points, earnest students probe deeper. They find that the fatigue scale rises or falls with the nature of the work, and they are compiling elaborate tables showing the relative amount of energy expended in diverse pursuits. Some enthusiastic reformers even suggest that instead of paying and being paid in currency (mostly depreciated), we shall barter “labour equivalents” one against the other.- When we require a new umbrella we shall be told that the article represents, say, two shifts of coal-mining or three hours’ futurist painting. We shall buy, not a loaf of bread, but so much baking time; not a book, but the days occupied in printing and binding it, with, perhaps, a trifle thrown in for the writing. This may be for the future. For the present it is enough to have fatigue and its effects understood, and so to be able to reduce and regulate it. The authorities of St. Mary’s Hospital are so impressed by the importance of the subject that they are inviting great manufacturing and mercantile firms to provide them with the means to found a Chair of Industrial Medicine, They think the firms will respond, because the propose Faculty will make the “human machine” a more valuable element in industry. Trained experts will be attached to every factory to see that the “machine” does not take too much out of itself. The danger does not seem acute at the moment, though it is undoubtedly true that overwork in factories and shops was common enough in the days of war stress Perhaps the specialists may point out that too little work is no healthier than too much, and that a strong man, in the prime of life, is not actually required, on hygienic grounds, to make every Saturday a whole holiday. This would not assist their popularity with those advanced circles where the ideal of a sixhour day and a five-day week is cherished. On the other hand they would have much support for their contention that toil should not be monotonous or uninterrupted. Frequent breaks are recommended to relieve the tendon. Dulness, it is held, is as harmful as actual fatigue. While it is possible to push this theory beyond the limits of the practical, the ideas of industrial betterment to which the war gave such an impetus are none the less sound in principle. In England, as in America, much has already been done to render the factory more “home like,” and the increasing number of “welfare” inspectors is an index of real progress. It is an encouraging fact that many of these new-model installations are very different from the workshops of the past, where no pains were taken to promote the comfort or protect the health of the workers. The process, in short, is in full accordance with modern ideas, and none will quarrel with it so long as it abides by the canons of reason.