Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE RESERVES OF PERSONAL EFFICIENCY The increase of product per hour, which we have seen so generally accompanying the reduction of the hours of work, has in some cases been aided by the improvement or speeding of the machinery in use, but the aid derived from this quarter has been after all surprisingly small, and in all cases much the greatest part of the effect, in many cases the whole of it, must be ascribed to the improvement and speeding of the personal agent in production. I have quoted the case of cotton mills in Lancashire, of which the details are given by Mr. Horner and in which out of 22 worth, more work done in the ten hours only 5 worth, or one-fourth of the result, could be ascribed to increased speeding of machinery, and the remaining 17, or more than three-fourths of the whole, came from closer attention and greater accuracy of work on the part of the operatives. In Switzerland, the usual increase of speed in the machinery was only 2J per cent., while theincrease of product per hour was 8 per cent. Change of the machinery itself was of course always much less frequent than change in the speed of the machinery, so much less frequent that it would not affect the general result. The change from which that mainly accrued was a change in the physical and mental energies of the workpeople themselves. Indeed in many factories, and in some whole trades, no other change had taken place. Various expedients, no doubt, were often practised for the purpose of whipping up these energies to their utmost exertion. Piece-work may have been substituted for day-work, or overlookers been paid a premium on the output; but after all is told, there remains the great fact without which no amount of whipping would have been effectual, that under the shorter ho…
