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Show uu REDUCED HOURS. The national industrial conference board has just issued some interesting i statistics on the matter of shorter hours. These figures cover Ihe collective experience or 436 manufacturing es (ablishmenls employing 373,536 work-ors. work-ors. In S7.2 per cent of the establish mentfl studied a reduction to a work week of 48 hours or less was accompanied accom-panied by a decrease in weekly output per worker. In 8.7 per cent of the plants the workers wero able to main-tain main-tain weekly production per worker, ftttd In 4.1 per cent weekly output per I worker was increased. It was found, the report says, that I the character of the work, that Is. j whether tho process was largely handwork hand-work or machine work, for the most part determined whether or not it was i possible to Sncreaso hourly output In : those Industries, such as cotton manufacturing; manu-facturing; where highly automatic machine processes predominated, the) j output was limited almost entirely to I the speed of the machine. But where hand-work predominated it was possible to Increase the hourly output of the workers, in some cases to the extent of entirely compensating for the loss in work time and even exceeding the previous weekly produc lion. The report seems to prove; 1 Employes do better and faster work in a short -hour day 2 There is need for better and faster machine processes. |