The Work of the Colleges.
It should be the work of the colleges to gather together what has been done in fatigue elimination, and to put it at the disposal of all interested. Each college should start a fatigue museum, and should invite its graduates first, and all those in its vicinity second, to co-operate and to send exhibits or pictures of exhibits to its museum. The colleges are recognized as not interested in any particular industry, as fair and impartial, and as standing for uplift in the community. It is, therefore, their duty to act as repositories for the data, at least until such times as the national government takes over the leadership in the entire fatigue question, and becomes the custodian of the data.
The colleges can help in a second way by making fatigue study a subject in the curriculum. It is not necessary that this be a new subject. It should rather be a new aspect in which the old subjects are presented. Especially in the colleges of engineering and business administration great emphasis should be laid upon fatigue study, both the theory and the practice. It is not essential that the students be sent out into the shops for actual practice in such study, although anything like the half-time plan is to be commended. The student may well apply fatigue study to his own activities. This will present an admirable field and a splendid incentive. After such a study the fatigue problem will never again seem remote or vague to the student. Also the student may well be sent, or taken, on tours of inspection through neighbouring industries, or may be allowed to co-operate in preliminary fatigue surveys. They should learn the general principle of fatigue study, and should become finger-wise. This preparation is identical to that for making motion study, and, in fact, is prerequisite or first step for greatest success in any managerial work.
But the college should not confine its activity in fatigue elimination to the museum, and to training the student who expects to enter the field. They should themselves become examples of successful fatigue elimination. In this way they can do most to cut down waste, and to train our young people to take an active part later in the waste elimination campaign being waged in the world’s work.