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.
The Work of the Manager.
The fatigue study and the installation which must follow it to be done by the manager have been outlined in this book. The manager who has put his own plant at such a stage of improvement that unnecessary fatigue is cut out to a great extent, and that recovery from necessary fatigue is provided for, has contributed greatly to the cause, but his work should not end here. He should educate those with whom he comes in contact on the subject of fatigue elimination. He should co-operate with those in his own neighbourhood, and also with those in his own trade towards solving the fatigue problem peculiar to the locality or the trade.
The Home Reading Box has been successfully installed by a group of manufacturers engaged in the same trade. This particular work furnishes an admirable starting point, and is a great help in arousing local interest. If even a few interested in the same trade in various parts of the country will co-operate, it will soon be possible, through trade journals, and through a general demand for equipment designed from the fatigue standpoint, to revolutionize fatigue conditions in that industry. Editors and writers of papers of all types have been quick to see the benefits of fatigue elimination, and to offer to co-operate in a campaign for education. Manufacturers have been equally eager to satisfy any demands which may be made. The managers can have a large share in making such demands, and in encouraging the support of publications in which they are interested.
The Work of the Worker.
The worker has two chief ways in which he can help in fatigue elimination. The first is to co-operate with the management in installing fatigue elimination methods and devices in the particular plant in which they are both interested. The second is to help to make fatigue elimination fashionable. This latter duty lies with no one but the worker himself. No new methods spread more quickly than the “fashion of work.” There is nothing of which a well run plant is more proud than the “way” it works, the work spirit. The whole idea must be that it is a disgrace to have causes of unnecessary fatigue existing. Overfatigue is a positive proof of inefficiency. There is no fear but that the workers will recognize these duties, and will perform them heartily and with good will, when they know that they are getting a square deal. It is right that they should make very sure that they are going to receive such treatment, and that fatigue study is not a new scheme for taking advantage of them, but they must be ready to listen to the proof and to accept it when they are convinced that it is true. Having accepted it, and thus made sure that they are safe in co-operating, the next step is to help actively in the good work.