It would seem probable that such experiments might also win psychotechnical significance. A short series of tests which would have to be adapted to the special situations, and which for the simple wage-earner would have to be much easier than those sketched above, would allow it to be determined beforehand whether an individual will suffer from repetition in work. Even if we abstract from arguments of social reform and consider exclusively the economic significance, it must seem important that labor which involves much repetition be performed by men and women whose mental dispositions favor an easy grasp of successive uniform impressions. Experimentation could secure the selection of the fit workmen and the complaint of monotony would disappear. The same selection could be useful in the opposite direction, as many economic occupations, especially in our time of automatic machines, demand a quick and often rhythmical transition from one activity to another. It is evident that those whose natural dispositions make every mental excitement a preparation not for the identical but for the contrasting stimulation will be naturally equipped for this kind of economic tasks.
XVII
ATTENTION AND FATIGUE
The problem of monotony may lead us on to other conditions through which attention is hindered and the product of labor thereby decreased. The psychologist naturally first thinks of external distractions of attention. If he turns to practical studies of the actual economic life, he is often decidedly surprised to find how little regard is given to this psychophysical factor. In industrial establishments in which the smallest disturbance in the machine is at once remedied by a mechanic in order that the greatest possible economic effect may be secured, frequently nobody takes any interest in the most destructive disturbances which unnecessarily occur in the subtlest part of the factory mechanism, namely, the attention apparatus of the laborers. Such an interference with attention must, for instance, be recognized when the workingman, instead of devoting himself to one complex function, has to carry out secondary movements which appear to be quite easily performed and not to hinder him in his chief task. Often his own feeling may endorse this impression. Of course the individual differences in this direction are very great. The faculty of carrying on at the same time various independent functions is unequally distributed and the experiment can show this clearly. It is also well known from practical life that some men can easily go on dictating to a stenographer while they are affixing their signature to several hundred circular letters, or can continue their fluent lecture while they are performing experimental demonstrations. With others such a side activity continually interrupts the chief function. Then some succeed better than others in securing a certain automatism of the accessory function to such a point that its special acts do not come to consciousness at all. For example, I watched a laborer who was constantly engaged in a complicated technical performance, and he seemed to give to it his full attention. Nevertheless he succeeded in moving a lever on an automatic machine which stood near by whenever a certain wheel had made fifty revolutions. During all his work he kept counting the revolutions without being conscious of any idea of number. A system of motor reactions had become organized which remained below the threshold of consciousness and which produced only at the fiftieth recurrence the conscious psychical impulse to perform the lever movement. Yet whether the talent for such simultaneous mastery of independent functions be greater or smaller and the demand more or less complex, in every case the principal action must be hampered by the side issue. To be sure, it may sometimes be economically more profitable to allow the hindrance to the chief work in order to save the expense of an extra man to do the side work. In most cases, however, such a consideration is not involved; it is simply an ignoring of the psychological situation. As the accessory work seems easy, its hindering influence on other functions is practically overlooked. Psychological laboratory experiments have shown in many different directions that simultaneous independent activities always disturb and inhibit one another.
We must not forget that even the conversations of the laborers belong in this psychophysical class. Where a continuous strain of attention has produced a state of fatigue, a short conversation will bring a certain relief and relaxation, and the words which the speaker hears in reply will produce a general stimulation of psychical energy for the moment. Moreover, the mere existence of the social conversational intercourse will raise the general emotional mood, and this feeling of social pleasure may be the source from which may spring new psychophysical powers. Nevertheless the fundamental fact, after all, is that any talking during the labor, so far as it is not necessary for the work itself, surely involves a distraction of attention. Here, too, the individual is not conscious of the effect. He feels certain that he can perform his task just as well, and even the piece-worker, who is anxious to earn as much as possible, is convinced that he does not retard himself by conversation. But the experiments which have been carried on in establishments with scientific management speak decidedly against such a supposition. A tyrannical demand for silence would, of course, be felt as cruelty, and no suggestion of a jail-like discipline would be wise in the case of industrial labor, for evident psychological reasons. But various factories in rearranging their establishments according to the principles of scientific management have changed the positions of the workmen so that conversations become more difficult or impossible. The result reported seems to be everywhere a significant increase of production. The individual concentrates his mind on the task with an intensity which seems beyond his reach as long as the inner attitude is adjusted to social contact. The help which is rendered by the feeling of social coöperation, on the other hand, is not removed by the mere abstaining from speaking. Interesting psychopedagogical experiments have, indeed, demonstrated that working in a common room produces better results than isolated activity. This is not true of the most brilliant, somewhat nervous school children, who achieve in their own room at home more than in the classroom. But for the average, which almost alone is in question for life in the factory, the consciousness of common effort is a source of psychophysical reinforcement. This evidently remains effective when the workingmen can see one another, even if the arrangement of the seats precludes the possibility of chatting during the work.
However, by far the more important cause of distraction of attention lies in those disturbances which come from without. Here again the chief interest ought to be attached to those interferences which the workman himself no longer feels as such. In a great printing-shop a woman who was occupied with work which demanded her fullest attention was seated at her task in an aisle where trucking was done. Removing this operator to a quiet corner caused an increase of 25 per cent in her work.[40] To be sure there are many such disturbances in factory life which can hardly be eliminated with the technical means of to-day. For instance, the noise of the machines, which in many factories makes it impossible to communicate except by shouting, must be classed among the real psychological interferences in spite of the fact that the laborers themselves usually feel convinced that they no longer notice it at all. Still more disturbing are strong rhythmical sounds, such as heavy hammer blows which dominate the continuous noises, as they force on every individual consciousness a psychophysical rhythm of reaction which may stand in strong contrast to that of a man's own work. From the incessant inner struggle of the two rhythms, the one suggested by the labor, the other by the external intrusion, quick exhaustion becomes unavoidable.
If it were our purpose to elaborate a real system of psychological economics, we should have to proceed here to a careful study of the influences of fatigue on the industrial achievement. We should have to discuss the various kinds of fatigue and exhaustion, the conditions of restoration, and the whole group of related problems of psychophysics. But this is the one field which has been thoroughly ploughed over by science and by practical life in the course of the last decades. No new suggestion and no new hint of the importance of the problem is needed here. Our short discussion was planned to be confined to those regions which have not been worked up in systematic investigations and for which new devices seemed desirable. Hence we do not reproduce here the rich material of facts which the physiologists and psychophysicists have brought together in the last half-century, the importance of which for industrial labor is perfectly evident. Moreover, the practical applications and the insight into the social needs have transformed the factories themselves into one big laboratory in which the problem of fatigue has been studied by practical experiments. The problem of the dependence of fatigue and output upon the length of the working day has been tested in numberless places with the methods of really exact research, as it was easy to find out how the achievement of the laborers became quantitatively and qualitatively changed by the shortening of the working hours.
When in one civilized country after another the exhaustingly long working days of the industrial wage-earner were shortened more and more, the theoretical discussions of the legislators and of the social reformers were soon supplemented by careful statistical inquiries in the factories. It was found that everywhere, even abstracting from all other cultural and social interests, a moderate shortening of the working day did not involve loss, but brought a direct gain. The German pioneer in the movement for the shortening of the workingman's day, Ernst Abbé, the head of one of the greatest German factories, wrote many years ago that the shortening from nine to eight hours, that is, a cutting-down of more than 10 per cent, did not involve a reduction of the day's product, but an increase, and that this increase did not result from any supplementary efforts by which the intensity of the work would be reinforced in an unhygienic way.[41] This conviction of Abbé still seems to hold true after millions of experiments over the whole globe. But the problem of fatigue has forced itself on the consideration of the men of affairs from still another side. It has been well known for a long while how intimate the relations are between fatigue and industrial accidents. The statistics of the various countries and of the various industries do not harmonize exactly, but a close connection between the number of accidents and the hours of the day can be recognized everywhere. Usually the greatest number of injuries occurs between ten and eleven o'clock in the forenoon and between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. The different distribution of the working hours, and of the pauses for the meals, make the various statistical tables somewhat incomparable. But it can be traced everywhere that in the first working hours in which fatigue does not play any considerable rôle, the number of accidents is small, and that this number sinks again after the long pauses. It is true that the number also becomes somewhat smaller at the end of the forenoon and of the afternoon period, but this seems to have its cause in the fact that with growing fatigue and with the feeling that the end of the working period is near, the rhythm of the activity becomes much slower, and with such slower movements the danger of accidents is greatly reduced. In a similar way the factories have had to give the fullest attention to the fatigue problem in its relation to the distribution of pauses, and above all in its relation to the advisable speed of the machines, the limits of which are set by the fatigue of the workingmen, and still more of the working-women.
The legislatures, the labor unions, and the manufacturers have then had this problem of fatigue constantly before their eyes.[42] On the other hand, the psychologists and physiologists have continuously studied the fatigue and restoration of the muscle system and of the central nervous system, and have analyzed the facts with the subtlest methods. Yet, in spite of this, it cannot be denied that a real mutual enrichment has so far hardly been in question. On the contrary, the whole situation has again demonstrated the old experience. The mere trying and trying again in practical life can never reach the maximum effects which may be secured by systematic, scientifically conducted efforts. On the other side the studies of the theoretical scholars can never yield the highest values for civilization if the problems which offer themselves in practical life are ignored. The theorists have to prepare the ground, and in this preparatory work they must, indeed, remain utterly regardless of any practical situations. But after that a second stage must be reached at which on the foundation of this neutral research special theoretical investigations are undertaken which originate from practical conditions. As long as industrial managers have no contact with the experiments of the laboratory and the experimentalists are shy of any contact with the industrial reality, humanity will pass through social suffering. The hope of mankind will be realized by the mutual fertilization of knowing and doing.