Review, mentions as the first of the four principal grievances of workmen—­“the hours are too long.”  Long hours have been accepted on both sides partly because during the War the call of the country for increased output, especially of munitions, was so urgent, and partly because it was thought that higher profits would thereby be obtained, and certainly higher wages earned.  It seems, however, well established that longer hours do not necessarily mean increased output.  There is a limit to the time during which a man can do even routine work effectively.  If men were to be regarded only as machines for turning out work of a certain class, very long hours would be bad business.  Where the work involves special skill and thought the evil results of long hours, even measured simply by the gross amount done, are still more serious.  Everyone who has had to do with young students and still more with parents disappointed by their sons’ failures must again and again have found that the cause of failure was too many hours devoted to reading.  The students acquired the habit of sitting over their books worrying their minds, but really absorbing nothing.  A senior wrangler has been known to find five or six hours a day of real work at mathematics as much as he could stand.  Of course, work involving little hard physical exertion and hardly any mental effort can go on much longer, but the very monotony which in some ways makes it easy, has a deadening effect.  A factory operative minding a “mule” being asked:  “Is it not very hard work always watching and piecing threads?” answered, “No, but it is very dree work.”  But the evil effects of too long hours are not confined to the fact that unrest or disputes arise from the state of feeling produced nor to the diminution of production due to fatigue.  Recurrent strains continued over a long period indeed deteriorate even things which are inanimate.  The “fatigue of metals” has been the subject of careful investigations.  It is time that fatigue of human beings, even looked at as machines, were more fully considered.[5]

The great and often permanent physical injury caused by too prolonged work is specially serious for women.  Many women are such willing workers that they go on overtaxing their strength.  Among girls and women students the fatigue from overstrain in preparing for examinations, from which boys and men may rapidly recover, often results in permanent physical and even mental degeneration.  Many who have watched the effects of such continuous study would advocate a complete sabbatical year in which systematic study should be suspended entirely for girls at some period between fourteen and eighteen.