Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Part 5

Here, too, we found that quickly succeeding equal or very similar impressions have a tendency to inhibit each other or to fuse with each other. Where such an inhibition occurs, we probably ought to suppose that the perception of the first impression exhausts the psychical disposition for this particular mental experience. The psychophysical apparatus becomes for a moment unable to arouse the same impression once more.

The above described new experiments suggest to me that this inhibition of equal or similar impressions is found unequally developed in different individuals. They possess a different tendency to temporary exhaustion of psychophysical dispositions. There are evidently persons who after they have received an impression are unable immediately to seize the same impression again. Their attention and their whole inner att.i.tude fails. But there are evidently other persons for whom, on the contrary, the experience of an impression is a kind of inner preparation for arousing the same or a similar impression. In their case the psychophysical dispositions become stimulated and excited, and therefore favor the repet.i.tion. If, as in our experiments, the task is simply to judge the existence of equal or similar impressions without any strain of attention, the one group of persons must underestimate the number of the equal impressions because many words are simply inhibited in their minds and remain neglected, the other groups of persons must from their mental dispositions overestimate the number of similar words. From here we have to take one step more. If these two groups of persons have to perform a task in which it is necessary that not a single member of a series of repet.i.tions be overlooked, it is clear that the two groups must react in a very different way. Now a perfect perception of every single member is forced on them. Those who grasp equal impressions easily, and who are prepared beforehand for every new repet.i.tion by their inner dispositions, will follow the series without strain and will experience the repet.i.tion itself with true satisfaction. On the other hand, those in whom every impression inhibits the readiness to receive a repet.i.tion, and whose inner energy for the same experience is exhausted, must feel it as a painful and fatiguing effort if they are obliged to turn their attention to one member after another in a uniform series. This mental torture is evidently the displeasure which such individuals call the dislike of monotony in their work. Whether this theoretical view is correct, we have to determine by future studies. In our Harvard laboratory we have now proceeded from such preparatory ma.s.s experiments to subtle investigations on a small number of persons well trained in psychological self-observation with whom the conditions of the experiment can be varied in many directions.[39]

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 repet.i.tion 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 repet.i.tion 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 n.o.body 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.s. 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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 att.i.tude is adjusted to social contact.

The help which is rendered by the feeling of social cooperation, 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 cla.s.sroom. 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 cla.s.sed 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 quant.i.tatively 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 Abbe, 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 Abbe 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 role, 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 a.n.a.lyzed 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 pa.s.s through social suffering. The hope of mankind will be realized by the mutual fertilization of knowing and doing.

The practical efforts of the factories have, indeed, not yet reached the point at which the greatest possible achievement which can be reached without over-fatigue may be secured. We called the abbreviation of the working day an experimental scheme. The question of reducing the working hours is so simple that no further special experiments are needed. But when we come to the questions of the pauses at work, the speed of work and similar factors related to fatigue, the situation is by far more complicated, and the often capricious changes in the plant have very little in common with a systematic experiment. Some well-known studies of the efficiency engineers clearly demonstrate the possibility of such systematic efforts. The best-known case is probably Taylor's study of the pig-iron handlers of the Bethlehem Steel Company. He found that the gang of 75 men was loading on the average about 12-1/2 tons per man per day. When he discussed with various managers the question of what output would be the possible maximum, they agreed that under premium work, piecework, or any of the ordinary plans for stimulating the men, an output of 18 to 25 tons would be the extreme possibility. Then he proceeded to a systematic study of the fatigue in its relation to the burden and of the best possible relation between working time and resting time. His first efforts to find formulas were unsuccessful, because he calculated only the actual mechanical energy exerted and found that some men were tired after exerting energy of 1/8 hp., while others seemed to be able to produce the energy of 1/2 hp. without greater fatigue. But soon he discovered the mistake in his figures.

He had considered only the actual movements, and had neglected the period in which the laborer was not moving and was not exerting energy, but in which a weight was pulling his arms and demanding a corresponding muscular effort. As soon as this muscular achievement was taken into account, too, he found that for each particular weight a definite relation exists between the time that a man is under a heavy load and the time of rest. For the usual loads of 90 pounds, he found that a first-cla.s.s laborer must not work more than 43 per cent of time working day and must be entirely without load 57 per cent. If the load becomes lighter, the relation is changed. If the workman is handling a half pig weighing 46 pounds, he can be under load 58 per cent of the day and only has to rest during 42 per cent.[43]

As soon as these figures were experimentally secured, Taylor selected fit men, and did not allow them to lift and to carry the loads as they pleased, but every movement was exactly prescribed by foremen who timed exactly the periods of work and rest. If he had simply promised his men a high premium in case they should carry more than the usual 12 tons a day, they would have burdened themselves as heavily as possible and would have carried the load as quickly as possible, thus completely exhausting themselves after three or four hours of labor.

In spite of such senseless exaggeration of effort in the first hours, the total output for the day would have been relatively small. Now the foremen determined exactly when every individual should lift and move the load and when he should sit quietly. The result was that the men, without greater fatigue, were able to carry 47-1/2 tons a day instead of the 12-1/2 tons. Their wages were increased 60 per cent. Such a trivial ill.u.s.tration demonstrates very clearly the extreme difference between an increase of the economic achievement by scientific, experimental investigation and a mere enforcing of more work by artificially whipping-up the mind with promises of extraordinary wages. Yet even such rules as the scientific management engineers have formed, may be elaborated to more lasting prescriptions as soon as the purely psychological factors are brought more into the foreground and are approached with the careful a.n.a.lysis of the experimental psychologist.

Such a systematic psychological inquiry is the more important for questions of fatigue, as we know that the subjective feeling of displeasure in fatigue is no reliable measure for the objective fatigue, that is, for the real reduction of the ability for work.

Daily experience teaches us how easily some people overstep the limits of normal fatigue, and in extreme cases even come to a nervous breakdown because nature did not protect them by the timely appearance of strong fatigue feelings. On the other hand, we find many men and still more women who feel tired even after a small exertion, because they did not learn early to inhibit the superficial feelings of fatigue, or because the sensations of fatigue have in fact a certain abnormal intensity in their case. The question how far the psychophysical apparatus has really been exhausted by a certain effort must be answered with the help of objective research and not on the basis of mere subjective feelings. But such objective measurements demand systematic experiments in the laboratory.

The experiments which really have been carried on in the laboratory as yet, as far as they were not merely physiological, have on the whole been confined to so-called mental labor, and were essentially devoted to problems of school instruction or medical diagnosis. We have no doubt excellent experiments which are devoted to the study of the individual differences of exhaustion, fatigue, exhaustibility, ability to recover the lost energy, ability to learn from practice, and so on, but they are still exclusively adjusted to the needs of the school-teacher and of the nerve specialist and would hardly be immediately useful to the manager of a factory. We shall need a long careful series of investigations in order to determine how far those manifold results from experiments with memory work, thought work, writing work, and so on can be applied to the work which the industrial laborer is expected to perform.

XVIII

PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON THE WORKING POWER

The increase and decrease of the ability to do good work depends of course not only upon the direct fatigue from labor and the pauses for rest; a large variety of other factors may lead to fluctuations which are economically important. The various hours of the day, the seasons of the year, the atmospheric conditions of weather and climate, may have such influence. Some elements of this interplay have been cleared up in recent years. Just as the experiments of pedagogical psychology have determined the exact curve of efficiency during the period of an hour in school, so other investigations have traced the typical curve of psychical efficiency throughout the day and the year. Sociological and criminological statistics concerning the fluctuations in the behavior of the ma.s.ses, common-sense experience of practical life, and finally, economic statistics concerning the quant.i.ty and quality of industrial output in various parts of the day and of the year, have supplemented one another. The systematic a.s.sistance of the psychological laboratory, however, has been confined to the educational aspect of the problem. Psychological experiments have determined how the achievement of the youth in the schoolroom changes with the months of the year and the hours of the day. It seems as if it could not be difficult to secure here, too, a connection between exact experiment and economic work. Much will have to be reduced to individual variations. The laboratory has already confirmed the experience of daily life that there are morning workers whose strongest psychophysical efficiency comes immediately after the night's rest, while the day's work fatigues them more and more; and that there are evening workers who in the morning still remain under the after effects of the night's sleep, and who slowly become fresher and fresher from the stimuli of the day. It would seem not impossible to undertake a systematic selection of various individuals under this point of view, as different industrial tasks demand a different distribution of efficiency between morning and night.

Such a selection and adjustment may be economically still more important with reference to the fluctuations during the course of the year. Economic inquiries, for instance, have suggested that younger and older workingmen who ordinarily show the same efficiency become unequal in their ability to do good work in the spring months, and the economists have connected this inequality with s.e.xual conditions. But other factors as well, especially the blood circulation of the organism and the resulting reactions to external temperature, different gland activities, and so on, cause great personal differences in efficiency during the various seasons of the year.

Inasmuch as we know many economic occupations in which the chief demand is made in one or another period of the year, a systematic study of these individual variations might be of high economic value, where large numbers are involved, and might contribute much to the individual comfort of the workers. But a constant relation to day and year also seems to exist independent of all personal variations. When the sun stands at its meridian, a minimum of efficiency is to be expected and a similar minimum is to be found at the height of summer.

Correspondingly we have an increase of the total psychical efficiency in winter-time. During the spring-time the behavior seems, as far as the investigations go, to be different in the intellectual and in the psych.o.m.otor activities. It is claimed that the efficiency of the intellectual functions decreases as the winter recedes, but that the efficiency of psych.o.m.otor impulses increases.[44]

The influences of the daily temperature, of the weather and of the seasons may be cla.s.sed among the physical conditions of efficiency. We may group with them the effects of nourishment, of stimulants, of sleep, and so on. As far as the relations between these external factors and purely bodily muscle work are involved, the interests of the psychologists are not engaged. But it is evident that every one of these relations also has its psychological aspect, and that a really scientific psychotechnical treatment of these problems can become possible only through the agency of psychological experiments. We have excellent experimental investigations concerning the influence of the loss of sleep on intellectual labor and on simple psych.o.m.otor activities. But it would be rather arbitrary to deduce from the results of those researches anything as to the effect of reduction of sleep on special economic occupations. Yet such knowledge would be of high importance. We have in the literature concerned with accidents in transportation numerous popular discussions about the destructive influence of loss of sleep on the attention of the locomotive engineer or of the helmsman or of the chauffeur, but an a.n.a.lysis of the particular psychophysical processes does not as yet exist and can be expected only from systematic experiments. Nor has the influence of hunger on psychotechnical activities been studied in a satisfactory way.

A number of psychological investigations have been devoted to the study of the influence of alcohol on various psychical functions and in this field at least the strictly economic problem of industrial labor has sometimes been touched. We have the much quoted and much misinterpreted experiments [45] which were carried on in Germany with typesetters. The workmen received definite quant.i.ties of heavy wine at a particular point in the work and the number of letters which they were able to set during the following quarter-hours were measured and compared with their normal achievement in fifteen minutes. The reduction of efficiency amounted on the average to 15 per cent of the output. It may be mentioned that the loss referred only to the quant.i.ty of the work and not at all to the quality. The well-known subjective illusory feeling of the subjects was not lacking; they themselves believed that the wine had reinforced their working power.

As soon as such experiments are put into the service of economic life, they will have to be carried on with much more accurate adjustment to the special conditions, with subtler gradation of the stimuli, and especially with careful study of individual factors. But at first it seems more in the interest of the practical task that the extremely complicated problem of the influence of alcohol be followed up by purely theoretical research in the laboratory in order that the effect may be resolved into its various components. We must first find the exact facts concerning the influence of alcohol on elementary processes of mental life, such as perception, attention, memory, and so on, and this will slowly prepare the way for the complete economic experiment.

At present the greatest significance for the economic field may be attached to those alcohol experiments which dealt with the apprehension of the outer world. They proved a reduction in the ability to grasp the impressions and a narrowing of the span of consciousness. The indubitable decrease of certain memory powers, of the acuity in measuring distance, of the time estimation, and similar psychical disturbances after alcohol, must evidently be of high importance for industry and transportation, while the well-known increase of the purely sensory sensibility, especially of the visual acuity after small closes of alcohol, hardly plays an important role in practical life. The best-known and experimentally most studied effect of alcohol, the increase of motor excitability, also evidently has its importance for industrial achievements. It cannot be denied that this facility of the motor impulses after small doses of alcohol is not a real gain, which might be utilized economically, but is ultimately an injury to the apparatus, even if we abstract from the r.e.t.a.r.dation of the reaction which comes as an after-effect. The alcoholic facilitation, after all, reduces the certainty and the perfection of the reaction and creates conditions under which wrong, and this in economic life means often dangerous, motor responses arise. The energy of the motor discharge suffers throughout from the alcohol.

Some experiments which were recently carried on with reference to the influence of alcohol on the power of will seem to have especial significance for the field of economic activity. The method applied in the experiment was the artificial creation of an exactly measurable resistance to the will-impulse directed toward a purpose. The experiment had to determine what power of resistance could be overcome by the will and how far this energy changes under the influence of alcohol. For this end combinations of meaningless syllables were learned and repeated until they formed a close connection in memory.

If one syllable was given, the mechanical tendency of the mind was to reproduce the next syllable in the memorized series. The will-intention was then directed toward breaking this memory type. For instance, it was demanded, when a syllable was called, that the subject should not answer with the next following syllable, but with a rhyming syllable. This will-impulse easily succeeded when the syllables to be learned had been repeated only a few times, while after a very frequent repet.i.tion the memory connection offered a resistance which the simple will-intention could not break. The syllable which followed in the series rushed to the mind before the intention to seek a rhyming syllable could be realized. The number of repet.i.tions thus became a measure for the power of the will. After carrying out these experiments at first under normal conditions, they were repeated while the subjects were under the influence of exactly graded doses of alcohol.[46] From such simple tasks the experiment was turned to more and more complex ones of similar structure. All together they showed clearly that the alcohol did not influence the ability to make the will effective and that the actual decrease of achievement results from a decrease in the ability to grasp the material. As long as the alcohol doses are small, this feeling of decreased ability stirs up a reinforcement in the tension of the will-impulse. This may go to such an extent that the increased will-effort not only compensates for the reduced understanding, but even over-compensates for it, producing an improvement in the mental work. But as soon as the alcohol doses amount to about 100 cubic centimeters, the increased tension of the will is no longer sufficient to balance the paralyzing effect in the understanding. Yet it must not be overlooked that in all these experiments only isolated will acts were in question which were separated from one another by pauses of rest. Evidently, however, the technical laborer is more often in a situation in which not isolated impulses, but a continuous tension of the will is demanded. How far such an uninterrupted will-function is affected by alcohol has not as yet been studied with the exact means of the experiment.

To be sure an obvious suggestion would be that the whole problem, as far as economics, and especially industry, are concerned, might be solved in a simpler way than by the performance of special psychological experiments, namely, by the complete elimination of alcohol itself from the life of the wage-earner. The laboratory experiment which seems to demonstrate a reduction of objective achievement in the case of every important mental function merely supplements in exact language the appalling results indicated by criminal statistics, disease statistics, and inheritance statistics.

It seems as if the time had come when scientists could not with a good conscience suggest any other remedy than the merciless suppression of alcohol. Indeed, there can be no doubt that alcohol is one of the worst enemies of civilized life, and it is therefore almost with regret that the scientist must acknowledge that all the psychological investigations, which have so often been misused in the partisan writings of prohibitionists, are not a sufficient basis to justify the demand for complete abstinence.

First, newer experiments make it very clear that many of the so-called effects of alcohol which the experiment has demonstrated are produced or at least heightened by influences of suggestion. Experiments which have been carried on in England for the study of that point show clearly that certain psychical disturbances which seem to result from small doses of alcohol fail to appear as soon as the subject does not know that he has taken alcohol. For that purpose it was necessary to eliminate the odor, and this was accomplished by introducing the beverages into the organism by a stomach pump. When by this method sometimes water and sometimes diluted alcohol was given without the knowledge of the subject, the usual effects of small doses of alcohol did not arise. But another point is far more important. We may take it for granted that alcohol reduces the ability for achievement as soon as such very small doses are exceeded. But from the standpoint of economic life we have no right to consider a reduction of the psychical ability to produce work as identical with a decrease in the economic value of the personality. Such a view would be right if the influence necessarily set in at the beginning of the working period.

But if, for instance, a moderate quant.i.ty of beer is introduced into the organism after the closing of the working day, it would certainly produce an artificial reduction of the psychical ability, and yet this decrease of psychophysical activity might be advantageous to the total economic achievement of the workingman in the course of the week or the year. To be sure the gla.s.s of beer in the evening paralyzes certain inhibitory centres of the brain and therefore puts the mind out of gear, but such a way of expressing it may easily be misleading, as it suggests too much that a real injury is done. From the point of view of scientific psychology, we must acknowledge that such a paralyzing effect in certain parts of the psychophysical system sets in with every act of attention and reaches its climax in sleep, which surely does no harm to the mind. It may be thoroughly advantageous for the total work of the normal, healthy, average workingman if the after effects of the motor excitement of the day are eliminated by a mild, short alcoholic poisoning in the evening. It may produce that narrowing and dulling of consciousness which extinguishes the cares and sorrows of the day and secures the night's sleep, and through it increased efficiency the next morning. Systematic experiments with exact relation to the various technical demands must slowly bring real insight into this complex situation. The usual hasty generalization from a few experiments with alcohol for partisan interests is surely not justified in the present unsatisfactory state of knowledge.[47]

Perhaps we know still less of the influences which coffee, tea, tobacco, sweets, and so on exert on the life of the industrial worker.

It will be wise to resolve these stimuli in daily use into their elements and to study the effects of each element in isolated form. To know, for instance, the effects of caffein on the psychophysical activities does not mean to know the effects of tea or coffee, which contain a variety of other substances besides the caffein, substances which may be supposed to modify the effect of the caffein. Yet the first step must in this case be the study of the effects of the isolated caffein, before the total influences of the familiar beverages can be followed up. An excellent investigation of this caffein effect on various psychological and psych.o.m.otor functions has recently been completed.[48] When the caffein effect on tapping movements was studied, it was found that it works as a stimulation, sometimes preceded by a slight initial r.e.t.a.r.dation. It persists from one to two hours after doses of from one to three grains and as long as four hours after doses of six grains. The steadiness test showed a slight nervousness after several hours after doses of from one to four grains. After six grains there is p.r.o.nounced unsteadiness. A complex test in coordination indicated that the effect of small, amounts of caffein is a stimulation and that of large amounts a r.e.t.a.r.dation.

Correspondingly the speed of performance in typewriting is heightened by small doses of caffein and r.e.t.a.r.ded by larger doses. In both cases the quality of the performance as measured by the number of errors is superior to the normal result.

The influences of the physiological stimulants have many points of contact with the effects of social entertainment, the significance of which for the economic life is still rather unknown in any exact detail. Many factories in which the labor is noiseless, as in the making of cigars, have introduced gramophone music or reading aloud, and it is easy to understand theoretically that a certain animating effect results, which stimulates the whole psychophysical activity But only the experiment would be able to decide how this stimulation is related, for instance, to the distraction of attention, which is necessarily involved, or how it influences various periods of the work and various types of work, how far it is true that the musical key exerts an exciting or relaxing influence, what intensity and what local position, what rhythm and what duration of such aesthetic stimuli, would bring the best possible economic results. We all have read of the favorable effects which were secured in a factory when a cat was brought into every working-room in which women laborers were engaged in especially fatiguing work. The cat became a living toy for the employees, which stimulated their social consciousness. In not a few plants the reinforced achievement is explained by the social means of entertainment, which have been introduced under the pressure of modern philanthropic ideas. The lounging-rooms with the newspapers and periodicals the clubrooms with libraries, the excursions and dances and patriotic festivities, fill up the reservoir of psychophysical energies. As a matter of course all the social movements which enhance the consciousness of solidarity among the laborers and the feeling of security as to their future development in their career have a similar effect of reinforcing the normal psychical achievement.

As the strongest factor, finally, the direct material interest must be added to these conditions. The literature of political economy is full of discussions of the effect of increase of wages, of the payment of bonuses and premiums, of piece-wages, of promised pensions, and, as far as Europe is concerned, of state insurance. In short, the whole individual financial situation in its relation to the psychophysical achievement of the wage-earner is a favorite topic of economic inquiry. We cannot partic.i.p.ate here in these inexhaustible discussions, because all these questions are to-day still so endlessly far from the field of psychological experiments. Nevertheless we ought not to forget the experience through which general experimental psychology has gone in the last few decades. When the first experiments were undertaken in order to deal systematically with the mental life, the friends of this new science and its opponents agreed, on the whole, in the belief that certainly only the most elementary phenomena of consciousness, the sensations and the reactions of impulses, would be accessible to the new method. The opponents naturally compared this modest field with the great problems of the mental totality, and therefore ridiculed the new narrow task as unimportant. The friends, on the other hand, were eager to follow the fresh path, because they were content to gain real exact.i.tude by the experiment at least in these simplest questions. Yet as soon as the new independent workshops were established for the young science, it was discovered that the method was able to open fields in which no one had antic.i.p.ated its usefulness. The experiments turned to the problems of attention, of memory, of imagination, of feeling, of judgment, of character, of aesthetic experience and so on. It is not improbable that the method of the economic psychological experiment may also quickly lead beyond the more elementary problems, as soon as it is systematically applied, and then it, too, may conquer regions of inquiry in which to-day no exact calculation of the psychological factors seems possible.

If such an advance is to be a steady one, the economic psychologist will emanc.i.p.ate himself from the chance question of what problems are at this moment important for commerce and industry and will proceed systematically step by step from those results which the psychological laboratory has yielded under the non-economic points of view. Many previous psychological or psychophysical inquiries almost touch the problems of industrial achievement. For instance, the experiments on imitation, which psychophysicists have carried on in purely theoretical or pedagogical interests, move parallel to industrial experiences. It is well known that the pacemaker plays his role not only in the field of sport but also in the factory. The rhythm of one laborer gains controlling importance for the others, who instinctively imitate him. Some plants even have automatically working machines with the special intention that the sharp rhythm of these lifeless forerunners shall produce an involuntary imitation in the psychophysical system. In a similar way many laboratory investigations on suggestion and suggestibility point to such economic processes, and it seems to me that especially the studies on the influence of the ideas of purpose which are being undertaken nowadays in many psychological laboratories may easily be connected with the problems of economic life. We know how the consciousness of the task to be performed has an organizing influence on the system of those psychophysical acts which lead to the goal. The experiment has shown under which conditions this effect can be reinforced and under which reduced. Pedagogical experiments have also shown exactly what influence belongs to the consciousness of the approach to the end of work; the feeling of the nearness of the close heightens the achievement, even of the fatigued subject. It would not be difficult to connect psychophysical experiments of this kind with the problems of the task and bonus system, which is nowadays so much discussed in industrial life. The practical successes seem to prove that the individual can do more with equal effort if he does not stand before an unlimited ma.s.s of work of which he has to do as much as possible in the course of the day, but if he is before a definitely determined, limited task with the demand that he complete it in an exactly calculated time. Scientific management has made far-reaching use of this principle, but whether constant results for the various industries can be hoped for from such methods must again be ascertained by the psychological experiment.

These hopes surely will not weaken the interest of the psychologist for those many psychological methods which lie outside of the experimental research. A sociologist, who himself had been a laborer in his earlier life, undertook in Germany last year an inquiry into the psychological status of the laborers' achievement by the questionnaire method.[49] He sent to 8000 workingmen in the mining industries, textile industries, and metal industries, blanks containing 26 questions, and received more than 5000 replies. The questions referred to the pleasure and interest in the work, to preferences, to fatigue, to the thoughts during the work, to the means of recreation, to the att.i.tude toward the wages, to the emotional situation, and so on. The 5000 answers allowed manifold cla.s.sifications. The various mental types of men could be examined, the influence of the machine, the att.i.tude toward monotony, the changes of pleasure and interest in the work with the age of the laborer, the time at which fatigue becomes noticeable, and so on. Many psychological elements of industrial life thus come to a sharp focus and the strong individual differences could not be brought out in a more characteristic way. Yet, all taken together, even such a careful investigation on a psychostatistical basis strongly suggests that a few careful experimental investigations could lead further than such a heaping-up of material gathered from men who are untrained in self-observation and in accurate reports, and above all who are accessible to any kind of suggestion and preconceived idea. The experimental method is certainly not the only one which can contribute to reforms in industrial life and the reinforcement of industrial efficiency, but all signs indicate that the future will find it the most productive and most reliable.

PART III

THE BEST POSSIBLE EFFECT

XIX