Two hundred and sixty-one had moderate defects requiring hygienic correction or minor medical, surgical, or dental attention.

Twelve had minor defects requiring observation or attention.

Five had no physical defects.

It is impossible to know exactly what conditions of postal work lead to the abnormal incidence of these physical impairments. There is the physical and nervous strain, the special demand on the eyes, the frequently poor ventilation and heating, the night work. There is no question, however, that all these causes tend to accelerate the accumulation of fatigue, which in turn increases the susceptibility to disease. And one obvious remedy for fatigue is an increase in the opportunity for rest, recreation, and recuperation, by shorter hours.

Medical and industrial authorities have greatly increased our knowledge of fatigue in recent years. Without citing them in detail, the general tenor of their findings may be described.

While a man works, his nerves and muscle are wearing down. Fatigue wastes are the result. They pile up in his body. This process begins even before he feels tired. There is fatigue or breaking down even when a person rests. But when he works the amount of poisonous wastes rises. He breathes out twice as much carbon dioxide as before.

The work of post-office clerks and railway-mail clerks causes heavy accumulations of fatigue wastes. The effort of the muscles in standing up and in continually "throwing" mail is part of this. But the work is especially a great strain on the nerves. And fatigue is chiefly fatigue of the nervous system. The work is monotonous, and the monotony of doing the same thing over and over and over "is a true factor in inducing fatigue," says Miss Goldmark. It wears down the nerves. She adds that even "The monotony of so-called light and easy work may thus be more damaging to the organism than heavier work which gives some chance for variety."

This wearing-down process in the body must be balanced by building up. Under ordinary conditions the body will rebuild itself silently. But if there is too much breaking down or too little building up, the result is a physical deficit. If the deficit comes regularly, the outcome is physical bankruptcy. Then the body begins to protest loudly in tiredness and disease. The facts about the health of postal employees which have been presented indicate roughly how near many post-office clerks and railway-mail clerks are to physical bankruptcy. The figures do not, however, show the amount of piled-up fatigue that is still hidden and has not yet come out openly in disease. And the Public Health Service could not include in its study the employees who had dropped out because the work was too wearing.

IV. EXTENT OF SHORTER HOURS ON SATURDAY

The movement toward shorter hours on Saturday is nation-wide, and is a logical part of the historical movement toward the shorter working week.

Many establishments which work 48 or even 50 hours arrange the work so that a Saturday half holiday may be granted.

It may be assumed that every establishment on a 44-hour week has at least a Saturday half holiday. Many of them are not open on Saturday at all. In addition, there is a rapidly growing number of workers who are on the 40-hour, five-day week-something which the postal workers are not even asking. It should be noted that the extension of the shorter work day on Saturday has two important applications to the present request of the postal workers. The first application is that other employers are finding it both equitable and efficient to grant more free time on Saturday. As a matter of both justice and intelligence, the United States Government ought not to lag behind other employers. It ought to be more enlightened rather than less. Justice to the post-office employees demands that they receive an advantage which has now become general.

To keep as
The cost of

The second application is that so many offices are now closed on Saturday that there is less mail to be collected or delivered at that time. large a force as before working in the post offices is pure waste. the shorter day on Saturday to the post office is reduced by every advance of the practice outside the post office.

The report on Recent Economic Changes of the National Bureau of Economie Research mentions the general trend toward shorter hours. In manufacturing. the United States census of manufactures shows the average full-time working hours for the whole country to have fallen from 57.3 in 1909 to 51.1 in 1923, the last year in which the information was compiled. It has undoubtedly gone lower since. The National Industrial Conference Board reports a drop of the average number of hours in the factories covered by its survey to 49.6 in 1927. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that average hours for all unionized trades had fallen to 44.9 in 1928, while in the building trades the average was 43.5.

The attached table shows the working hours of various kinds of union labor in the United States as of May 15, 1928, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. It will be seen that 82.3 per cent of the building trades were on the 44-hour week, while 15.3 per cent worked 40 or under. Granite and stonecutters were 99.6 per cent on 44-hour; longshoremen, 86.7 per cent; printing and publishing (book and job), 91.5 per cent. Average hours in the men's clothing industry are now under 44, nearly half the workers employed now having a 5-day week.

Average hours per week and per cent of trade-union members, by trade groups, working each classified number of hours per week, May 15, 1928

SOURCE: U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 482, Union wages and hours of labor, May 15, 1928, p. 3.

Average customary hours per full-time week in sheet mills and tin-plate mills throughout the United States were, in 1929, according to the United States Monthly Labor Review for November, 1929, under 44 hours for most occupations. Particularly significant is the extent of the short Saturday among offices, both because the clerks are office workers and because it is chiefly in offices that mail originates or is delivered.

The American Management Association recently made å survey covering 304 establishments with a total of more than 174,000 office employees, and discovered that the working-day on Saturday averaged slightly over four hours. Only 51 per cent of the offices worked longer hours in winter than in summer. Several reported closing all day Saturday in summer.

The Personnel Classification Board reported to the Seventieth Congress (H. Doc. No. 602) that it had investigated the practices of 1,372 firms employing 446.626 office workers, and found that "there is a marked tendency to work short hours on Saturday throughout the entire year." Some offices close for the entire day in the summer months. "Seventy-three per cent of the offices employing 85 per cent of the total number of employees reporting, close at or before 1 o'clock Saturday afternoon." Only a little over 10 per cent of the employees received no time at all off on Saturday.

Office employees, distribution of companies and employees according to Saturday closing hours

The office employees of Federal, State, and local governments also very generally share in the Saturday half holiday.

A large part of the procession has indeed passed on ahead of this, to the 5-day week. With the accession of 150,000 building trades workers in New York City to the 5-day week, the total on this schedule is rapidly approaching 1,000,000. "During the last four months," states the Monthly Labor Review of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics for November, 1929, "237,674 organized workers are reputed as having obtained a 5-day week.'

In addition to these, the following are a few of the large concerns having Saturday closing throughout the year:

Ford Motor Co., motor vehicles.

Waltham Watch Co., watches.

Daly's Golden Rule Factories, shoes.
William Wrigley, jr., chewing gum.
Sikorsky Corporation, airplanes.

Eberhard Faber, pencils, etc., etc.

V. QUOTATIONS FROM AUTHORITIES ON THE VALUE OF SHORTER HOURS John J. Raskob, former chairman of the finance committee of the General Motors Corporation and of the Democratic National Committee, referring to the 5-day week states:

"The knowledge that he had two days out of seven in which to enjoy life and family companionship would make every ambitious worker in the land more efficient. But, in addition, modern machinery, methods and power have already developed a vast margin of unused production capacity, and there is literally no limit at present to be foreseen to further progress in this direction. In other words, America is in shape to produce in five days all she can consume in seven, with a lot left over for export. That being so, the 5-day week, in my judgment, should become the rule in America with as little delay as possible." (Quoted in the Literary Digest, Nov. 16, 1929.)

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Thomas A. Edison: "If for no other reason than that it would prevent overproduction * *. the hours of labor should be reduced to not more than 8 per day and not more than 5 days a week." (The Typographical Journal Aug., 1929.)

Irving Fisher, professor Yale University: "In order to avoid economic disaster in our Nation, there should not be more than a 6-hour day and a 5-day work week for labor." (The Typographical Journal Aug., 1929.)

Morris L. Cooke, noted engineer: "There is no longer any difference of opinion among those who are well intentioned and competent as to the value of shortening the hours of labor both as an aid to production and for its effect on the standard of living." (The Typographical Journal, Aug., 1929.)

Charles S. Meyers, industrial psychologist: "In certain occupations evidence has been brought forward to prove that the greatest hourly rate of output generally occurs during a 44-hour working week, and that it diminishes not only when the weekly hours are more, but also when they are less than this." (The Typographical Journal, Aug., 1929.)

J. Douglas Brown, director industrial relations section, Princeton University: "As a means of safeguarding the health of the worker in high-pressure industries

or assuring greater regularity in seasonal industries it (the 5-day week) is a logical solution of a serious problem." (The Typographical Journal, Aug., 1929.) Elliot Dunlap Smith, professor industrial engineering, Yale University: "We should not criticize but applaud the American Federation of Labor in their 'spiritual opportunism,' if you want to call it that-in substituting the quest of leisure with what it may bring in education, in intellectual, spiritual, and artistic appreciation, and in a chance to live-in substituting the quest of leisure for the quest of money, of the opportunity to buy more cars, more radios, or whatever money may buy. Under our present industrial methods it is primarily from the wholesome use of leisure throughout life that an old age for workmen that is truly worth while can come. Our task as managers in this regard, as it is in the shop, is that of leadership; it is the task of giving an example of how leisure can be happily, wholesomely, and constructively_employed to enrich living and make better men." (The Typographical Journal, Aug., 1929.)

F. L. Sweetser, general manager Dutchess Manufacturing Co., Poughkeepsie, N. Y.: "In our factory we have not found it impossible to get the same wages per week and the same production per week on a 5-day week or a 39-hour week-sometimes on a 7-hour or a 72-hour day-as we have on longer hours and more days. I believe thoroughly that industry would be better off if everyone had more leisure (Bulletin of the Taylor Society, Dec., 1928, p. 244.)

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George B. Cutten, president of Colgate University: "The 5-day week is just around the corner, and it does not take a very powerful telescope to give us a glimpse of the 5-hour day.

"Machines are not only turning out countless numbers of pins, bolts, fabrics, and shoes; they are not only grinding out profits for employers and wages for employees, but just as surely they are producing leisure for everyone. It is as though each person, compared with those living a century ago, had 20 or 30 servants working for him. With all these servants leisure is inevitable. "During the last 50 years the week's work has been shortened from 72 hours to 40, and the next 50 years may see it cut down to 20. A halfday's work on Saturday has been common for years, and now even that is disappearing." (New York Times Magazine, Sept. 9, 1928.)

"Gen. J. Leslie Kincaid, president of the American Hotels Corporation, predicted recently that if two successive days of rest each week became the general rule, tourist hotels could look forward to a $500,000,000 annual increase in business. He bases these figures, he said, on increases in two and three day business already experienced through establishment of the 5-day week in many trades and in department stores in the summer months." (Trades Union News, Sept. 12, 1929.)

It

Joy Elmer Morgan, editor of the Journal of the National Education Association: "The time has come for the general adoption of the 5-day week in industry. That will mean one full day each week for health, education, and home life in addition to the day reserved from time immemorial for rest and worship. It may easily represent as great an advance for the human race as the setting aside of the original day of rest. It will lengthen life. will increase efficiency and prosperity. It will offset the monotony of machinefacture. It will give opportunity for adult education through travel, reading, radio, and participation in citizenship projects. It will lift the whole level of our civilization. Everyone who believes in a richer life for the masses should be an advocate of the gradual and early adoption of the 5-day week." (The Lather, April, 1929.)

Excerpts from address of Miss Frances Perkins, State industrial commissioner, before Columbia students at McMillin Academic Theater:

"The 5-day week for factory workers is rapidly becoming one of the greatest forces in the humanizing of industry, and within a few decades will become a universally adopted system. The 6-day week is as surely doomed to pass as the 12-hour day was 25 years ago.

"Industry as a social force has to be humanized. Ever since Mr. Ford made it clear to us that the 5-day week is best for the factory there has come an entirely different state of mind in regard to industry. Twenty-five years ago the 8-hour day was almost unmentionable as a practical working plan, but Mr. Ford showed that he could make money with it. In the same way leaders in industry are pointing the way to a shorter week and are successfully putting the idea into practice.

"In the next generation executives will know how to play, and so will their employees."

VI. INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY IN THE POST OFFICE

The previous section makes many references to the increased productivity of modern industry, and the necessity which it creates for shorter hours. These references are mainly along two lines of argument: First, that since it takes less time to produce a given output, shorter hours are entirely feasible; second that more leisure is necessary to consume or otherwise take advantage of the increased product of modern industry.

Both these arguments apply to the Postal Service, but there is another which applies with even greater force. The large increase in productivity which, as we shall see, has occurred in the post offices, is the result not so much of improved and automatic machinery, as of the more efficient work of the individuals composing the force. It is necessary to enlist their utmost cooperation and effort at every turn, in order to maintain this advance. Unless the workers receive a commensurate reward, through increased compensation and reasonably shorter hours of labor, there is less incentive for them to do their best. And, indeed, the greater strain of faster work makes more rest physiologically necessary. Recognition and reward of greater efficiency increases the impetus to cooperation and team work among employees themselves, as well as between employees and officials. It stimulates the cooperative endeavor to render more and better service to their common employer, the public, which is the only sound relationship through which both groups can adequately perform their duty.

1. Productivity of post-office clerks.-We can measure the productivity of the post-office clerks by comparing the growth in the amount of mail matter they have to handle with the growth in their numbers. The amount of mail matter may be roughly estimated from the postal receipts. Indeed, the actual amount of mail has probably grown somewhat more rapidly than the receipts, since there have been no permanent increases in rates since 1914, but a number of reductions, and of course the receipts do not indicate the increase of franked and other free service.

From the accompanying table it will be seen that while postal revenues rose 142 per cent between 1914 and 1929 the number of post-office clerks in first and second-class offices increased only 87 per cent. The revenues per clerk grew, in this period, 30 per cent. This table also shows that while receipts per post office increased 28 per cent from 1914 to 1929, the average number of clerks per first and second class post office has shown no increase but rather a slight decline from an average of 15.4 in 1914 to 15.2 in 1929. This is indeed a remarkable showing of growth in efficiency.

In speeches made to the House at this session of Congress by two members of this committee Representative Kelly of Pennsylvania and Representative Mead of New York-further data has been submitted showing in striking fashion the increased productivity of postal employees.