Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/880

858 boys, 3,813; women and girls, only 1,080. When the baths were first opened the policy was to have as many free days as possible, but it was found quite impossible to keep order even with the aid of a police officer. Under a new arrangement by which a fee of five cents was charged, which included soap, towels, and bathing dress, a great improvement was manifested, even this small fee seeming to make the bathers more self-respecting and conscientious and doing away with that irresponsible and reckless feeling which an unadulterated charity seems so prone to produce. Instead of the fees decreasing the number of bathers, there was a constant and steady increase. An interesting experiment in connection with these baths is the giving of instruction in swimming to the public-school children. The town pays for this through the school committee. The pupils as well as the teachers have taken great interest, and already large numbers have been taught how to swim. At the end of the school year there will be thorough tests, and certificates of proficiency will be given. Aside from the value which this bath has as a swimming school and healthy recreation ground for the children, its successful continuance can not fail to have a most beneficial effect on the general personal cleanliness and sanitation of the town, a clean individual being much less patient with nasty streets and houses and neighbors, than a dirty one. The importance of the public bath does not seem to be generally appreciated in this country. It is when properly handled one of the most powerful and far reaching of the municipalities' institutions for promoting cleanliness, both mental and physical, and good citizenship; in several of the European states where this fact has been appreciated the public baths of the cities and towns are among their most important institutions.

Industrial Instability in Russia.—Industrial labor in Russia, as pictured in the bulletin of the Musée Social, is usually unstable and can not be depended upon. In most of the shops the workmen scatter at once in the spring. The operatives who come in after the Easter vacation, which lasts several weeks, are generally new ones, who have never worked in that kind of industry, and a new apprenticeship is necessary. Hence arises an obstacle to the development of professional skill. The new hands are very awkward, and are more quickly tired than those who are accustomed to work methodically. The workman is continually changing his place, and passes from one trade to another, as he would from one place to another, becoming now a shop operative and now an agricultural laborer. As M. Anatole Leroy Beaulieu says, he is a nomad. He is not identified with his machine, does not understand it, and does not know how to bring out its latent power. Hence in many industries which have been long organized on the grand scale in the West, the Russian does better work at home in the old way than can be turned out in the factories. Besides this, the Russian working class takes to machines with a bad grace, and will not use them except under compulsion. A curious condition, resulting partly from this disposition, is that when crops are good and the demand for manufactured products is lively, the workmen abandon the shops because they can live without the labor. It is of no use to raise wages, for that offers no attraction to the peasant who has enough to live upon in his usual way. While in the West the best-fed workman is the most efficient, in Russia the one who is satisfied is the most idle. Where women are found in the shops, it is an indication of improvement and of better development and more stable conditions.

Defects of the Metric System.—An admirable summary of the arguments against the enforced adoption of the metric system of weights and measures is presented by Mr. George W. Colles, in a paper read by him before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Having examined what has been said in favor of the system and against it, he concludes that the claim for its scientific accuracy is not justified, none of its units being what it purports to be; that the metre, as a scientific standard, can claim no superiority over the yard, and leaves us, moreover, without that most useful of measures, the foot; that while uniformity, carried too far, is of doubtful advantage, the metric system in practice has generally served not to introduce but to destroy it, by