Page:Sergei Ilich Kaplun - The Protection of Labor in Soviet Russia (1920).pdf/18

 the working masses themselves are attracted to this work. The Trade Unions in conjunction with doctors and engineers study in detail the circumstances and conditions of work of every individual trade. At the present time the Department of Protection of Labor of the Labor Commissariat is organizing a special institute for the study of labor; a number of experimental laboratories, clinics for trade diseases and cabinets for medical statistics have been established. This Institute is to serve as the first scientific establishment in Russia in connection with questions of the protection of labor, after the type of similar institutions in the largest centres of Western Europe and America. The People's Commissariat of Labor has, at the same time, established an experimental study of the questions of a hygienic labor efficiency. Fully recognizing the necessity of a scientific organization of production Soviet Russia cannot, however, completely accept the system of Taylor and other American engineers, who fail to take into consideration the interests and the health of the workers. The problem of the hygienic efficiency of labor is to unite all the scientifically correct and rational foundations of the Taylor system with the needs of physiology and labor hygiene.

It is necessary to mention the extensive cultural and educational work which is being carried on directly at the factories and works, and in the very thick of the working masses, by the organs of labor protection. One of the basic principles of our work is the effort to make of every workman, even of the most backward, an intelligent factor for his own labor protection. To this end the Inspectors of Labor and other workers in the sphere of the protection of labor continuously arrange lectures and reports on various subjects of labor legislation, of the history of the protection of labor, of hygiene, sanitation and safety.