Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/99

Rh Now the National Industrial Conference Board has shown that im 3,800 manufacturing plants representing 26 major industries and accounting for upward of 25 per cent of the workers in those industries, between the middles of 1914 and 1920 the nominal week of work was reduced from 55.1 hours to 50.7, a sacrifice of nearly 10 per cent. The reports of the Department of Labor of the State of New York show that the number of workers in the factories of that state was no greater in 1922 than at the middle of 1914, and was less in 1921, which is substantially a confirmation of the census figures, the manufacturing industry of the State of New York being large and widely diversified, and therefore probably a good sample of the whole country.

If then, along with the substantial increase in population, there were no more workers in factories in 1922 than in 1913, and if they were working nearly 10 per cent fewer hours we should have to imagine a vast improvement in managerial efficiency and a great increase in mechanicalization in order to have had even the same production, not to speak of increased production.

In some industries that has without any doubt occurred. Thus in the manufacture of automobiles and the tires for them the output per man has greatly increased. Both of these are relatively new industries and the opportunities for development were great. In other industries also there have undoubtedly been improvements but not so great as in those previously mentioned. On the whole, however, it is extremely doubtful that production has been maintained at a rate high enough to give the people of this country the