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Physiology in the American Context 1850–1940 pp 237–262Cite as

Industrial Fatigue and the Discipline of Physiology

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Abstract

In the summer of 1915 a worker inspecting shrapnel cases at a munitions factory in Birmingham, England described the conditions under which he and his fellow workers produced materiel for the British army. Men and women, skilled workers and inexperienced recruits such as himself, labored twelve hours a day, for as long as seventy-nine hours over a seven-day week. Observing the lathe operators toward the end of their shift, he noted in his diary:

It were interesting to know how far their last hour’s output falls short of the high-water mark attained sometime in the forenoon. Their first hour is well-known to be less effective than a later when they have warmed to work. But the degree to which persistence fritters out despite all incentives as the day proceeds and drags on into overtime deceives enquiry. The individual differences must be great. Overtime must be uneconomical and unhygienic plan of heightening output.

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Notes

  1. H. M. Sinclair, “Sherrington and Industrial Fatigue,” Notes Rec. R. Soc. 39 (1984): 91–104, quotes on 102–104.

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  3. William Henry Howell, ed., An American Textbook of Physiology, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 1901), pp. 17–170 (the chapter, “General Physiology of Muscle and Nerve,” was written by Warren P. Lombard, professor of physiology at the University of Michigan); Frederic S. Lee, “Fatigue,” in Harvey Lectures 1905–6 (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1906), pp. 169–194, quote on 170.

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  8. See, for example, Howell, American Textbook of Physiology, p. 72.

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  11. Josephine Goldmark, Fatigue and Efficiency: A Study in Industry (New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1912), quote on p. 252; the material used in this and subsequent briefs is contained in pt. 2. On the history of protective labor legislation for working women and the significance of Muller versus Oregon, see Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 180–214, esp. 186–187.

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  14. Ibid., p. v-vi. At least two other researchers, Francis Benedict and Edward Cathcart at the Nutrition Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington were aware of the possibility of applying physiological research to a study of industrial efficiency; Benedict and Cathcart, Muscular Work (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1913), esp. pp. 3–4.

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  19. Reports of the Committee on Mental and Muscular Fatigue are in Report BAAS, 1910 (London: John Murray, 1911), pp. 292–297; 1911, pp. 174–175. The committee included psychologist McDougall and J. S. MacDonald, professor of physiology at Sheffield.

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  20. Reports of the Committee on the Question of Fatigue from an Economic Standpoint are in Report BAAS, 1914 (London: John Murray, 1915), pp. 175–176; 1915, pp. 283–349; 1916, pp. 251–274; A. F. Stanley Kent, Interim Report on an Investigation of Industrial Fatigue by Physiological Methods (London, 1915), Cd 8056; Kent, Second Interim Report (London, 1916), Cd 8335. The Committee on the Question of Fatigue was chaired by J. H. Muirhead, professor of philosophy at Birmingham, UK and its membership was dominated by economists and physicians from Birmingham.

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  23. Industrial Fatigue Research Board (IFRB), Report (1920), pp. 2–6, quote on 5. Sherrington resigned the chairmanship in 1921 upon becoming president of the Royal Society, but remained a member of the board.

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  24. Ibid. (1920), p. 22; for a list of IFRB publications see Industrial Health Research Board, Industrial Health in War (London: HMSO, 1940), pp. 29–36.

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  25. Minutes of the Committee of Industrial Fatigue (CIF) are held in the Frederic S. Lee Papers (hereafter, FSL), Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, box 6; see also “Memorandum on Studies of Industrial Fatigue,” Public Health Rep. 34 (1919): 731. Phillip Sargant Florence’s dissertation on industrial fatigue was published as Use of Factory Statistics in the Investigation of Industrial Fatigue (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1918).

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  26. CIF Minutes, 7 June 1917, 7 March 1918. On the Council of National Defense and other government wartime agencies, see Ellis Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order (New York: St. Martin’s, 1979), pp. 20–37.

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  27. The major study of the CIF was Goldmark and Mary D. Hopkins, Comparison of an Eight-Hour Plant and a Ten-Hour Plant, Public Health Service Bull. no. 106 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1920); see also Albert Baird Hastings, The Physiology of Fatigue, Public Health Service Bull. no. 117 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1921); Scott, “The Present Status of our Knowledge of Fatigue Products,” Public Health Rep. 33 (1918): 605–610; A. H. Ryan, “The Quantitative Measurement of General Fatigue,” Am. J. Physiol. 45 (1918): 537–538. Hastings went on to become professor of biochemistry at Chicago (1926–1935) and at Harvard (1935–1958).

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  28. E. G. Martin to Lee, 26 March 1918, FSL, box 2; Lee to W. H. Howell, 6 January 1919, FSL, box 1; Lee to J. R. Murlin, 1 September 1920, FSL, box 2.

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  29. See National Research Council, “Physiology Committee. Sub-Committee on Fatigue in Industrial Pursuits,” in National Research Council Archives (hereafter, NRC), National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, Division of Medicine, Committee on Physiology; Henry A. Christian to Lee, 11 December 1919, NRC, Committee on Industrial Physiology, 1919–1920; “Minutes of Sub-Committee on Medical Problems in Industry,” 17 September 1919, NRC, Sub-Committee on Medical Problems in Industry, 1919.

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  30. Ralph Chester Williams, The United States Public Health Service, 1798–1950 (Washington, DC: USPHS, 1951), pp. 279–286; Henry B. Selleck, Occupational Health in America (Detroit, MI: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1962).

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  31. A partial list of their publications includes Lee, The Human Machine and Industrial Efficiency (New York: Longman, Green, 1918); Lee, “The Human Machine in the Factory,” Harvey Lectures, 1917–19 (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1920), pp. 216–233; Florence, Economics of Fatigue and Unrest, and the Efficiency of Labour in English and American Industry (New York: Henry Holt, 1924); H. M. Vernon, Industrial Fatigue and Efficiency (London: Routledge, 1921); Charles S. Myers, “Industrial Overstrain and Unrest,” in Lectures in Industrial Administration, ed. Bernard Muscio (London: Pitman, 1920), pp. 172–184; Myers, Mind and Work (New York: Putnam’s, 1921); Myers, “Industrial Fatigue,” Lancet 1 (1925): 905–908.

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  32. Lee, Human Machine, p. 13; see Goldmark and Hopkins, Comparison, p. 29 for a similarly qualified analogy.

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  33. Vernon, Industrial Fatigue, p. 34; Lee, Human Machine, p. 13; Florence, Economics of Fatigue and Unrest, pp. 383–384.

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  34. Vernon, however, held that accidents did not measure fatigue, and that they were due rather to the workers’ carelessness (the employers’ traditional explanation) and the “psychical factor”; see Vernon, Industrial Fatigue, pp. 179–226.

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  35. Lee, Human Machine, pp. 14–18; Florence, Economics of Fatigue and Unrest,pp. 359–371. Vernon, however, chose not to treat fatigue tests in his book, arguing that all were impractical for use in industry; see Vernon, Industrial Fatigue, pp. 3–4.

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  36. Lee, Human Machine, pp. 24–78; Vernon, Industrial Fatigue, passim; Florence in CIF, 26 June 1918; see summary of the conclusions and recommendations of the CIF study in Goldmark and Hopkins, Comparison, p. 26.

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  37. Florence in CIF, 26 June 1918.

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  38. Even British researchers associated industrial physiology with Lee; see Sir Thomas Oliver to Lee, 30 May 1930, FSL, box 2.

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  40. Lee, “Industrial Efficiency,” Public Health Rep. 33 (1918): 29–35, quote on 30.

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  41. For an extended discussion of the emphasis on productivity by members of the British IFRB and Factory Inspectorate, see Whiteside, “Industrial Welfare and Labour Regulation.”

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  43. See, for example, Lee, “Is the Eight-Hour Working Day Rational?” p. 729; Myers, Mind and Work,p. 41.

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  45. Sherrington to Lee, 20 December 1908, FSL, box 2.

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  46. Fletcher, “The Aims and Boundaries of Physiology,” Report BAAS, 1921,pp. 125–142, quotes on 131, 132.

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  47. Lee, “Human Machine in the Factory,” p. 233.

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  50. On Lee’s attempt to have physiology made part of the science faculty at Columbia, see Pauly, “Appearance of Academic Biology,” pp. 287–289; on his campaign to shift the College of Physicians and Surgeons to Morningside Heights, see Lee to Sherrington, 21 October 1912, FSL, box 2; for his views and proposals on medical education, see Lee, “A Proposed Undergraduate Course in Clinical Physiology,” J. Am. Med. Assoc. 64 (1916): 639–641; Lee, Richard M. Pearce, and W. B. Cannon, “Medical Research in its Relation to Medical Schools,” J. Am. Med. Assoc. 68 (1917): 1075–1079.

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  51. CIF, 26 June 1918.

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  52. IFRB, Report, 1921, pp. 5–8; 1922, pp. 4–7; on the PHS research, see Frederick Bonner Flinn, “Industrial Aspects of Human Fatigue” J. Personnel Res. 4 (1923–1924): 285–293.

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  53. Reynold A. Spaeth, “The Problem of Fatigue,” J. Ind. Hyg. 1 (1919/1920): 22–53, quote on 25; Spaeth, “The Prevention of Fatigue in Manufacturing Industries,” J. Ind. Hyg. 1 (1919–1920): 435–447, quote on 435; Muscio, “Is a Fatigue Test Possible?” Br. J. Psychol. 12 (1921/ 1922): 31–46. For other criticisms of fatigue, see Emery R. Hayhurst, “Points in the Detection of Industrial Fatigue and Measures for its Possible Complete Elimination,” J. Ind. Hyg. 2 (1920/1921): 256–258; Henry C. Link, “A Practical Study in Industrial Fatigue,”J. Ind. Hyg. 1 (1919/1920): 233–237.

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  54. C. K. Drinker, J. Ind. Hyg. Abstr. 2 (1920/1921): 109–115, quote on 115; Goldmark and Hopkins, Comparison, quote on p. 350. Lee and Edsall had forced refinements in Florence’s definition of fatigue, while psychologist Raymond Dodge had made criticisms similar to those later made by Muscio; see CIF 22 October 1917, 26 November 1917.

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  55. Muscio, “Is a Fatigue Test Possible?”; Myers, Mind and Work,esp. pp. v–vi; Myers, “The Study of Fatigue,” J. Personnel Res. 3 (1924/1925): 321–334. Lee and the American physiologists took Muscio’s criticisms seriously; see Martin to Lee, 15 June 1922, FSL, box 2.

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  63. See, for example, F. J. Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickson, Management and the Worker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1939), chapt. 5; George C. Homans, Fatigue of Workers: Its Relation to Industrial Production (New York: Reinhold, 1941); Gillespie, “Manufacturing Knowledge.”

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  64. See, for example, the first volume of the Journal of Applied Physiology, established by the American Physiological Society in 1948.

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  1. Program in History of Science, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA

    Gerald L. Geison (professor of history) (professor of history)

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© 1987 American Physiological Society

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Gillespie, R. (1987). Industrial Fatigue and the Discipline of Physiology. In: Geison, G.L. (eds) Physiology in the American Context 1850–1940. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7528-6_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7528-6_11

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