family terms. For example, a man will want to quit because of a slight ruction with a fellow-worker or a superior, whereupon she will remind him that his little Johnny should not be forced by father’s unemployment to leave school to go to work, or that another baby is coming in a couple of months and that he mustn’t cause anxiety to ‘the wife’.... This particular ‘plant mother’, I am told, has been instrumental in reducing the labour turnover to an astonishing extent.”3
My readers will be able to think of many other possible applications of this principle. Cannot our domestic parrot be turned to economic advantage? Its present function would seem to be only that of preserving the unity of private family life by giving its jaded members something to laugh and talk about when the bonds of common interest and filial piety are beginning to wear thin. That which preserves the family from disruption and armies from revolt will surely soon be dedicated to the cause of peace in industry.
To these things we are gradually and insensibly being led, so gradually and insidiously as to evade the inhibitory sense of the ludicrous. Already it is known that light, ventilation, and the general comfort of the worker are relevant to production. By slight and inexpensive changes in these respects output may be augmented say 3.5 or even 10 per cent, and the worker suffers less from nervous irritability and is less punctual in paying his subscription to his union. At any moment it may be found that hanging pictures on the workshop walls has a similar effect. Possibly Landseer’s would raise efficiency and contentment only 1 per cent, whilst Sargent’s would really justify their auction prices. We should then discover a more satisfactory policy with regard to our National Galleries. We should go to Port Sunlight to see good pictures and the Royal Academy would become the testing hall for experiments in industrial art.
All this is coming about no longer by mere chance or blind experiment, but by the operation of a principle which I take as a