ickly as possible, thus
completely exhausting themselves after three or four hours of labor.
In spite of such senseless exaggeration of effort in the first hours,
the total output for the day would have been relatively small. Now the
foremen determined exactly when every individual should lift and move
the load and when he should sit quietly. The result was that the men,
without greater fatigue, were able to carry 47-1/2 tons a day instead
of the 12-1/2 tons. Their wages were increased 60 per cent. Such a
trivial illustration demonstrates very clearly the extreme difference
between an increase of the economic achievement by scientific,
experimental investigation and a mere enforcing of more work by
artificially whipping-up the mind with promises of extraordinary
wages. Yet even such rules as the scientific management engineers have
formed, may be elaborated to more lasting prescriptions as soon as the
purely psychological factors are brought more into the foreground and
are approached with the careful analysis of the experimental
psychologist.

Such a systematic psychological inquiry is the more important for
questions of fatigue, as we know that the subjective feeling of
displeasure in fatigue is no reliable measure for the objective
fatigue, that is, for the real reduction of the ability for work.
Daily experience teaches us how easily some people overstep the limits
of normal fatigue, and in extreme cases even come to a nervous
breakdown because nature did not protect them by the timely appearance
of strong fatigue feelings. On the other hand, we find many men and
still more women who feel tired even after a small exertion, because
they did not learn early to inhibit the superficial feelings of
fatigue, or because the sensations of fatigue have in fact a certain
abnormal intensity in their case. The question how far the
psychophysical apparatus has really been exhausted by a certain effort
must be answered with the help of objective research and not on the
basis of mere subjective feelings. But such objective measurements
demand systematic experiments in the laboratory.

The experiments which really have been carried on in the laboratory as
yet, as far as they were not merely physiological, have on the whole
been confined to so-called mental labor, and were essentially devoted
to problems of school instruction or medical diagnosis. We have no
doubt excellent experiments which are devoted to the study of the
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