he number of errors is
superior to the normal result.

The influences of the physiological stimulants have many points of
contact with the effects of social entertainment, the significance of
which for the economic life is still rather unknown in any exact
detail. Many factories in which the labor is noiseless, as in the
making of cigars, have introduced gramophone music or reading aloud,
and it is easy to understand theoretically that a certain animating
effect results, which stimulates the whole psychophysical activity But
only the experiment would be able to decide how this stimulation is
related, for instance, to the distraction of attention, which is
necessarily involved, or how it influences various periods of the work
and various types of work, how far it is true that the musical key
exerts an exciting or relaxing influence, what intensity and what
local position, what rhythm and what duration of such aesthetic
stimuli, would bring the best possible economic results. We all have
read of the favorable effects which were secured in a factory when a
cat was brought into every working-room in which women laborers were
engaged in especially fatiguing work. The cat became a living toy for
the employees, which stimulated their social consciousness. In not a
few plants the reinforced achievement is explained by the social means
of entertainment, which have been introduced under the pressure of
modern philanthropic ideas. The lounging-rooms with the newspapers and
periodicals the clubrooms with libraries, the excursions and dances
and patriotic festivities, fill up the reservoir of psychophysical
energies. As a matter of course all the social movements which enhance
the consciousness of solidarity among the laborers and the feeling of
security as to their future development in their career have a similar
effect of reinforcing the normal psychical achievement.

As the strongest factor, finally, the direct material interest must
be added to these conditions. The literature of political economy is
full of discussions of the effect of increase of wages, of the payment
of bonuses and premiums, of piece-wages, of promised pensions, and, as
far as Europe is concerned, of state insurance. In short, the whole
individual financial situation in its relation to the psychophysical
achievement of the wage-earner is a favorite topic of economic
inquiry. We cannot participate here in these inexhaustible
discussions, because all these q