by political ferment. In many trades, however, the decline in output per worker is greater than can fairly be explained by these unfavorable conditions.
Coal mining in Germany is now a legal seven-hour day. Before the war the rule was eight hours. As against a reduction of one-eighth in working time, there has been a decline of about one-third in output—from 0.884 ton per man per shift to 0.597 ton. This is in the Ruhr mining district of Westphalia, but figures from other mining districts are much the same. [Doctor Hoffmann wrote before the French and Belgians occupied the Ruhr.]
Doctor Hoffmann holds that in works where payment by the hour prevails a one-fifth output reduction as due exclusively to the shortened hours may be taken as proved. In such operations the intensity of work has not increased at all. Where piece payment prevails conditions are otherwise. The working hours of concerns practicing piece payment have also been reduced to eight, and with them if the workman is to earn his former income he must either get a higher piece wage or he must work more intensely. Doctor Hoffmann holds that more intense work has been achieved in certain industries where the human element dominates; but that where the intensity of work depends primarily upon the speed of machines the shorter hours of piece payment workers have brought shortened production. He calculates for all the workers of Germany an average reduction of 15 per cent in production.[1]
- ↑ The crisis in Germany in October, 1923, which resulted in the establishment of a dictatorship, focussed upon this very point of the statutory eight-hour day. The industrialists insisted upon its abolition for the salvation of the nation, while the Socialists continued stubbornly to resist.
