The Revolution in the Factories
Where these conditions exist, it is obvious that three workmen working successively for eight hours each produce more han two workmen each working twelve hours. On the other hand, when the output is limited by the scarcity of raw material, the question of working hours loses its importance from the point of view of the intensification of industrial production. There remain the cases where labour is insufficient. These are more rare than one would imagine in this country, that has not mobilized, as those of the West have done, its whole valid population, and where there certainly remain great reserves of unemployed labour, notably female labour. But it is undoubtedly true that in certain cases skilled labour is difficult to obtain in sufficient supplies to permit of a third shift. Very often, therefore, in such cases they go back to the pre-war system of overtime. In two factories at least we were assured that even now, in spite of special technical difficulties, the workmen were producing as much in eight hours as they formerly did in ten.
But we must admit that this instance
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