Book Description

Excerpt from Fatigue and Efficiency: A Study in Industry As I turn from my laboratory to consider in what words I may fittingly introduce Miss Goldmark's admirable book, two thoughts that have often been with me come to me again. The first is, that among the many conditions of human life which may be classed as causes of misery, there is none more potent than the failure of men to live in accordance with physiological laws. Many men fail so to live because of ignorance; many for the reason that even though knowledge be present, desire is defeated by the fact that within their chosen sphere of labor they are not free agents. If this cause of misery is to be removed, there is needed first of all a knowledge of what is physiological. Like other men of science, the physiologist is too often content to spend his time in seeking, to which is added the occasional greater pleasure of finding. He tells his discoveries to his colleagues in the language common to both, but too often he does not interpret them to the people; and thus he lets the world at large remain in its ignorance and misery. Even more rarely does he venture to instruct those who shape the conditions under which multitudes of the people live. But he gladly welcomes the services of those individuals who understand physiological laws and their bearing upon human life, and are capable of bringing this knowledge convincingly home to those who are most in need of it. The second thought that comes back to me is this: Industrialism has been quick to accept the achievements of science in inanimate things, but slow to recognize the teachings of physiology with regard to the man himself. Methods and machines have been revolutionized, but the human element has not yet been eliminated. The man or woman or child is still essential to the method and the machine, and while the inanimate agent demands more and more of him, his fundamental physiological powers are probably not so very different from what they were when he built the pyramids and made papyrus. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.