Industrial Fatigue

Abstract

THE Industrial Fatigue Research Board, which has recently been reconstructed as an advisory body under the Medical Research Council, is to be congratulated upon the publication of two highly valuable and most interesting reports. These are doubtless a legacy to it from the older Board the wider sphere and greater liberty of action of which were recently brought to an end by the Treasury under the pretext of economy. They are published by H.M. Stationery Office at 1s. and 2s. respectively, Report No. 12 being on vocational guidance and Report No. 15 on motion study in metal polishing. The former of these reports, written by Mr. B. Muscio (who has since accepted a professorship in the University of Sydney), gives a detailed review of the literature on vocational selection. The list of nearly sixty books and papers at the end of the report indicates the diligence which the author has brought to bear on his task. The report is divided into three sections: (1) introductory, (2) summary of special investigations, and (3) future investigations. The second section, filling forty-two ot the fifty-seven pages, contains a most able and critical account of the psychological tests that have been applied to clerical, engineering, and metallurgical occupations, music, printing, salesmanship, telegraphy, telephone exchange work, transport work, war experiments, etc. Prof. Muscio indicates in his last section the wide field which is now open for future investigations conducted on a broader scale and on a more systematic basis than hitherto.