Garden Cities in Theory and Practice (Volume 2); Being an Amplification of a Paper of the Potentialities of Applied Science in a Garden City (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905. Excerpt: ... TIME WASTED 783 days available in each year for the whole industrial population of the United Kingdom may be roughly estimated at about 2,900,000,000, and of this the report under notice shows that the aggregate of time wasted over disputes in 1903 was 2,338,668 days. Now, 2,338,668 working days are equal to rather more than 6,000 working years; and, even granted that in 50 per cent. of the disputes the strikers won a complete victory (obviously a highlyexaggerated supposition), there would still remain a period of working time equivalent to 3,000 years wasted during the twelve months. In considering this serious question of the immense national loss caused by strikes, it will be instructive to glance at the cognate effect of dilatoriness. Taking the 2,900,000,000 working days to be of eight hours, we have 23,200,000,000 hours per annum. Now, if we assume that one-third of the operatives did full work whilst two-thirds did but half as much as might be done in the hour, then we have 7,733,333,333 hours wasted during the year, or, taking three hundred days to the year, 25,777,777 hours wasted each day. What does this mean to masters, to workmen--for they would participate in the saving--and to the nation? If the average wages be taken at sixpence an hour (the artisans earn nearly double that), this means that the loss due to such waste of time amounts to the enormous figure of nearly two hundred millions every year--that is, nearly six hundred and fifty thousand pounds Vol. 1I. 50 every day ( 644,444). More than eighty thousand pounds every hour ( 80,555). It means a preventable waste far exceeding a thousand pounds every minute ( 1,342). This want of integrity in our artisans--it is no use blinking the fact--is the principal cause of our suf...