The papers of last Saturday contained an account of a
new experiment in industrial life. For some time past large firms which have been foremost in applying methods of industrial welfare have provided music for their workers in spare time, but several of them have now gone a step, further and have experimentally provided bands in factories to play while the workers. worked. The Daily Chronicle reports one firm as saying that " when the brass band plays liveliness is born among the workers, who can be heard whistling and singing the tunes as they push on with their work." The success of bands.which
el
pay for themselves .by increasing the output would indeed be delightful. We wonder, however, whether when some grave student of the muscular movements of the industrial human being gets to work upon the effect of braes bands, he will not discover that production increases with rapid tunes and decreases with slow ones. Is there not a tendency in moot persons to keep time to the musio ? We have all heard of the " Government stroke." But might there not be such a thing as a brass-band stroke, " keeping time, time, time, in a sort of runic rhyme," to the gallop, or to the slow march, as the case may be t.
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