The Report on "The Regulation and Restriction of Output" in
the United States and Great Britain recently issued by the Bureau of Labour of the United States, which is noticed in Thursday's Times, is a document of great interest. Dr. Gray, the author of the Report, gives - with great minuteness of detail a specific instance in Britain where the same body of men, engaged in building for a Co-operative Society of which they were members—and therefore with every incentive to practise economy—two sets of cottages according to the same specifications, of the same materials, and under similar conditions (except that in the first case the foreman was a Union man, and in the second he was not), laid twice as many bricks per day on the average on the second set of houses as on the first. Furthermore, Dr. Gray comes to the conclusion, as the result of interviews with the workmen, the president of the two Co-operative Societies involved, and the foreman, that there had been great and deliberate restric- tion of output in the various bra.uches of the work. "The only explanation," he adds, "for the unquestionable facts in- the case is that the men were doing on their first series of buildings what they were accustomed to do, in large measure, on public works and under independent contractors?' The significance of Dr. Gray's testimony is all the more striking in that he is apparently on general grounds a strong supporter of Trade-Unionism.
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