having men leave us, and having them decide whether they would keep their situations or not, we had something tangible to bring before them.

It is the same way with the other divisions of this table under "Left of Own Accord." We find entered here under the sub-title, "Working Conditions," this reason: "Heavy, Wet, Dusty," etc. We have in our plant a great deal of dusty work. We were able to show the management in certain departments it was possible for them to spend quite a number of thousands of dollars in improving their dust systems and make money. We tried it on a small scale in one department. We found as soon as the extreme dusty conditions were removed-and it cost a good deal of money to put the improvements through-the number of men who left on account of "heavy, wet, dusty," etc., was greatly reduced.

We showed that in the dusty departments that it was a low statement that it cost $100 to break in a man. It takes about four months to get men up to maximum earning capacity, and the difference between the piece work wage and what we paid the man while teaching him, and the cost of instruction and all that, was $100. We were able to go to the foreman of this department in which there was the largest quantity of dust and say to him-"We have fixed the dust situation, and every man you keep for only four months, and then let go, you can simply imagine that a $100 bill left with him." This man gets only $2,000 a year, and he might save to us twenty men and make that $2,000. We then told him that part of his value to us was going to consist, not merely in the amount of work turned out by the department, but in the smaller number of men we had. to pay for breaking in, and he saw it, and he will get an increase in salary when the year goes around, because he has risen to the situation, which he would not have seen if we had not put before him in black and white that he was losing more than his proportion of men.

There are other things not chargeable to the foreman, not chargeable to the employment department. How many people leave on account of ill health? Who is responsible? Ordinarily we would say no one is responsible, but if we put it up to our hospital department-What are you doing to prevent this? Are you going to do something to get control of this condition, and

will you do something for them, before they are actually out of work? The result is that the hospital department braced up, got on to this, and we are cutting down the loss of time due to ill health, and the leaving of our employes due to ill health, very markedly. It was surprising to find out how much we could do in that direction.

Another of these headings is "Monotony." We found when some of our firms insisted on sending in orders for 50,000 or 60,000 grinding wheels, all of a size, that it looked like a pretty monotonous job to put up to a man to be on that job day and night, day after day. The kind of man we would like to have do that work would not do it under those circumstances, and would object. We broke that order up and gave him 400 or 500 of that lot, and then put him on a little different kind of job, and then brought him back to the first lot. That is not efficient, the Taylor system will not stand for it, but we get more work out of the men, and they stay with us and do it. There is no use in being so efficient if the men will not stay with you and do the work at all.

Another of the items is, "Family Moving," to which I have referred previously. Of course, this applies to young fellows, and will apply to the girls, as we get them working for us more and more, when their parents move out of town. We want to know why people will not live in Worcester. If we find that many people are leaving Worcester, we want to know why it is. Are they going to Buffalo or Detroit because Worcester is slow and does not attract them? If so, we must take some means to prevent their leaving the city. We are interested in Worcester just as much as any one else in town.

Another head is, "Household Conditions." What classes of people, as indicated by the departments they are in, need better housing conditions? Who are leaving the town because they cannot get houses to live in at all? We do attract some people from outside places, and we must take care of them in some way. If there is an indication we are losing a considerable sum of money, through lack of housing conditions, let us build some houses. Some of you were in Worcester two years ago and saw what we were doing at that time, and we are continuing it. We are building a good many homes for our work people. A good home attracts a man longer than anything else I know of,

and we believe a greater investment in the loyalty and permanency of our men can be secured by good housing conditions better than anything that can be done for the same amount of money. We sell houses to our work people and make only a profit of five per cent-that is a fairly good investment, and we are perfectly willing to take some liberty bonds at 31⁄2 per cent. We are situated three miles out of town, and it is a handicap, and lots of concerns all over the country situated in that way have found it is a handicap;-three miles from the moving picture houses, three miles from a saloon, and three miles from a lot of attractive things to the employes.

That means that the men will try to get jobs nearer to the places where they happen to have their homes. How much does it cost us to be located three miles out of town? I figured that it was costing us a half a million dollars a year to have our plant out in the location where it is. The idea occurred to us that perhaps we ought to get a site nearer the center of the city. We were willing to make a sacrifice of a half a million dollars, if necessary, but on considering the problem we did not believe it was necessary, and consequently we took the matter up with the local street railway company and got them to allow us to spend several thousand dollars in putting in a terminal at our plant for the operation of their cars into the plant, so we can load our people inside the works, as any modern plant ought to do, and ship them down where they live, and then they can go to the moving picture houses all they want to, and incidentally we keep them away from the saloons, which is another cause of turnover. We have met the situation by putting in what we call milk stations, and sell our people buttermilk, sweet milk, ginger ale and a number of other soft drinks. We get them so full of it before they go home at night that there is no room for them to put in any liquor.

Then there is another heading entitled, "Other Exits." Of course, there may be a variety of reasons for our desire to get rid of a man, and they would be entered under this heading. Some one will say, any time a man is discharged, that that is one on the employment department-they hired the wrong man. Perhaps it is and perhaps it is not. The foreman may not have been the right man for the work. We have a little department, which we checked up yesterday, and found that the turnover ran

up to 300 per cent in the case of every man who had been turned out of that department, boys eighteen or twenty years old, when he got ready to go I was absolutely unable to recommend him to any other department in the plant. That department had gone down hill. We have in that department a foreman who is not constructive. That means that that foreman has either got to change his entire method of handling these boys, or we have got to get a new foreman. We hope we can educate the foreman. His attention has been called to the matter quite sharply, and in a month or so we expect to see very decided improvements. We would not have been able to place the responsibility for this large turnover if we had not some means of analyzing the conditions.

I do not mean to go through all the rest of these reasons for withdrawals. The rest of them are pretty nearly self-explanatory. It is simply a selling proposition-selling this thing to the management, to get them to see that it can be done, and what they might do to enable us to do something along that line.

CHAIRMAN PITZER: I am glad that Mr. Fish has told us what he has, as he has shown what it is possible to do in connection with a chart. Is there any questions to be asked in connection with the chart? Do you think you will be able to take it home and use it?

A DELEGATE: I ask Mr. Fish why, as an employment man, he has failed to bring out in this list the thing which the employment man is primarily responsible for; that is, correct placing. How about those round fellows in square holes? Surely, that is an important item that should be included in the problem of labor turnover. There is one other thing I looked for, or listened for, and did not see or hear, and that is the establishing of an intelligent confidence between the management and the men. think these two things are absolutely essential to any program of stáblizing labor. I speak from having had a pretty extended experience, and made a careful study of this problem from the practical side as well as the theoretical side.

CHAIRMAN PITZER: Nothing has been left out of the chart. If you will look at the chart facing page 80 you will see about a dozen blank spaces, and those are spaces for anything which might come up other than those provided for by the headings. We suspected that some one would ask just that question, and for that reason we left those blank spaces in the chart.

Now, as to the relations between the employment manager and the executives, I think the employment manager is the one who makes and establishes that relation. Of course, the executive can err in his selection as well as the employment manager can in selecting help, but, of course, the employment manager must be selected, and I think you must give the executives credit in making selections of that kind, and it is pretty generally a good job. I think the employment managers will bear me out in that the employment manager's job is a real job, and as the employment manager progresses he shows results, and he will work into the confidence of the executive, it cannot be otherwise. The same principle applies to the employment manager and the clerk. The clerk, by faithful service, will work his way into your confidence, and I do not see any other way of viewing that proposition, unless Mr. Fish can answer your question more intelligently. Don't you think we have allowed sufficient spaces for anything that might come up, Mr. Fish?

MR. E. H. FISH: I am sorry to say we have not. In our case we had to cross out one or two of these and put in other clauses. There were not enough blank spaces left. You realize in almost any business there will be reasons peculiar to that business why people leave. You must leave some of these blanks for the individual business.

The first question which the gentleman asked, if I recall aright, was correct placing. I do not know how you can show that on the chart, because the employment manager is going to make out the chart, and in that case there is no need to reserve any space for incorrect placement. As a matter of fact, I do not know whether any one will chart whether or not you made a correct placement. If you tolerate the man on a job for a year, does that prove you placed the correct man there? That does not prove anything. I can imagine people in jobs working continuously five or ten years incorrectly placed and they have never been found out. I do not see how any one person can tell whether you have correctly or incorrectly placed them. Suppose it is a shop job. A man goes to work in the shop and the foreman says, "That was a useless chap you sent the other day, he is absolutely no good." Does that prove that he is wrongly. placed? Take him out of that department and put him under a different foreman, who does not pay much attention to him, and