Employers, too, are experimenting boldly
with the idea of creating pleasure in work.
The first step has been taken in the very
general elimination of the old wasteful, neglectful
elements of factory and office environment.
Comfort, the first neutral element
of pleasure, is provided for employees just as
solid foundations are provided for the factory
buildings. There is light, heat, and ventilation
where a generation ago there were tiny windows,
<p 180>
shadows, lonely stoves, and foul air. Cleanliness
is provided and preserved; not a few of
the larger industries employ a regular corps of
janitors to keep floors, walls, and windows clean.
The walls are tinted; the lights are arranged
so as to provide the right illumination without
straining the workers' eyes. The departments
are symmetrically arranged; the aisles are
wide; the working space is ample; there is
no fear to haunt machine tenders that a mis-
step or a moment of forgetfulness will entangle
them in a neighboring machine. The factory
buildings themselves, without being pretentious,
have pleasing, simple lines and unobtrusive
ornamentation. They look like, and
are, when the human equation does not interfere,
_*pleasant_ places to work in.
This is the typical modern factory; thousands
can be found in America. On this
foundation of good working conditions and
pleasant environment, many companies have
built more or less elaborate systems of welfare
work, whose effectiveness in creating
pleasure and efficiency seem to depend on the
<p 181>
purpose and spirit of the men behind them.
These systems frequently begin with beautification
of the factory premises and workrooms
--window boxes, factory lawns, ivied walls,
trees, and shrubs--and advance by various
stages to lunch rooms for workers, factory
libraries, rest rooms for women workers, factory
nurses and physicians, and sometimes the
development of a social life among employees
through picnics, lectures, dances, night schools,
and like activities. The methods employed
are too diverse and too recent to permit an accurate
estimate of their work or a true analysis
of the elements of their success. It is incumbent
on the employer to find or work out for
himself the method best suited to his individual
needs.
_To understand how pleasure heightens the
suggestibility of the individual it is but necessary
to consider the well-known effects which pleasure
has on the various bodily and mental processes_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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