INTRODUCTION

of the day or week may be covered by this peak demand.
Capital investment in production facilities in the industry is,
therefore, regulated by maximum requirement. This problem
 of peak load has in late years been intensified as a result
of the gradual but progressive shortening of the working day.
If, in the near future, work on Saturday should become the
exception instead of the rule, the industrial demand for power
on Saturday would practically cease, leaving the power companies
 with relatively idle equipment on two of the seven
days in each week. In addition, if part of the former Saturday
 working hours were retained and spread over the preceding
 five days of the week, the length of these working days
would be increased, a situation that at certain times of the
year would tend to bring about a crossing of the power load
and the light load, thereby perhaps creating a new maximum
requirement for current. Therefore, in the event of a widespread
 adoption of five-day operation, power companies apparently
 face a dilemma; first, with a greater concentration
of demand resulting in a new maximum and the need for additional
 capital investment to provide facilities for meeting this
maximum demand, and second, at the same time a longer
period of comparative idleness for equipment with fixed
charges going on and little revenue coming in.
While these problems may be considered as primarily
affecting the public utility companies themselves, they may
have a much wider bearing. These companies might find the
loss of revenue on Saturday sufficiently serious, or the capital
cost of new facilities enough of a strain upon their resources,
to make the maintenance of present power rates impossible.
In the event of an increase in these rates, manufacturing industries
 would feel the direct effect of problems which their
adoption of the five-day schedule had created.
Such questions, however, are based upon the assumption
that the five-day week would be introduced generally in a
relatively short period of time, which is very doubtful, and
that such application of the five-day week would mean that
plant operation would necessarily be restricted to five-days
per week or to the same five days for all establishments. Asa
matter of fact, any increase in five-day operation in manufacturing
 industries is likely to be so gradual that, judging