THE FIVE-DAY WEEK

of management or in processing? Decisions of management
upon the immediate practicability of the five-day schedule
will be strongly influenced by its attitude in regard to these
points. While the five-day week must still be considered
more as an experiment than as an established and general
policy, it is undoubtedly receiving serious consideration by
business executives, not as an abstract proposition but as a
definite practical question for their individual enterprises.
A well-founded appraisal of the practicability of the fiveday
 week as a general working schedule has been made difficult
 in the past by the lack of data upon which sound judgment
 could be based. Favorable or unfavorable attitude toward
 the question has heretofore rested largely upon personal
prejudice or the accepted school of economic thought, rather
than upon objectively analyzed evidence. The National Industrial
 Conference Board undertook this study of the fiveday
 week, not in an attempt in any way to pass final judgment
 upon this work arrangement, but to take account of it
as one possible schedule of industrial operation and to assemble
 available data that would show the extent of its use, the
reasons for its adoption, the character of the industries in
which it is found, the technique of its operation and its
effectiveness as a regular working schedule.
In interpreting the results of the investigation it is important
 to note at the outset: first, that the total number of
employees found to be on a regular five-day week schedule,
even including the huge employment of the Ford Motor
Company, constitutes only about 2.6% of the total number
of wage earners in manufacturing in the United States; second,
 that most of the instances of five-day week operation
that were found and studied are confined to certain industries
in which, as a rule, labor is highly organized; and third, that
most progress in the spread of the five-day week has probably
been in the highly unionized construction industry, which is
not treated in detail in this study since the problems involved
 are radically different from those in manufacturing
industries.