EXPERIENCE WITH FIVE-DAY WEEK 51

income by working for wages on Saturdays would not appear
to be losing the value of his weekly day of freedom from the
accustomed work, so long as the spare-time work is of a
different character from that of his regular occupation.
A more serious objection mentioned by a few employers
is that the compression of the work week into five days has
made these five days too long, particularly in the hot summer
months. In one plant, a poorer quality of work was observed,
 which was attributed to longer working hours under
artificial light during the winter months. An employer who
approved the five-day week in principle, but had not been
able to adapt it to the work in his plant as a regular schedule,
had such an objection:

“We work a fifty-hour week from 7.30 a. m. to 5 p. vm. We found
‘hat a five-day week would not give us an economical volume pro-Juction
 unless we worked a ten-hour day. A ten-hour day with two
days a week off would no doubt be satisfactory to some of our men,
but there are jobs in our plant at which we feel no man would or should
work ten hours daily. The resulting fatigue would so increase the
accident hazard that we feel the benefits of a five-day week in such
cases are very questionable, not to mention the moral responsibility
involved.”

This question of long hours is fundamental and is probably
the consideration that has deterred many companies from
experimenting with the five-day week. Many have found
it possible to shorten their weekly schedule somewhat in
changing to a five-day basis, some without loss of production,
 others accepting a certain loss in output. Where such
a reduction in total hours does not seem practicable, and
where occupational demands are severe, there arises the
question as to the desirability of five-day week operation.
The increase in accident hazard due to longer hours, which
was mentioned by the employer quoted above, is given but
little weight by most employers operating on the five-day
schedule. Since accident hazard is understood to increase as
fatigue dulls the normal sharpness of perception and reaction,
 the lengthening of working hours per day might be
expected to have some effect. In most cases reported, however,
 no difference had been observed; in companies whose
accident frequency had improved, some credit for this better