56

THE FIVE-DAY WEEK

day week, at least at first, has certain drawbacks. With
respect to this issue, however, the disadvantages appear to
have been outweighed by the advantages derived. The preponderance
 of opinion in favor of the five-day week schedule
indicates that in most plants reporting it has commended
itself to both management and working force.

CoNcLUSION

The conclusion that any or all industrial establishments
could advantageously adopt the five-day week schedule does
not follow from the evidence offered in its favor by a majority
of the companies that are qualified from experience to appraise
 its advantages and drawbacks. This evidence does,
however, remove the five-day week from the status of a
radical and impractical administrative experiment and places
it among the plans which, however revolutionary they may
appear to some, have demonstrated both practicability and
usefulness under certain circumstances. An employer who is
interested in the adaptability of the five-day schedule to his
own business may, therefore, approach the problem as a
working schedule that has been in force for a number of
years in various establishments with generally satisfactory
results.
Whether or not the application of the five-day week will
be extended to industry generally, and whether such extension
 would be economically sound and socially desirable, are
questions that lie in the field of conjecture and opinion and
are outside the scope of this study. The relatively very small
number of individual instances of its application here surveyed,
 and the circumstances, sometimes inherent in special
cases and sometimes imposed, under which the applications
were made, afford no adequate basis for answering the
broader economic and social questions reflected in the shortening
 of working hours. In the end, the question of the
length and arrangement of the working week is likely to be
settled, not on the basis of theoretical principles but by the
practical experience of employers and workers, individually
and in groups; and the general practice may ultimately
even run counter to these principles and ignore the theoretical
problems involved.