MANAGEMENT: Don’t Be a Slave Driver

With an eye to the fast-approaching manpower shortage, the National Industrial Conference Board last week offered management some advice: don’t put your employees on a seven-day work week or a 60-hour schedule. Whenever that happened in World War II, said N.I.C.B., “output increased [briefly]. Then, as fatigue accumulated, weekly output fell to levels existing before the change, or even below that.” Added N.I.C.B.: the best standard in peace is a five-day, 40-hour week; in war, a six-day, 48-hour week.