s legislation enforced by
efficient factory inspectors, regardless of what may be given to
employees above the requirement of hygiene.

Until employees are more active as citizens and more sensitive to
hygienic rights, it is desirable that welfare directors be employed in
factories to arbitrate between employer and employee, to raise the
moral standard of a factory settlement, to organize amusements.

Welfare work at its best is a method of dividing business profits among
all who participate in making these profits. Too often welfare
secretaries teach employees how to be happy in the director's way,
rather than in their own way. This adventitious position increases
suspicion on both sides, disturbs the discipline of the foreman,
weakens rather than strengthens the worker's efficiency, because it
depends upon other things than work well done and the relation of
health to efficiency. In a small factory town the owner of a large
cotton mill has recognized the financial benefit of physically strong
workers, and is trying the experiment of a welfare director. The man
himself works "with his sleeves up." The social worker has an office in
the factory. A clubhouse is fitted up for the mill hands to make merry
in. A room in the factory is reserved for a lunch room, with plants,
tables, and chairs for the comfort of the women. Parties are given by
the employer to the employees, which he himself attends. He has thrown
himself into whatever schemes his director has suggested. The director
complained that the reason the new lunch room was not more popular was
because a piano was needed. A second-hand one would not do, for that
would cultivate bad taste in music. This showed the employer that soon
everything would be expected from the "big house on the hill." An event
which happened at the time when the pressure was greatest on him for
the piano, convinced him that his employees could supply their real
needs without any trouble or delay. The assistant manager was about to
leave, and in less than a week five hundred dollars was raised among
the workers for his farewell gift. Walking home that night late from
his office the owner was attracted by the sound of jollity, and saw a
little room jammed full of mill people enjoying the improvised music of
a mouth organ played to the accompaniment of heels. He resolved
henceforth to train his employees to do his work well and to earn more
pay,--and to let them amuse themselves. From that tim