have found that the cause of failure was too many hours devoted to
reading. The students acquired the habit of sitting over their books
worrying their minds, but really absorbing nothing. A senior wrangler
has been known to find five or six hours a day of real work at
mathematics as much as he could stand. Of course, work involving little
hard physical exertion and hardly any mental effort can go on much
longer, but the very monotony which in some ways makes it easy, has a
deadening effect. A factory operative minding a "mule" being asked: "Is
it not very hard work always watching and piecing threads?" answered,
"No, but it is very dree work." But the evil effects of too long hours
are not confined to the fact that unrest or disputes arise from the
state of feeling produced nor to the diminution of production due to
fatigue. Recurrent strains continued over a long period indeed
deteriorate even things which are inanimate. The "fatigue of metals" has
been the subject of careful investigations. It is time that fatigue of
human beings, even looked at as machines, were more fully considered.[5]

The great and often permanent physical injury caused by too prolonged
work is specially serious for women. Many women are such willing workers
that they go on overtaxing their strength. Among girls and women
students the fatigue from overstrain in preparing for examinations, from
which boys and men may rapidly recover, often results in permanent
physical and even mental degeneration. Many who have watched the effects
of such continuous study would advocate a complete sabbatical year in
which systematic study should be suspended entirely for girls at some
period between fourteen and eighteen.

It is impossible to have a healthy nation if the majority, or any very
large part of it, work for excessive hours even in the factories where
the best methods are employed to make the conditions as healthy as