Motion Study
A Method for Increasing the Efficiency of the Workman

48 MOTION STUDY Entertainment Music. — The inspiring and stimulating effect of music has been recognized from ancient times, as is shown by the military band, the fife and drum corps, the bagpipe of the Scotchman, down to the band that rushes the athlete around the track or across the field. The singing of gangs at certain kinds of work, the rhyth- mic orders that a leader of a gang shouts to his men, and the grunting in unison of the hand drillers, show the unifying as well as the motion-stimulating effect of music and rhythm. That some of the trades can have their motions affected in time and speed by music, to a point that will materially affect the size of their outputs, is a recognized fact. Some of the silent trades have used phonography and musical instruments to entertain the men while they were working. It was found it paid the employer to furnish stimulating records at his own expense, so that the work- men would make more and quicker motions, rather than to permit the employees to furnish phonographic records at random at their own expense. Reading. — Reading as a stimulus to output has been used with excellent results among the cigar makers. It is also interesting to read in an article on “Three Months in Peonage” in the March, 1910, issue of the American Magazine, that story-telling may produce the same good results.