MILES OF WASTED HYPHENS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2684, 2 February 1916, Page 6

MILES OF WASTED HYPHENS

Scientific management is poking its nose into every nook and cranny of our economic system in search of superfluous movements and extravagances in the expenditure of energy, and one <rf the latest leaks discovered is the waste of time in writing certain hyphenated words.

A statistician, with an infinite capacity for detail, iias just figured out tho amount of time and energy we waste in the use of the hyphen in the words to-day, to-night, and to-morrow. He figured tho three words are used on an average of forty-eight times daily by 178,236,592 English-speaking people and an average of five times every 48 hours are written in longhand.

The daily output of hyphens, the statistician declares, is 801,236,460. Allowing one quarter of an inch to a written hyphen, this would mean a continuous line 3£64 miles jn length. Writing at a fair speed, it would take one man 76 years to writcthat number of hyphens, working during an average workday.

Typewriter and typesetting machine operators write to-day, to-morrow, and to-night at an average of four times each on about a quarter of a million typewriters-andabout three times daily for each word on about 184,312 linotypes. One ounce pressure is required to operate typewriter or linotype key, an aggregate of about 352,974 footpounds of energy wasted on a practically useless character. The same amount of energy would draw a train across Europe. Of further interest is the useless waste of ink and papor in writing hyphens, the same, master of figures declaring that the value of the ink and paper so employed would buy bread for ono day for everybody iu the Commonwealth.

Said Bishop Julius to a querist from "The Christchurch News":—The cause of Labour is one that has always appealed to' me from my . youth upward, but I' am compelled to confess that the manifesto of the Labour Conference on conscription has given me tho greatest disappointment. The one great object of trio British Empire at present is to crush German for Germany victorious would spell rum—would deal a death-blow, in fact—to the now steadily advancing cause of . Labour, and therefore any motion or manifesto that furthers the cause of Germany or oilcourages her still to fight, can have tho sympathy of none in the' Empire. I am sure that the working men of Now Zealand, when they learn all that that manifesto means, will not support it in any .way. There can be no ulterior object in the singte aim _ which would crush for ever Prussian militarism. The capitalist is not longing to turn the war to his own advantage or the advantage of his class. On the contrary the war is entirely against his interests, and he and the working man should bo as one in joining in the great work before us." Bishop Julius added that he had no sympathy with what wns known as confiscation, but as there seemed to be a large class in this country who appeared to be expecting taxation, he would favour taxing them to the ui> most. v