If you look round a large city you will note that the tendency is to set up factories on the best possible site; if it is not a feasible plan to convert the factory site into a park-like condition, then a move is made to the outer fringe of the city. Bourneville, outside Birmingham, and Port Sunlight, close to Birkenhead, England, are examples of this development. Coming nearer home, there is a splendidly lit, spacious factory abutting on to Myers Park, in Auckland, while the main entrance to the N.Z. Railway Shops at Otahuhu gives promise of being a lead in such matters to the North Island, if not to New Zealand. Unthinking persons, or those employers who worked in old-time factories prior to setting up for themselves, decry the new movement, for they fail to see the psychological effect of such outward and visible signs of care; but the operatives benefit considerably. Within the modern factory the maxim must be order and neatness, absence of noise and similar distractions, freedom from “chasing or driving.” In many old factories, e.g., the Newmarket Workshops, the site resembled a junk shop, while the shop itself was conducive of anything but good work. On the present site the shops are compact, with a scientific lay-out, so that there is no needless movement, as has been noted by Mr. E. T. Spidy, Superintendent of Workshops, in his remarks before the recent Boot Manufacturers’ Commission. Noise is a distinct evil because it prevents concentration, as well as being distinctly unpleasant. Miss Goldmark says: “Noise not only distracts attention, but also necessitates a greater exertion of intensity or conscious application, thereby hastening the onset of fatigue of the attention.” Experiments have proved that, simply by removing men from a yard in which trucks were being pushed about, to a quiet place, their output was increased 25 per cent., and obviously at a relatively greater conservation of energy.