0 ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Brittle Books Project, 2019.COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION In Public Domain. Published prior to 1923. This digital copy was made from the printed version held by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was made in compliance with copyright law. Prepared for the Brittle Books Project, Main Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2019The Eight Hours Work Day. LABOUR UNION, 50, Ivydale Road, London, S.E. May, 1891. By A. K. DONALD.THE EIGHT HOUES WORK DAY. N England the masses of the people are overworked and insufficiently supplied with the necessaries and the comforts of life. The consequence is they are not the men they ought to be. The lives of the majority of Englishmen are passed in one unceasing grind at joyless work, done with no hope of anything better, and no reward beyond a pittance just large enough to enable them to work and to drag up their children to take their places when they are worn out or hurried to a premature death. Time after time English workmen have tried to alter the state of things that keeps them ceaselessly toiling in want and misery that others may spend their lives in idleness and luxury. Within the last year or two many attempts have been made to obtain an increase in wages, sometimes with a favourable, but too often with the opposite result. This ha& been due largely to-the presence of a body of unemployed labourers who, from their starving condition, are only too glad to take the place of the strikers, regardless of the harm they thereby do to their class. The strikes of gas workers at Manchester and South London, and of railway men in Scotland, are cases to the point. Any scheme which promises to absorb the unemployed, in whole or part, who are competitors for work, will be of the greatest advantage to the workers by enabling them to success- fully claim an increased share in the product of their labour. The workman should obtain for his own and his family's^ consumption the whole return of his labour. I mean by a workman every person who is engaged in useful production,, whether his work be of the nature of organizer, producer of commodities, or of services. The work should be so arranged, as to be a pleasure to the man who has to do it. To effect this nothing short of a complete reorganization of society is necessary. Among other things it would mean the abolition of the non- producing class. A change of such magnitude takes time to bring about, meanwhile, it is our duty to adopt such practical, measures as will hasten its advent.3 One of the most effective of these steps in the direction of a brighter future is the reduction of the working day to a maxi- mum one of eight hours, or the establishment of a maximum working week of forty-eight hours ; overtime to be abolished except in cases of extreme urgency, such as when the safety of life or limb is at stake. Due allowance to be made for occupa- tions dependent upon the weather or the seasons, and of an intermittent character. All the staple industries of the country must come under the proposal: spinning, weaving, mining, smelting, house and ship-building, hard and stoneware manu- facture, transport, warehousing, retailing, &c. It will require practical men to deal with such occupations as agriculture, horticulture, fishing, and the like in the spirit of fixing a normal working day for the different seasons. This is not the place to enter into minute details as to how speciaL cases are to be treated; they will have to be dealt with in such a way as to harmonize with the principle. What is wanted at present is to prove to those in the great staple industries who have not studied the question that the reduction of the hours of work to eight per day would appreciably increase the well-being of those who live by labour. Before attempting this task, it will be interesting to glimpse at the development of the demand for a short working day. The history of the labour movement largely consists in the story of the struggle for it. The leaders of the English working classes have for generations been agitating to reduce the period of exploitation to the narrowest limits. It is no wonder that the fight has been a bitter one; the rich have fought to maintain their privilege of living in luxury on the labour of the masses, and the workers for a free life eased of the burden of supporting an .idle class. The accounts of factory life at the beginning of the century show the most rapacious cruelty on the part of the capitalists of that time. The official reports prove that men, women, and children used to regularly work sixteen and seventeen hours a day. The mortality and misery of the people under such conditions can hardly be realized. The intelligent amongst their own ranks began an agitation for reducing the hours of labour. Their efforts were supplemented by the assistance of philan- thropists like Robert Owen, Richard Oastler, Thomas Sadler, the Fieldens, and Lord Shaftesbury. Various combinations in certain trades tried to reduce the hours of labour, but with a very small amount of success. At last, Parliament, actuated by humane motives, passed the Factory Acts (1881, 1844, 1847), P859164 which practically introduced a ten hours work day, though the laws directly protected only women and children. Lord Shaftesbury relates the difficulties he had in passing his Ten Hours Bill: " I had to break EVERY POLITICAL CONNECTION, to encounter a most formidable array of capitalists, mill-owners, and doctrinaires. Peel was hostile and the Tory country gentlemen. But in 1847, indignant with Peel on the ground of Corn Law Repeal, they returned to the cause of the factory children. Out of Parliament, there was in society every form of contempt. In the provinces, the anger and irri- * tation of the opponents were almost fearful. In very few instances did any mill-owner appear on the platform with me, in still fewer the ministers of any religious denomination. I had more aid from the medical than the divine profession. The operatives themselves did their duty. Their delegates, whom they maintained at their own cost, were always active and trustworthy men. Bright was their most malignant opponent. Cobden, though bitterly hostile, was better than Bright. Gladstone ever voted resistance to my efforts. He gave no support to the Ten Hours Bill; he voted with Sir Robert Peel to rescind the famous division in favour of it. He was the only member who endeavoured to delay the Bill which delivered women and children from mines and pits ; and never did he say a word on behalf of the factory children until when defending slavery in the West Indies, he taunted Buxton with indifference to slavery in England." The definite demand for an eight hour day dates from early in the century. In the Francis Place collection of Manuscripts preserved in the Library of the British Museum, there is a copy of a petition of north country weavers dated in the twenties, soliciting the establishment of an Eight Hours Working Day. Many of the chartists had this proposal in view. The French Socialists of 1848 advocated it, and in the sixties it was a subject discussed at the Congresses of the International Working Men's Association, and at the English Trades' Union Congresses. The abolition of systematic overtime has always been a standing principle with the English Trades' Unionists in theory. The late J. Gr. Eccarius, one of the Secretaries of the International Working Men's Association, in 1871 wrote an admirable pamphlet, 44 The Hours of Labour," on the subject, which may still be read with interest. Then came the period of busy trade and high wages, caused by the stoppage of industry on the Continent by the Franco-Prussian War. Many trades took advantage of the exceptional condition of business to force a nine hour day. This, the last general reduction of the nominal working day, was obtained without the aid of Parliamentary legislation, but it should be borne in mind that the demand for labour in Great Britain at that time was of an altogether extraordinary character, as can be seen from the fluctuations in5 our foreign trade which increased by leaps and bounds for some years. The nine hours day partially obtained was really a rise in wages because of the large amount of overtime that was worked. When our export trade returned to its normal level, and the demand for labour diminished, wages fell, then the Eight Hours Movement came again to the front. It was looked upon as a method of limiting the output of commodities and of making stocks command higher prices by preventing the demand being glutted by over-production. At the International Labour Congresses of the last decade, the Eight Hours Working Day claimed an ever increasing attention, and in the important Labour Congresses of 1889, held in Paris, the Eight Hours Working Day was all but unanimously agreed to be the most urgent measure necessary for the emancipation of labour. It was decided at those Congresses to organize on the 1st of May, 1890, demonstrations in all countries in favour of the proposal. They took place, and were so successful that the attention of the workers has since been concentrated on a reduction of the working day as their next step towards economic freedom. On September 4th, 1890, the British Trade Union delegates at the Liverpool Congress carried by a majority of 38 the following resolution : 4'That, in the opinion of this Congress, the time has arrived when steps should be taken to reduce the working hours in all trades to eight per day, or a maximum of forty-eight hours per week, afrd while recognizing the power and influence of trade organizations, it is of opinion that the speediest and best method to obtain this reduction for the workers generally is by Parlia- mentary enactment. This Congress, therefore, instructs the Parliamentary Committee to take immediate steps for the furtherance of this object." In Europe and America the movement is making striking progress, and its early success is prophesied by people who have the best means of becoming acquainted with its strength. The Labour Commissioner of Pennsylvania states : " That eight hours will be the standard measure of a day's work in the not distant future is, in my opinion, beyond doubt," Modern invention has enormously increased our productive capacities. Lord Brougham asserted fifty years ago, that if all did their fair share of work in England, twenty minutes' daily labour from each individual, or one hour and forty minutes' labour per family, would furnish all with abundance of the necessaries of life. William Hoyle, the temperance advocate,6 in his work '1 Our National Resources, and How they are Wasted," says : " The total amount of labour needed to provide for our wants will be as follows : Food, half-an-hour's labour daily; clothing, fifteen minutes1 labour daily; houses, &c., half-an-hour's labour, that is (assuming'every person did their share) a total of 1| hour's daily labour would suffice to supply us in abundance with all the comforts of life." Edward Atkinson, the American economist, reports that seven men's annual labour, with the aid of machinery, can produce enough to feed a thousand people for one year. Michael Mulhall, the statistician, wrote in 1887 : "An Englishman of to-day can do as much work in three hours as would have taken nine hours in 1840." Facts like these, even after some allowance has been made for exaggeration, show that there is ample room for reducing the present working day. Nearly all the results of invention have gone to increase the luxury of the rich. Little has been done to reduce the hours of toil of the producers. Men who would have been ploughmen, weavers, or miners have become flunkeys, fabricators of useless luxuries, and the like. The censuses prove this, and when the returns for this year are tabulated, another demonstration of this fact will be given. When the hours of labour are long and wages low it is often unprofitable to employ labour-saving machinery. Once get the workers to insist on reducing the labour day and on having higher wages, the natural result will be that invention will be quickened, and a still further reduction of the work day will become possible. Some factories retain out-of-date appliances simply on account of labour being cheap. When the worker claims his due, these establishments will have to be adapted to the age or be shut up. Health demands that the day's work should not be over long. Medical men with great unanimity have declared that constant exertion for eight hours a day is as much as can be borne if health is to be maintained. If men work longer they may not in their youth feel that a drain is being made on their constitu- tion ; but after they pass thirty they experience unmistakably the effects of overwork. Why is it that workmen are always inclined to lounge on Saturday afternoons and on Sundays ? It is the demand of the exhausted body for rest. There is little doubt that the enormous consumption of stimulants is partially accounted for by the effects of overwork. Premature old age is common among the toilers. Look at the difference in physique between the easy living gentleman who lives on his income at the age of 60 and the average workman at the same7 age. The one is vigorous and healthy, with perhaps another ten years to live, the other looks used up, bent double sometimes, and fast sinking to his grave. This is no exaggerated picture. Dr. Drysdale stated in 1886 that the average length of life amongst the upper classes was 55 years, while in a district of South London the artizans lived only on the average 29 years. In a Government inquiry of 1842 on the 4 4 Comparative chances of life to different classes of the community in the same Towns," I find in Whitechapel the rich died on the average at 45, the workers at 22 ; in "Wiltshire at 44 years and 26 years ; in Bath at 55 and 25 years respectively; and so on, showing a difference of more than twenty years in favour of the rich. One of the main causes of the high mortality among the workers is over- work. This is particularly the case in unhealthy trades. Plumbers, for instance, are said to die at from 34 to 88. Painters are not long lived. This mortality could be greatly reduced if the work day were lessened and the systems of those employed in dangerous occupations were enabled by rest to renew their strength and to throw off the poisonous fumes that they inhale. Even comparatively light occupation^ like retailing, warehousing, and working on tramways, become exhausting if worked more than eight hours. The medical faculty have continuously denounced the excessive hours worked by assistants in retail shops. The effects of long hours on the health of shop girls and barmaids is deplorable, and the ten hours day that women factory hands have to work is certainly two hours too long. The great increase in health experienced from a reduction of the labour day has been repeatedly proved. Dr. John Moir reports that the recently obtained Eight Hours Work Day has reduced sickness by half and accidents by a third among the men employed at the Beckton Gas Works. The improvement in health effected by the Factory Acts is known to all. No one acquainted with the facts doubts that the working class has become more healthy and robust since they have been in operation. In some of the Australian Colonies, where an Eight Hours Day is the rule, visitors from Britain report that the mass of the population is in better health and enjoys better spirits than we do at home. The final test of the prosperity of a nation is the quality of its men. Gold, silver, and merchandise may be heaped up, but the nation is poor if the people are unhappy and shortlived, and I am afraid that in our country, highly favoured by nature as it is, the workers are not the men they ought to be. I am convinced that there is no hope of any material change unless8 they get more leisure. It requires no argument to prove that a man that is overworked can have but little pleasure in life. Those rich men who think an Eight Hours Work Day too short, seldom work more than a six hours day themselves, if they work at all; and, consequently, they have no knowledge how exhausting ten or eleven hours' labour really is. After health, the next thing in importance for the workman is to secure the full return of his industry. This cannot be obtained where land, capital, and credit are all monopolized, so what is immediately aimed at by reformers is to secure as much of the product as possible in the shape of high wages. Would an Eight Hours Work Day enable the workman to command higher wages ? I think there are strong reasons for believing so. But suppose the very worst, that the reduction of the Labour Day would slightly reduce wages, the workman would still be the gainer in health and leisure. He would not require to expend his savings in times of sickness, brought on by overwork. This and the increased leisure would surely be a recompense worth even the sacrifice of a few pence of wages. But an examination of the method by which wages are regulated, dispels the idea that a lessening of the working day would reduce them. The maximum wages possible to be obtained would be the entire product; but except in primitive communities, no worker gets that. The monopolists—or to use the more polite epithet applied by economists—the holders of land, capital, and credit claim part of the product. What that part is varies in different countries, and in the same country at different times. It is impossible to say very exactly the amount that the monopolists obtain in Great Britain, though many estimates have been given. Some statisticians declare that half the produce is appropriated by the monopolist class, others put the amount as high as two- thirds of the total. I should not be surprised if the latter estimate were accurate, as the division of the net income of three of our great railway companies shows the following result in a half year, after allowance has been made for keeping plant in proper repair. North-Eastern Railway Co. Midland Railway Co. London & North-Westn. Railway Co. Interest for Half a year. £1,880,000 £1,680,000 £2,535,000 Wages for Half a year. £920,000 £1,160,000 £1,479,0009 The figures are a year or two old, but the proportion between interest and wages remains much the same. Why is it that the products of industry are divided in this inequitable manner ? The root explanation is that the producers permit the consuming class to monopolize the means of pro- duction. When organized labourers seek to advance their wages, the great difficulty they meet is the competition of other men who* are out of employment ready to accept low wages to get work. If the employer refuses to grant the advance, those who insist on their demand risk their employment if they leave work. If, when the demand is made, there are no men idle in the trade, the employer has to grant the increase. From this it appears- that within certain limits wages are regulated by the relation that exists at a given time between the number of labourers- seeking work and the number that capitalists can profitably employ. Richard Cobden put it plainly when he said : 4 4 If two men run after a master, wages are low, and if two masters run; after a man, wages are high." Low wages are due to excessive competition for employment. Capitalists take advantage of the- necessities of the labourers and reduce their pay by competi- tion to the very lowest level. What the workman receives is* a competition wage, not a fixed portion of his produce. Clearly then the policy of those who want to obtain high wages should be to remove the unemployed from the labour market. Would an eight hour day have the effect of employing the* unemployed ? If so, wages could be increased without the product being increased, as there is a large margin of product,, as I have already shown, absorbed by non-producers. It may be taken for granted that the reduction of the labour day would not decrease the demand for goods. It would probably increase it. If then the working-day were decreased) and the demand for goods maintained, more men would have to be taken into the factories to produce them. But we must not take for granted that a reduction of hours means a pro- portionate diminution of product. Common sense would hint that a man towards the end of a day's work gets tired and less, efficient. After a certain amount of labour the hand and brain begins to feel fatigued, and in many industries the amount produced in the last hour is considerably less than in the first. Experience proves this to be true. Carroll D. Wright, Chief of the American Bureau of Labour Statistics, reports the case of a carpet mill " employing about twelve hundred persons, which has been running but ten hours-10 for several years, and has, during this period tried the experi- ment of running overtime with the following results. The manager said, 41 believe with proper management and super- vision, the same help would produce as many goods, and of superior quality, in ten hours as they will in eleven. I judge so from the fact that during certain seasons, being pushed for goods, we run up to nine o'clock ; and for the first month the production was increased materially. After this, however, the help would grow listless and the production would fall off, and the quality of the goods deteriorate.' " In England when the Factory Acts limited the working day in the textile industries it was found possible to run the machinery faster and get an increased product in a shorter working day. Mr. John Rae, in The Economic Journal for March, 1891, says : 44 It is, I think, beyond question that the shortening of the day to eight hours has improved the efficiency of the labour [in Victoria, where the Eight Hours Work Day is the rule] during the time employed, both as to quantity and quality, and there is every probability that in some trades and some particular kinds of work this cause alone would lead to as much work being done in the short day as the long one. . . . Mr. James Stephen, the originator of the movement in Melbourne, is said to have ascertained by practical experiment in his brick-making works, that the men did quite as much in eight hours as they used to do in ten.'7 In London, Mr. Mark Beaufoy, M.P., a vinegar manufacturer, introduced the Eight Hours Work Day into his establishment in 1889, with the result that he has as much work done by the same staff in a work day of 8 hours as before in one of 9f hours. These results are not universal. In some trades where machinery is greatly used, and a ten hours work day is the rule, the product is found to be reduced nearly in the proportion of the shortening of the work day. The general principle holds good, however, in the majority of trades, that you can get more good quality work out of a man if you work him eight hours a day and give him a rest on Sunday than if you work him longer. As experience shows that in most businesses the last hours of the day are the least productive, there ought to be little fear of reduced wages on the ground of a greatly reduced production. This argument, so far as it is true, does away with the necessity for increasing the number of the workers to keep up the present rate of production, and the consequent absorption of the unemployed. Still, it would have that effect to some extent. At the Beckton Gas Works a verjr large increase of11 the staff took place, and their wages were slightly increased when they secured the Eight Hours Work Day. When the different reductions took place in the labour day in England owing to the Factory Acts and Trade Combinations, wiseacres predicted reductions of wages. The reverse has taken place. Little by little wages have increased, especially in those trades that work the shortest hours. The sweated tailor or cabinet-maker in East London has to work from twelve to sixteen hours a day to earn a miserable wage. The engineer or printer earns twice as much in half the time. The result of the Eight Hours system in Australia has been to increase the real wages of men, the money wages remaining about the same. Capitalists can introduce improved machinery, and in this way increase the product. They will only do this on pressure from without, that is, from competitors in business or the ■demands of their work-people for more leisure or more pay. Further, it must not be forgotten that profits in England <;ould be considerably cut down to raise wages and still leave a good return to the capitalist to cover risks and other legitimate charges. I have already shown that some of our railways give £2 to shareholders and bondholders to every £1 given to the workers who do the work. The profits earned by Gas Works, Tramways, etc., are well known. The spinning and weaving -companies, in spite of all the croaking of manufacturers, often pay a 10 per cent, dividend—and even 20 per cent, dividends are not unheard of. Large amounts of capital are being put into this business, which shows it is still reckoned a good investment. If employers find it difficult to reduce the labour day and pay the current or higher wages, they must compel landlords to reduce rents, and eliminate useless middlemen, cornerers, fore- stalled, and the like. So long as the labourer gets only half, or less than half, of his produce, it is nonsense for determined and organized men to be afraid of reducing their hours of labour for fear of earning less money. Want of leisure prevents the workers taking an intelligent interest in social reform and politics. They have not sufficient time for social intercourse, for self education, or for the proper performance of parental duties. An Eight Hours Work Day is the only cure for this. The crowding of the producers into slums, and so-called model dwellings, is partly caused by them requiring to live near their work. They have no time to spare for long walks or train journeys. If the working day were reduced, many12 thousands of workmen who live in overcrowded neighbour- hoods could change their abodes to the suburbs. Ernest von Plener, in his history of 44 English Factory Legislation,'' gives an account of the arguments used against the Ten Hours Bill. The employers said that the reduction of the working day would be ruinous to the men as well as to themselves. They said production would diminish, wages go down, profits disappear, and England be driven out of the markets of the world. They said they could not do without the children's labour, because its absence would heighten tha price of their manufactures, and render them unable to compete against the foreigner. The workmen were not deluded. " They were of opinion," says von Plener, " that the reduc- tion of wages consequent upon the adoption of short time would only be temporary, and that owing to a falling off in the production, the demand and prices would respectively rise in such ratio that more men would be wanted and employed at shorter hours at the same or even a higher rate of wages than hitherto paid." When, after a prolonged struggle, the hours of the women and the children in the textile trades were limited by the Factory Acts of 1844, 1847, etc., and as a consequence the hours of the men also reduced, the views of the workmen were verified. In spite of the decrease of the working day, wages were slightly increased. These same arguments are used against the reduction of the Labour Day now proposed. None of them are valid. I have already shown that the tendency of wages would be to go up. That though in many cases with the present machinery the produce of each worker might be reduced to some slight extent by a short labour day, yet the national product could be not only maintained, but largely increased by employing those out of work, and by improving our machinery. Besides, the reduction of the work day would improve the quality of the work. And we must not forget that rent, interest, and profits will bear a very great diminution indeed before they disappear. That a lessening of the hours of labour would reduce the income of the non-producing consumers I believeT and see no reason to regret it, because the aim of the workers in trade and politics is to cut down the income of those who consume without producing, and who are consequently a burden on the industrious classes. There are no grounds for concluding that our foreign trade would become altogether unprofitable if profits were slightly reduced. Whatever traders may say to the contrary,IB foreign business brings a good return. Employers syste- matically complain about the decrease of profits to mislead those who work for them. German, French and American manufacturers say that English competition prevents them doing business in other countries, while at home we complain of the competition of the foreigner. Most nations find it necessary to protect their home markets against British goods by high tariffs, so we need not fear for our position in the world market while they are continued. The movement for reducing the labour day is world wide. One country is afraid to introduce it because others hold back. If Great Britain were to set the example, there is little doubt but that others would soon imitate it. The diplomatic gathering initiated by the Swiss Government and by the German Emperor shows that international legis- lative action is possible. The benefits would not be done away with by increased prices. If any upward change took place, competition would drive them to about the old level, and even if prices were advanced a trifle, wages could be raised to a greater extent, and the classes who live on rent and interest would have to pay them. I claim to have shown that a reduction of the working day in all industries to eight hours would be an unmixed benefit to those who have to work to live. They would gain in leisure, in health, probably in wages, and in regularity of employment. There are no corresponding disadvantages. I have also shown that the great increase of the power of man over nature by improvements in machinery makes such a demand just and suitable. How is the Eight Hours Day to be obtained ? There are various means that can be adopted. The Organized Workers can refuse to work longer in those trades 'where their Unions are sufficiently strong to ensure victory. This method has its strong and weak side. The main -difficulty is in the complicated nature of modern industry, which requires artizans in different trades to work into one (another's hands. If one trade works less hours, the men in Mother departments must do so also, else industry would become dislocated. Another obstacle to trades acquiring a shorter day jby voluntary combination is the weakness of the Trade Unions. tJnless Non-Unionist workmen agreed to co-operate with Union men on the question, in the badly organized trades, success Would be very problematic. The failure of many trades to Secure a universal nine hours day by combination; and systematic overtime being still general in trades with powerful14 Unions, in spite of the remonstrances of the men, show the weakness of this method. Several trades in the United States have, by Trade Combinations, reduced the Labour Day in recent years, but in most cases they have found themselves unable to keep it. However, it should be remembered, it was in this way that the gas-workers recently succeeded in altering their work day from twelve to eight hours. Years ago Trade Union combination materially helped to the attainment of the short working day in the Northumberland mines. While this pamphlet is in the press, the Carpenters are trying by combination to establish an Eight Hours Day. A few other trade organizations are moving in the same direction. The State employs many thousands of men and women in the Post Office, in the arsenals and dockyards, &c. The local bodies have also in their employment a large number of men. If the working class voters cared to trouble themselves, they could easily have Eight Hours fixed as the working day in the public service* When vestrymen, guardians of the poor, town and county councillors, and the like solicit their suffrages they can insist on a pledge from candidates that they will, if elected, reorganize the department under their control on the eight hours system. If all the public departments were reorganized in this way, a large body of additional hands would be drafted into the service of the State. Their competition would be taken out of the labour market, and so the chances of obtaining more wages would be increased. Taxes, of course, would have to be raised to pay them, and it would be the duty of the people to see that they came out of the incomes of the rich. The most effective way to secure the Eight Hours Work DJJr is by political action. The wealthy classes and the politicians disapprove of any attempt being made in this direction. Lord Salisbury, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. John Morley, and the smaller fry of capitalist politicians, Whig and Tory, unite with singula^ unanimity in opposing this infringement, as they are pleased t(> call it, of the liberty of the workers. Some workmen join in the discordant chorus, but British organized labour has declared itself on the side of the legislative enactment. Continental and American workers also unite in a demand for State action. j The anxiety about the liberty of the workers expressed by the politicians is insincere cant. They see that an Eight Hour^ Work Day means less wealth for the monopolist class and mor^ for the producers. So, unable to convince the people that the present working day is better for them, they try to delay the15 advent of a shorter one, by creating dissensions in the ranks of the workers as to how it is to be brought about. The position of Lord Salisbury and Mr. Gladstone would be much more dignified if they spoke, as Sir Robert Peel is reported ta have once done in a conversation about a clause in a Factory Bill. "I am opposed to the measure," he said, "It would reduce profits too much. All the argument is on the side of the clause, but, fortunately, all the votes are on the other." To show the scope and end of political action in the mind of an acute thinker, apart from any special question, I quote from Paley's "Moral Philosophy:" "The final view of all rational politics is to produce the greatest quantity of happiness in a given tract of country. The riches, strength and glory of nations; the topics which history celebrates, and which alone almost engage the praises and possess the admiration of mankind; have no value farther than as they contribute to this end. When they interfere with it, they are evils, and not the less real for the splendour that surrounds them." If tried by this test the reduction of the hours of labour would be a proper subject for legislation. The enforcement of a general Eight Hours Day by law would do away with many objections that might be raised against the partial adoption of such a system, by trade optiort or the like. I have already pointed out how in modern manu- facture one trade is interwoven with another, and how any alteration of the hours of labour must become general or ause great confusion and unfair treatment of those who /ould still have to work long hours, and perhaps opposition from them. It is clearly the interest of fair employers to see that the Eight Hours Day, when introduced, is universal. Otherwise their selfish and unscrupulous rivals will be able to compete with them by overworking their employes as they do now.. The Eight Hours system can only become general by the force of law. It is absurd to believe that in villages and small town& where, perhaps, only three men are working for hire in & particular trade, that they could enforce a short working day by combination. How are women and young persons to have their hours of labour generally reduced except by law ? It is difficult to understand the logic of those who profess themselves partizans of a short working day, but who object ta it being enforced by law. They will tolerate Trade Union coercion, but not that of Parliament. This position is so singularly stupid that I am convinced that only muddle-headed16 30 12 72412023 people can take it up. Coercion is coercion, whether enforced by Parliament or by a trade society. The operation of a law that acts universally and surely, and is endorsed by the majority of the people, can be easily borne, because none can evade it without running great risks ; but what employer is there who would respect a Trade Union Rule like the law of the land ? How are we to secure the enactment of an Eight Hours Work Day, when all the politicians are opposed to it ? Some Eight Hour advocates are sanguine enough to believe that they can coerce the Liberal or Tory party to carry it through. I do not believe that to be possible. To get Factory legislation almost three generations of workers had to agitate without ceasing, and still it is admittedly defective for the protection of women and children.- A much more expeditious way would be for the workers who are in earnest to see that in the next Parliament, labour is properly represented. Why fiddle away time asking capitalists candidates to pledge themselves to a measure they detest. If they do so, the pledge will be given to secure votes, and will either be broken or acted upon in a half-hearted manner in Parliament. Some will object to the money and labour that would have to he expended to secure the return to Parliament of representatives ■of the producers. I answer, if workmen can find money to buy bad beer and to back horses, they can, if they like, find it for political purposes ; and if they prefer to spend it on beer and racing, and will not find any for politics, then Parliament will remain an engine to oppress them, instead of being apowerf means of protection. The workers now have political powe if they do not use it to better their condition it is theii own fault. I hope that the Labour Party will grow powerful enough to