Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/259

Rh and force. This necessitates the rule, therefore: More labor, more wealth; less labor, less wealth. This rule no one can escape or ignore.

The question now comes up, whether working eight hours a day tends to more riches or more production than working twelve. That it does not, I have already stated is my belief, and the belief is founded upon a long experience as a mechanic, farm laborer, employer, and observer. In twenty years of labor in a shop, I never saw the time when I could do twelve hours' work in eight hours, except possibly for a single day. I never saw the man that could do it, and I never heard of one that could do it.

I never met one that said he thought it could be done for any length of time. It is a well-established fact that most men that pretend to work well have a working gait of their own, and can not be hurried beyond that advantageously. If they are, they do poor work or break down. This is so obvious that any pretense that as much will be accomplished in the shorter hours in farming or physical labor of any kind borders on the ridiculous. So obvious is it, that the principal advocates of the eight-hour movement have ceased to put their case on this ground, and rely upon the other theory, that less work will be done, and consequently more work will be left to be given to the laborers seeking for something to do.

If this latter view be adopted, it follows that the eight-hour men are philanthropists, who have sacrificed, or propose to sacrifice, one third of their possible earnings for the good of their fellow-men who have no work. This is incredible. The laborers themselves do not act from any such principle. They are thinking all the time that, instead of making a sacrifice, they are getting more leisure and making more money. They think that, Instead of the work they could do in the four hours they have abandoned being done by the poor fellows who need help, it is not done at all, and, not being done at all, wages have risen, and thus they can get twelve hours' pay for eight hours' work.

In other words, they propose to increase the wealth of the community by lessening the amount produced by the community, thinking that, with a smaller amount to be divided as wages by one third, they can get a bigger share. Not only do they suppose this impossible thing, but they claim it has already been accomplished, and they say the advance in wages during the last thirty years has been caused by the reduction of hours.

Assuming this to be true, it is perfectly legitimate to argue that a further reduction of hours will work in the same way, and they name eight as the next station on the scale, with an intimation that soon six will be the point, and later four. I believe that most concede that it is necessary to have some work done, not