Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/261

 They keep on at this rate ten years, and James has laid by two thousand dollars, and John nothing. Now, the two thousand of James earns ten dollars a month for him, and is better than a good apprentice, because he pays the fund no wages and it costs nothing for board. The reason why they are "now so wide apart is that the extra hours of James have yielded fifteen hundred dollars principal in the ten years, and five hundred dollars in interest. John has nothing, because the expense of living of each and support of the families has amounted to four hundred and fifty dollars a year for each. In ten years more James will have interest-money sufficient to meet the family expense of four hundred and fifty dollars, and John will be with his nose still on the grindstone. A company of ten such men would lose in ten years twenty thousand dollars, and society would never make it up to them. Society would not pay for one hundred pairs of shoes when only seventy-five pairs were furnished, and the idea that it would is a delusion. Many workingmen have gained in the last half century, and the general condition has improved a great deal, but no part of the money gain has been due to less hours of labor. The people have grown rich during that time because they have availed themselves of the increased means of production which have been developed, and not because production has been lessened by the laborer refusing to work the former number of hours. Our riches are made up entirely of things produced, and when we say we are richer, we mean that we have more things which are the product of applied force. The increase of wealth, as was stated before, has increased the disposition to build more expensive houses and buy more elaborate furniture, and have an endless variety of things deemed needless a few years ago, causing a demand for labor and an increase of wages that in a measure counterbalances the loss of time. This is what has helped labor, and not the refusal to work more than ten hours. Had the other two hours a day been worked, the laborer would have been still richer by one sixth of the principal and all the interest on his extra earnings during the whole time that the ten-hour rule has prevailed. The workman, then, has simply exchanged the wealth he might have got in the extra two hours for leisure of two hours; a very proper thing to do if he can afford it, but he hasn't had the leisure and the money he might have earned in the lost time also.

The community is also the poorer to the same extent. It misses just the amount of wealth that the laborer has failed to produce in his idle hours. It finds on its hands a large body of men advanced in years who might now be comfortable, but are still struggling to meet the cost of increase in the style of living consequent on the increase of wealth, when they are more than one sixth short in possible resources.