Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/45

 Rh in 1856, for perhaps half the labourers in Victoria were employed at that time by government contractors on public works of one kind or another, and the labourers were fortunate in having in the Minister of Works (or Surveyor-General, as he was then called), Captain (now Lieutenant-General Sir Andrew) Clarke, a very warm friend of their cause, whose word had great weight in smoothing their difficulties with the contractors. Moreover, when all the contractors had given in except one, the contractor for the Houses of Parliament, the Government then removed this last obstacle by refusing the contractor's request for leave to suspend operations for a month in order to fight the matter out, but undertaking to compensate him for any loss he might sustain through the reduction in the hours of labour. They did pay him this compensation. But when the great struggle of 1859 broke out a new ministry was in power, and they were disposed at first to take the employers' side. When the masons struck, this ministry gave the railway contractor permission to substitute iron or wood for stone in the construction of the bridges; they refused to interfere with the railway carriage contractor for raising the hours to ten, on the ground that he could justly come upon them for compensation if they obliged him to go back to eight; and they at first flatly declined introducing the eight hours system into their own engineering works at Williamstown, on the plea that the change would involve extra expenditure for which no provision had been made in the estimates, and therefore could not be undertaken without the sanction of the legislature. They afterwards yielded, however, because they felt that as eight hours was the rule in private engineering works, it would be impossible for the Government to hold out as an exception. In Victoria, accordingly, Government works did not set the example but followed it. The eight hours day is now the rule in all public work, and was introduced as a mere incident of administration by the executive Government without Act of Parliament.

The subject has been repeatedly before the Victorian Parliament. A general election took place in 1859, the very year of the great struggle, but the legal eight hours day played no figure in it, though it did occasionally appear upon the scene. Immediately on the opening of the new Legislative Assembly in the same year, Mr. Don, the parliamentary leader of the working class, moved a resolution, 'That in the opinion of this House it is desirable that all future contracts should be let on the understanding that eight hours should be considered the term of the day's work.' He held that the eight hours day was a simple necessity of the climate,