Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/450

 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL at all, and now almost the only important trades in the colony which have not got the eight hours day are the very trade those employing female labour which have enjoyed the paper protection of that Act for the last seventeen years. And though an eight hours clause may be inserted in Acts for public works like the Melbourne Harbour Act, 1883, and in government contracts, the clause is really in the nature of a supplementary security merely, and it must not be supposed that the trades affected by the contracts first obtained their eight hours day in consequence of that clause. The quarrymen and masons of Melbourne have had the eight hours day uninterruptedly ever since 1856, and had no need of any legislative assistance to extort it from a harbour contractor in 1883. Clauses of that sort may, of course, be sometimes useful in forcing some remaining long hours contractor to shorten his day in order to be able to compete for public work, but whether or how far they have in any instance answered that purpose Messrs. Webb and Cox have no information to offer us. As far as the eight hours day exists in Victoria, it exist with the exception I have mentioned through opinion and independently of law; but there seems to be a growing feeling in the colony that opinion has now done all it can, and that legislation must henceforth be more resorted to in order to supply lacuna, where practicable.' The rest of our authors' historical narra- tive is valuable, instructive, full of details, and marked by a praise- worthy care for accuracy and impartiality in the presentation of facts. In truth, the facts of the book read often like a running refutation of its most favourite theories. These theories are contained chiefly in a special chapter on ' The Probable Economic Results of an Eight Nours Day,' in which the writers speculate upon the effect of a general reduction of the hours of labour in all trades on the product of labour, on wages, on prices, on profit, and on international trade. There is no space here to follow their argument in all its branches, but the stem of the whole is their speculation as to the effect of the shorter hours on production. On this point they repeatedly declare their conviction, as founded on all the positive evidence in the case, that the adoption of an eight hours day will result in no diminution of individual production, except in certain special branches of industry, such as the train, omnibus, and tramway services, because in most other branches of industry the reduction in the duration of labour can be made up by its intensity, and the work- people will do as much in eight hours as they did before in nlne. In this conclusion I am disposed to agree with them entirely, for the fact has been already tested beforehand by a far greater number of practical experiments, and in a far greater variety of industries than it ever was in any of the preceding cases of reductions in the hours of labour, and some very decisive experiments of this sort are published for the first time in the present work. But the writers no sooner pronounce this to be the probable alternative than they appear to lose faith in it again; at all events they lose sight of it, and devote the rest of their argument to building up visions of hope for the working class on the