Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/58

 38 correct. The real difference of time between the old system and the new cannot be proved to be more than three-quarters of an hour per diem. . . . . In the face of more and better work in eight hours (virtually nine hours and a quarter) than in ten hours (actually but eight and three-quarters, allowing for the time of meals), no employer can maintain that he would be a loser.' Under the old ten-hour system of Victoria, an hour and a quarter was allowed off for meals, and work was stopped for the purpose twice in the course of the day, each stoppage involving, of course, a certain slackening of energy on the part of the workers. But under the eight hours system there is usually only one break and two steady four-hour spells of work, and it is easily possible that with an industrial stock distinguished like the English above all others for their powers of close and sustained application, the gain from the more continuous concentration of the labour might do more than make up for the loss of three-quarters of an hour in its duration. The double break is not indeed unknown in eight-hour trades, but it seems to be more frequent in New South Wales than in Victoria. Sometimes they work from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. in winter and 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. in summer, with two hours off for breakfast and dinner, but the common rule is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. with an hour off for dinner. The bakers, it may be mentioned, who have often to wait some time idle for their bread to rise, only count their eight hours from the moment of its rising, when they begin actual work.

What use does the working man of Victoria make of the leisure he has obtained through the eight hours day? The 'go' and energy he is said by so many observers to put into his work is itself good evidence that he does not spend his time in vicious dissipation. If a shorter day in the workshop meant only a longer evening in the tavern he could not possibly show such signs of invigoration, and his day's work and his day's wages would soon have hopelessly declined. The general opinion in Victoria is that the habits of working men have improved and not deteriorated through the short hours. By leaving work early in the afternoon, they are enabled to live out in the suburbs in neat cottages with little gardens behind them, which are almost invariably owned by their occupiers, and they spend much of their leisure tending their little gardens or in some out-door sport or with their families. The two first effects of the Ten Hours Act in this country were the multiplication of mechanics' institutes, night schools, and popular lectures on the one hand, and the multiplication of garden allotments on the other. Workpeople