Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/32

18 historians may add that the most virile peoples have been those who have been constrained to work hardest, contending against adverse conditions. Philosophers may remark that human nature seems to make men and women congregate in cities where there is no opportunity to cultivate home gardens. The simple economic consideration, however, is whether a people, whose living must come out of production, can radically and suddenly shorten its working hours and still produce enough for its needs. The economic theory of the residual claimancy of labor would at once give a negative answer to this, with the reservation that great improvements in methods of production might make it possible; but engineers and entrepreneurs if asked respecting such improvements would answer: “Probably, but not quickly; certainly, not right away.” Psychologists, biologists, historians and philosophers might then unite in the polite inquiry whether the consequential prolificness in human breeding would not tend naturally to keep conditions much as they were previously.

It has not been until recently that there has been economic evidence respecting the effects of shortening of work hours by a people as a whole. Since the end of the war some of the European countries have furnished such evidence to us. Among these is Germany. In another paper, of not long ago, I mentioned that although the rate of employment in Germany had been high ever since the Armistice the efficiency of work had been low, and I attributed that to several evil factors, among which the general eight-hour day was prominent. Statistical evidence is positive to the effect that German production continues below the pre-war rate. This is not only the deduction of observers at a distance, but