Statistics of employment show that the aggregate of employment during any given year does not vary much.It would vary less, if every man engaged in an essentially irregular trade had an alternative, in which he was qualified to earn a living when employment in the other trade was short.For there is little truth in the contention that specialisation for most manual trades is carried so far that an alternative or subsidiary employment spoils a worker for efficiency in his prime trade.If there are any necessary trades for whose unavoidable unemployment no such effective provision can be made, society must either saddle the trade with the obligation of keeping the 'reserve' of labour while it stands in waiting, or it must itself undertake the administration of the trade as one which cannot safely be left in private hands.In the case of fashion or luxury trades, which furnish many instances of greatest irregularity, legal prohibition of over-time will often operate most beneficially.Where much unemployment still remains, a high contribution to an unemployed insurance fund would stimulate advantageous readjustments.
Finally, if there are trades incapable of bearing the true costs of maintenance of the labour they employ, it would still be right to place on them the obligation to do so, for their destruction will be a gain not a loss to a society that understands its human interests.
But the main problem of leisure would still remain unsolved.For the normal burden of industrial toil, imposed by our present economic system upon most workers, is excessive.That excess consists primarily in duration of the work-day, though aggravated in many cases by intensity or pace of working.great numbers of workers, especially among women, are employed in occupations where neither law, custom, nor trade organisation, imposes any limits.No factory day affects the employees in shops or offices or most warehouses, or in most transport trades, or in domestic service departments of employment which absorb a rapidly increasing number and proportion of the employed population.There are vast numbers of domestic workshops and home trades in which men and women are employed, where all hours are worked.
No legal restrictions of hours are set upon adult male labour in manufacturing and other industrial work in most of the metal and other trades which are exclusively or predominantly men's employments, though in trades where women also are employed restrictions are often imposed which in fact extend to men the factory day.
But there is a generally recognised feeling that the length of the factory day is gravely excessive, that 10 1/2, or even 9 hours per diem, under modern conditions of speeded-up machinery and nervous tension, involve too heavy a human cost.
§3.It is this growing volume of feeling that has crystallised in the demand for an eight-hours day.This is no immoderate demand.A regular contribution of eight hours' working energy of hand, or brain, or nerves, to some narrow routine process, is as much as, or more than, the ordinary man or woman can afford, in the wholesome interest of his personality, to give up to society.For we have recognised quite clearly that a specialisation of function, a division of labour, growing ever finer, is required of the individual in the interests of society.He must make this apparent sacrifice of his private tastes, feelings and interests, for the good of the society of which he is a member.It is not, as we perceive, a real sacrifice, unless the demand made upon him is excessive, for the good of the society he serves is his good, and what he gives out comes back to him in participation of the common life.But, when the task imposed is too long or too hard, the sacrifice becomes an injury, the encroachment upon the human life of the worker inflicts grave damage, which damage again reacts upon society.
The stress of the Labour Movement upon the urgency of shortening the work-day to-day is extremely significant.It testifies to two advances in the actual condition of the labouring classes.In the first place, it indicates that some substantial progress has been made towards a higher level of material standard of consumption.For workers on the lower levels of poverty dare not ask for reduced hours of labour, involving, as may well occur, a reduction of pay.Workers struggling for a bare physical subsistence cannot afford to purchase leisure.
Of course I know that even the better-to-do workers who voice a demand for an eight-hours day are not ready to proclaim their willingness to pay for it in diminished wages.Nor need they in all cases.Where the shorter day is attended by improved efficiency or increased intensity of labour, or merely by better organisation of the business, there may be nothing to pay.More leisure has been squeezed out of the working-day.There are many cases where this can be done, for the working-day in many instances is wastefully prolonged.But, though in certain trades a ten-hours day may be reduced to nine, or even eight, without any reduction of output, this is not the case in other trades, nor even in the former trades could the process be carried far without a loss of output.In a great many employments a short working-day will involve a larger economic cost of labour, and where, as is usual in competitive trade, this larger cost cannot be made good out of profits, labour will have to buy this leisure, in part at any rate, by reduced wages.For even if he can get it shifted on to the consumer in the shape of higher prices, as consumer he will in his turn have to bear a part of it.
Where the demand for shorter hours is genuine, and is not a mere cover for extended over-time, to be paid for at a higher rate, it must be taken as indicative of the workers, willingness to take part of his share of industrial progress in leisure instead of wages.
