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THE
EIGHT HOURS QUESTION
THE
EIGHT HOURS QUESTION
****
- BY,
JOHN M ROBERTSON
AUTHOR OF “MODERN HUMANISTS," "THE FALLACY OF SAVING," ETC.

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LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.
NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1893
HD
5106
.8651
PREFACE.
It is a very remarkable fact that an agitation which
in scope and economic importance comes near the
movement for the repeal of the Corn Laws, is going
on with hardly any critical comment from our leading
economists. The following pages, in so far as they
are controversial, deal mainly with the arguments of
Socialist and other light skirmishers in the economic
field, because there is little other argumentation to
deal with. The “Fathers” have scarcely spoken.
Various conclusions may be drawn from the fact, but
I will merely suggest that there is likely to be the
usual proportion of fallacies in the pioneer reason-
ings; and in undertaking to show a number of these
fallacies on one side, I cannot expect to escape others
on my own. If this essay should at all force the dis-
cussion towards greater circumspection, it will have
done its part. First partly published in journalistic
form, it has since received such development and
rectification as I can give it.
In subinitting it to my fellow-Radicals, and to the
friends of social reform generally, I would at the out-
set implore them to look at the question as one of
science and not of sentiment. In a discussion on the
PREFACE.
(D
theme at the National Liberal Club, I was told by
several philanthropic speakers that I ought to look at
it in a more idealistic spirit, which seemed to mean
that we ought to speak more of what we should like
to do than of what can be done. There has been
plenty of that kind of idealism in human affairs : the
field of history is strewn with the wrecks of such
idealisms; and it is a little disquieting to see how
many friends of reform are still disposed to try legis-
lative experiments merely because they are humanely
conceived, without staying to consider their chances.
If, however, the avoval of an ideal be any passport
to the ear of such enthusiasts, I can claim to have
mine; and I hope they will recognise it even in the
following pages. Some of them are apt to assume
that he who does not wear his heart upon his sleeve
has no heart to wear. But, at the risk of incurring
their ban, I am more inclined to apologise for import-
ing ethical feeling into an economic discussion than
for making it subordinate there.
JOHN M. ROBERTSON.
February, 1893.
CONTENTS.
CHAP
1
PAGE
PREFACE - - - - - - - - v
I. THE TROUBLE AND THE HOPE - - - - I
II. HISTORICAL AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
III. THE HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT - - - - 18
IV. THE VARIOUS SCHEMES - - - - - -
V. THE BEST ACCREDITED PLEA - - - - -
VI. THE PLAN OF PARTICULAR LEGISLATION : RAIL-
WAYS AND MINES - - - - - ...
VII. THE PROJECT OF GENERAL LEGISLATION: THE
MAIN ECONOMIC FORCE - - - - - 52
VIII. THE CLASSES OF INDUSTRY SEPARATELY CON:
SIDERED - - - - - - - - 61
IX. INDUSTRIES SEPARATELY CONSIDERED : FOREIGN
COMPETITION - - - - - - - 78
X. INDUSTRIES SEPARATELY CONSIDERED : HOME
COMPETITIVE INDUSTRIES - - - - - IOI
XI. THE EFFECTS OF FIXED HOURS ON TRADE FLUCTUA-
TIONS - - - - - - - - - 106
XII. THE POLITICAL SIDE OF THE CASE - - - 112
XIII. THE POPULATION CRUX - - - - - -
XIV. SOCIALISM AND THE POPULATION QUESTION - 136
XV. INDUSTRY AND ART--CONCLUSION - - - 145
123
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
CHAPTER I.
For several years past, much has been heard in this
and other industrial countries of a plan for improving
the position of the wage-earning classes by passing a
law, as general as may be, restricting to eight hours
the day's work of everyone employed on salary for
purposes of manufacture and commerce. And there
can be little doubt that, be it good or bad, the pro-
posal will be still more discussed in the immediate
future. Its hearing is secured by that sense of pres-
sure and struggle which, through all ups and downs
of trade activity, grows upon nearly all classes who
have to earn their living. The sense of pressure is, of
course, relative to the standard of comfort that has
become usual in each class; and the great increase in
the class living either wholly or in old age on interest,
with the correlative decline in the rate of interest,
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
means a sense of struggle on a plane of comparative
"comfort," as the phrase goes; while the skilled
worker to-day, when he works shorter hours than his
predecessors, has to work harder, and in many in-
stances will choose to work hard and long rather than
go back to low rates of wages. Among the unskilled
class, the position of individuals is perhaps no worse
than it ever was; but the class grows ever larger, and
so its lot makes a stronger impression on the general
consciousness. Thus in all classes struggle and exi-
gency are prevailing conditions. It is not merely
among the hand-workers, skilled or unskilled, that the
pinch is felt, The ordinary citizen hears in his ordi-
nary experience of far more cases of hardship than
he can hope to relieve. Thousands of unclassed
strugglers, with no regular trade; thousands of low-
classed workers, without unions, are for ever in the
grip of want. Women of the lower middle-classes
suffer in countless instances from an almost hopeless
penury; so that there are hundreds of applications
for every sort of place they can take. If they try to
enter the class of “working-women” specially so-
called, they find the same pressure, and there their
entrance worsens it. Women half-supported compete
for places with women unsupported. Every new line
of work, artistic or mechanical, is speedily choked.
Of teachers there is always an over-supply, and
thousands of young women have their lives darkened
by the disappointment which this involves. As for
the overwork in special industries-special, that is, in
being off the line of simple production—it is heart-
breaking to contemplate. Never in the world's history
0
VIN
· THE TROUBLE AND THE HOPË.
did a great nation seem to taste so little of the fruitions
of life, and so much of the mere toil of it, as ours. In
the long-run, certain main results are traceable, as ill-
health and emigration, which are the sinister safety-
valves of social over-pressure, and the predominating
presence of the more mechanical industries, the more
commercial professions, and the inore vulgar forms of
the arts, as against the higher, the more intellectual,
and the more skill-demanding. A hard-driven people
must have unsubtle pleasures, if any.
II.
This outcome of a continual advance in our nominal
command of the energies of Nature is the ground and
pretext of far more extensive schemes of betterment
than that of an Eight Hours Law. But the Eight
Hours plan appeals to a far wider audience than any
comprehensive scheme can yet obtain. To the great
mass of the poorer workers, over-worked and pinched,
its rationale seeins simple, its utility clear. It fits
in with half the objections made by employers to
appeals for shorter hours or larger wages. The shop-
keeper avows that he would gladly close sooner if
only all his neighbours would; but he knows that if
he does, others will take advantage of him. Employers
tell their men that the ever-increasing stress of coin-
petition, which has year by year been cutting down
their profits, must finally tell on wages. In a recent
strike of timber-porters at Bristol, this was the
position of the masters, who pointed to the increased
use of machinery at other ports. And at a mass
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
meeting in the open-air, I heard one of the most
popular labour leaders virtually admit the force of
this plea, by declaring to the men that all that was
wanted was that all the masters should combine to
resist the cutting down of prices. That is to say, the
labour leader called upon the masters to form a
"ring." He could not or would not see that the
masters, who would be glad enough to form a ring if
they could, are in the grip of the current as truly as
the men, inasmuch as there are always new-comers
who upset rings by underselling, and always workers
who are glad to be employed by the new masters, and
ready to buy their cheaper products in preference to
the dearer. The workers, looking at the larger in-
come of the masters, revolt at the difference; making
no account of the thousands of competitors who get
crushed out in the employing class as in the employed,
and staying not to calculate what the successful
masters' profits (as distinguished from rent and in-
terest) would run to if distributed in wages. So their
first thought is to strike. But a strike is only a
ineans of finding out whether profits have been cut
down to the point at which employers cannot be
found willing to go on; and it naturally happens that
in many cases the employers have accurately gauged
the situation, and the men fail. Even a successful
strike may sometimes mean that a rise of price, con-
sequent on serious stoppage of supply, makes it possible
for employers to go on at a profit where they had
none before. Of course a strike is at times a means
of forcing down or forcing out an obstinate employer,
who will not consent to take less profits ; but by
THE TROUBLE AND THE HOPE.
common consent the wars of labour are like those
of nations, usually calamities to victors as well as
to vanquished. There are always the slain and
the wounded, however loud the pæans of the
rest.
Here, then, lies the prima facie strength of the
case for an Eight Hours Law. Let a law be made
forcing everybody to work shorter hours, and there
must result, the worker thinks, a relief for masters.
and men alike, or at least for men. The shopkeeper
can no longer plead his helplessness. The manufac-
turer surely must employ more men, and so wages
must rise, since labour will be in extra demand. If
prices should rise, they will probably not rise so much
as to balance the rise in wages; and as for the
"general consumer," who may have to pay more
without getting a rise of income, the workers owe
small consideration to him. As for the plea of in-
dividual liberty, the workers know too well how
hollow is the significance of that as against the over-
whelming force of the struggle for existence, which
makes their liberty at most a choice of hardships,
and to the upper-class alone means a choice of either
measure or mode of activity, to say nothing of leisure
and joy. If all may fitly be taxed, why may not all
be subjected to a restriction on working hours, in the
interest of all ? So runs the argument, or so it may
run, for it is often ill put, even from the point of
view of the pleaders. Is it sound ? Does it take
in all the essential facts, and does it foļlow from
them truly ?
6
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
III.
At the outset, I am fain to call the attention of
reformers in general to the fact that this agitation is
going far to swallow up, for the time, those others
which advanced Radicals had been wont to regard as
the most vital. It has left the movement for taxation
of ground values well-nigh becalmed; it has made the
plea for a graduated income tax inaudible. Beside
this, the suggested nationalisation of land and of
railways has no attraction for any body of labour
voters. To stretch a metaphor that has done good
service, bread-and-butter politics have over-ridden
beef-and-soup politics. The worker's politics are
rightly concerned with his well-being : the question
is whether he judges rightly of his course. And it
will not be denied that there are few cases on record
of sound sociological conceptions being reached, either
by the masses or by their governors, within a few
years of the broaching of the problems implied. The
economic expedients of the governing classes in past
ages were usually those which seemed proper to most
men of the day; and the laws to prevent the export
of bullion, and to keep exports of goods above im-
ports, were good in the sight of most citizens, though
i I am quite aware that the principle of restriction of hours
has been agitated for generations, and that the Eight Hours
Law, in particular, has been talked of for a good many years ;
but it is certain that the bulk of its support has come to it
within the last half-dozen,
THE TROUBLE AND THE HOPE.
we perceive them to-day as attempts to inake water
run up-hill, merely to stay there. Those expedients
were empirically plausible, and would have been
approved of by the trade guilds of the time had these
been consulted on the subject. In our day there has
arisen among Radicals a not unjustified faith in the
soundness of popular political demands; and the faith
is one I should be sorry to help to shake, if the doing
so made room for the contrary faith, of old standing,
But the candid reader will admit a difference of kind
between proposals which assert political rights and
are opposed as striking at established privileges, and
proposals which affirm that certain economic results
will follow on certain legislation. On a claim of
political rights, a popular instinct will usually be
sound and just: on a question of economic law it is
probably as fallible as that of any other class. Such,
at least, was the opinion of Mill, who was perhaps
sounder in his sympathies than in liis economics.
And there is another general consideration, prelim-
inary to our investigation, which it may be well to
keep in view. The Eight Hours Law is a scheme
solely for the manufacturing and exchanging indus-
tries, and for the mining: it has nothing to do with
the lot of the agricultural population. That is to
say, a scheme aiming avowedly at à general better-
ment of the lot of working-people deals almost solely
with the management of secondary industries, not at
all with the first, closest, and most vital of industrial
relations to Nature. These facts are in no way con-
clusive, but they are suggestive.
While, however, there is this one-sidedness about
8
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
the Eight Hours Movement, there can be no question
about its popularity in the towns and the mining
districts. About the raising of the question, there-
fore, there can be no misgiving such as that with which
one asks for a hearing on some fundamental issue of
life or belief. Few will take up the fundamental
issues if they can help it; but bere is a “practical"
problem that now faces every elector who is con-
cerned about his vote. It is not (as we shall see)
that the practical issue does not lead us further when
we follow it out; but it comes in the guise of a politi-
cal cry, not of a thinker's theory, and so it cannot but
be listened to. He who ignores it must be a lamed
specialist, a trifler, a dreamer, or a dullard. The
Socialist societies have taken it up—a course which
could not well have been foreseen from their prin-
ciples, or from their practice a few years ago. Among
the skilled as among the unskilled trades, it appears
to make headway; and already there is a small litera-
ture of discussion upon it. But the need for the
publication of the following chapters, first written
before some of the later books on the subject ap-
peared, seems to me on the whole greater, and not
less, than when I began them, though some of the
newer books coincide a good deal with my conclu-
i Of books, as distinguished from pamphlets, I may specify
Messrs. Hadfield & Gibbins' "A Shorter Working Day”
(Methuen), and Mr. H. M. Thompson's "The Theory of Wages”
(Macmillan), which turns largely on this question. I shall have
occasion to refer to various essays and pamphlets.
THE TROUBLE AND THE HOPE.
9
:
sions. While these books are more judicial than the
earlier publications with which I have dealt, I am
constrained to think that they overlook part of the
economics of the question, and thus leave even their
own conclusions imperfectly established. It is for the
reader who will follow me to judge.
IV.
Only one warning is necessary to the more hasty.
friends of the Eight Hours Movement. It is possible
to criticise this movement, not because of a wish to
do for the workers less than it proposes, but because
of a wish to do more. If any bias has affected my
inquiry, it is the latter and not the former. The ideal
that guides or misguides my own constructive pro-
posals is one of a state of things in which considerably
less than eight hours should have to be worked per
day in mechanical or toilsome employments. That
the workers should have more leisure is assuredly
one of the first conditions of social betterment. And
so strongly do I feel this that I should decline even
to discuss the objection sometimes made to an Eight
Hours Law, that the men would be apt to misuse the
ments should ever be resorted to. If some men should
misuse their leisure, they would be doing no worse
than many in the educated and opulent classes have
always done hitherto; and to keep them without
leisure, for pure fear lest they should misuse leisure,
would be the very imbecility of conservatism. It is
a necessary condition of their profiting by leisure at
1
ITY
10
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
TY
all that they should have it to begin with; and the
waste that may arise must just be set down to the
loss side in the ever two-sided account of civilisation.
Leisure for the toilers is a primary aspiration of every
reformer. The first question is not, How will it be
used, but, How is it to be secured ?
HISTORICAL AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS,
1.
Two historical facts, or opinions, count for much in the
agitation for an Eight Hours Law: the belief that at
one time, about five hundred years ago, artisans and
labourers in this country had an ordinary working
day of eight hours, and were paid for overtime; and
the fact that the very long hours worked in the first
half of the present century, by both children and adults,
were effectively modified by law.
On the first head, the principal authority is the
late Professor Thorold Rogers, 1 who is cited by
Messrs. Webb & Cox, and Messrs. Gibbins & Hadfield.
Rogers noticed that in the documents he studied
for the agricultural economy of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, the wages paid in December and
January were about 25 per cent. less than during the
rest of the year, and he observes that “this fact,
which I have frequently noticed, is proof that the
hours of labour were not long." He further noticed
i “Six Centuries of Work and Wages," pp. 180, 542 ; “Work
and Wages” (chapters of former work), pp. 28, 175,
I
12
that at a later period than that first dealt with, extra
time was paid for at a rate per hour which, on the
ordinary wages, would mean a working day of eight
hours, if the extra pay were reckoned to be a little in
escess, as at present.
Now, it is not in any way conclusive as to the present-
day problem whether or not the workers of the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries had or had not during
these centuries an ordinary Eight Hours Day; and it
would be somewhat comforting to believe they had ;
but on the simple question of fact it is not easy to
come to Rogers' conclusion. The fact of the wages
being lowered 25 per cent. for December and January
only, he seems to have held to imply that, as the
hours of light in these months are about seven or
eight, the working hours (allowing time for meals),
would be five or six; in which case full wages would
be for about eight hours. But everything depends
on what the class of labour was, and on this Rogers
is not explicit. If it was agricultural labour, the
lessened pay would not be so much for shorter light-
time, since November and February are also months of
short light, as for suspended operations. December
and January are the slack months of the agricultural
year, and the time of Yule festivities.
As to the wages, again, it is not easy to see how
Rogers could calculate with certainty, in view of the
money unit. Before the Black Death, in the four-
teenth century, he tells us the rate of wages for
thatchers was “about a penny a day :" after the
1 “Work and Wages," p. 20,
HISTORICAL AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.
13
Plague it rose to 24d. 1 But of necessity it gradually
fell; and whether we consider the penny rate, or the
peculiar conditions of the time of high wages, when
the labourers were, in Rogers' words, “masters of the
situation," it is not easy to see how we can make sure
of the usage during two centuries for labourers in
general. About other wages for field labour he
admits there are difficulties in the documents. 2
II.
Another of Rogers' historical inferences is worth
notice in this connection. Speaking of old house-
building, he writes3 :-
"The quality of the work in the old times of which I have
written is unquestionable. It stands to this day as a proof of
liow excellent ancient masonry was. The building, from the
construction of which I have inferred so much as to work and
wages, is still standing as it was left four centuries ago. I am
persuaded that such perfect masonry would have been incom-
patible with a long hours day.”
There is indeed much force in the contention that
in some industries a shorter working day might
easily mean better work-à point to which we shall
return. But, to begin with, it is not clear that
masonry is one of these occupations; and in the next
place, the argument from the survival of some ancient
masonry is a plain fallacy. If Rogers were right we
ouglit to have had much masonry from the period of
1 Artisans got much more, carpenters at Windsor in 1408
getting 6d. a day (p. 28). ^ Ibid. p. 14. 3 Ibid. p. 175.
14
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
which he speaks. But we have not. Carlyle in the
same way argued that because his father-in-law's
furniture was of excellent make, labour in those days
was honester than now, when so much furniture is
flimsy. But Carlyle also held that his father did
excellent mason-work; and it is pretty certain that
his father worked much more than eight hours a day.
As to the old furniture, he was only helping to illus-
trate the variety of ways in which men can contrive
to be absurd. Such old furniture will be likely to
survive as was well made ; and if it was well made it
must have been well paid for. The elder Welsh was
a wise man, who, in ordering his furniture, would
give a good price to a good màn. But Scotch
carpenters in his time certainly worked more than
eight hours a dayCarlyle could have had excellent
furniture made in his own day if he had given his
order and paid the proper price; but he was penu-
rious, and probably would never do this. There
must have been plenty of bad work done in the past
as now, though probably not so much, even propor-
tionally. Adulteration and docking are old arts.
Falstaff found lime in his sack; and four or five hun-
dred years ago Scotch hide-exporters got all Scotch
hides an ill name by shortening them. Much of the
house-building of previous centuries was certainly
flimsy. What is pronounced good in old masonry
was so largely because sound mortar lime was used.
In our jerry-building, the lime and plaster are the
things most adulterated; and if they were made
is.
Even our jerry-builders lay better foundations
HISTORICAL AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.
15
and build more truly than their sulider predecessors :
you may find strongly-built London houses of past
generations in which there is no proper foundation :
the new houses, cheaply built, stand because they are
built more scientifically, barring only bad materials.
But the important economic outcome of all this is our
main point, to wit, the fact that long hours and bad
work are alike the outcome of certain tendencies in
our life, which a mere Eight Hours Law will not
alter.
110
III.
If the old labourers of whom Rogers speaks had
the short day he thinks they had, there can only be
one explanation, or one twofold explanation. They
could insist on short hours as they could insist on high
wages, because their number had been greatly cut
down by the Plague, both absolutely and proportion-
ally to the employing classes. Save in the last re-
spect, their position would be economically analogous
to that of the workers now in Australia, where the
relative security of labour and abundant field of em-
ployment, not yet overtaken by the proletariat despite
rapid immigration, enables them generally to insist
on an Eight Hours Day, and to secure good wages.
In Elizabeth's time, according to Rogers himself,
the position of the labourers was considerably worse.
Broadly speaking, it is held by him to have got
progressively worse still, down to the present century,
with some ups and downs. Certainly the worst phases
of artisan overwork arose in the end of last century
and the beginning of this, after the application of
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION,
steam to factory uses. And why? Because the new
openings for labour, accompanied as they were by
bettering conditions of life on the side of civil peace
and sanitation, permitted of an immense increase of
population, and this increase took place before there
were any of the facilities of emigration which later
relieved the strain. These facts are obstinately
ignored by what some call " the new economics ”_as
if either old or new economists were all of one mind.
The sequelæ of Factory Legislation are pointed to
without any investigation of cause and effect; and it
is assumed that because there has been improvement
in the past there must be improvement in the
future, given only certain restrictive legislation,
no matter what the other conditions may be. Yet it
is easy to show, and it will appear in our inquiry, that
but for the advent of certain new conditions, notably
the opening of new fields for emigration and new
markets for produce, our earlier Factory Legislation
would only have produced new forms of evil. The
advocates of that legislation do not seem to have had
any foresight, though the results seem to justify them.
Merely to prevent children and women from working
is not to provide for the feeding of these women and
children. The prevention was indeed justifiable and
laudable-I make no demur on that head;--but the
act, as regards the actors, partook of the nature of the
plan of closing all public-houses without opening
places of recreation. And a main purpose of the
present argument is, not to resist the shortening of
hours of labour, but to show that the shortening of
hours of labour by law, either on the assumption that
· HISTORICAL TY
LE
17
AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.
concurrent favourable conditions must arise now as
they did in previous years, or, as is almost always the
case, without any perception of the function of con-
current conditions at all, is to court a great disaster
and a grievous disappointment.
CHAPTER III.
THE HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT.
It is not proposed here to write a detailed history of
the movement for an Eight Hours Day, as such a
history is to be found in the volumes of Messrs. Webb
& Cox, and Gibbins & Hadfield, which, on points
of narrative, I believe to be trustworthy. But there
are some of the historical facts which specially
challenge notice when we make a study of the
economics of the problem. It is significant, for in-
stance, that at the Swansea Trade Union Congress of
1887 the resolution proposed (and not carried) was
simply “that the hours of labour in all Government
works should be reduced to eight per day," though as
early as 1871 the London Congress had unanimously
resolved that “the productive powers and skill of the
perfection which guarantees that eight hours labour
a day will answer all the commercial, national, and
domestic requirements of the population.” An amend-
ment proposing a general Eight Hours Law was re-
jected by 76 votes to 29, but an amendment proposing
a plebiscitum was carried. This was acted upon, but
the inquiry set on foot was ignored by very many of
18
THE HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT.
19
the unions, and more than half of the 17,267 votes in
favour of a legal Eight Hours Limit (understood to
be of general application) came from one union, the
Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners.
Only one large society, that of the Stirlingshire
Miners, voted unanimously for both an Eight Hours
Limit and an Eight Hours Law. A fresh plebiscitum
was then ordered.
Next, at the London International Trade Union
Congress of November, 1888, a resolution was carried
by a majority in favour of an Eight Hours Law in
all industries (“every case” was the expression used),
while at the same time it came out, despite the cross-
voting, that a larger majority of delegates was in
favour of an Eight Hours Day for all State and muni-
cipal employments. At the Dundee Trade Union
Congress of the following year, the report of the fresh
plebiscitum showed 28,511 for an Eight Hours Law (as
distinguished from an Eight Hours Limit), and 67,390,
against even the Eight Hours Limit, and so à fortiori
against the law. The return, however, was rejected,
on the ground that no attempt had been made by the
officials of the textile unions to ascertain the opinions
of the members, the entire membership (56,541) having
been returned as against the law; and the Congress
passed a resolution in favour of an Eight Hours Law
for miners only. Meantime, among the miners them-
selves the demand was opposed by those of North-
umberland and Durham, who had already an Eight
Hours Day for hewers.
Next, at the Liverpool Trade Union Congress of
1890, a resolution in favour of an Eight Hours Law
1
20
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
for all trades was carried by a considerable majority,
largely representative of unskilled trades," which had
of late joined the unionist ranks in large numbers.
At the same Congress, a resolution in favour of an
Eight Hours Law for miners was again carried by an.
overwhelming majority. The case of the railwaymen,
whose hours are out of comparison harder than those
of miners, is thus always postponed to that of the
miners, many of whom work less than eight hours
a day already.
In all of these discussions, as Messrs. Gibbins &
Hadfield point out, there has been a strong body of
feeling against legal action; and at the Newcastle
Congress of 1891, where the previous resolution for
an Eight Hours Law for all trades was repeated, the
majority, even in demanding legal action, qualified
the demand first by a suggestion of permissive clauses,
and finally by agreeing to let the union of any par-
ticular trade refuse the law by ballot vote.
There are thus two preliminary questions to be con-
sidered : (1) How do the workers expect a permissive
law to operate ? and (2) Why are the miners so in-
variably selected for preliminary legislation when a
general law is also being demanded ?
II.
To neither of these questions is there even the
pretence of an answer, either from the out-and-out
1 Messrs. Webb & Cox quote from Mr. John Burns (p. 35) a
statement which, professing to state the “character of the
majority,” carefully leaves that undescribed. 2 Pp. 38, 39.
THE HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT.
21
advocates of the Eight Hours Law or from the
friendly critics. Yet it is of great importance that
both should be answered. For, in the first place, if
trades are to be left to enforce and abandon an Eight
Hours Law at their choice, there is an end of the plea
that the object in view is more leisure, and work for
the unemployed. That is to say, if any one trade
is to be free to apply the law at pleasure, and
set it aside at pleasure, the law will merely be
a means of restricting output or raising wages at
particular times chosen by the workers. Besides,
if the workers look to putting on and taking
off the law at will, they will merely be doing by the
machinery of the law what they could just as well do
by experimentally striking for lower hours and
waiving the question of wages. For if they enforce
the law, with the result that wages tend to fall, they
have no remedy against the fall save a strike, which
they say they are unwilling to resort to; and if they
recognise the possibility that the law may lower
wages, and are prepared in that case to go back to
longer hours, they are admitting that the question is
from the start one of wages. It is not on record that
any union has asked the masters at what reduction
of wages they would be prepared to reduce the
working day to eight hours; yet such an inquiry
would be the first that would suggest itself, were it
not that lessened wages are all round felt to be a
death-blow to the shorter working day.
It may be, of course, that the Newcastle Congress
meant that a trade should be allowed to take or
reject the Eight Hours Law, but should be bound to
THE EIGHT HOURS QÜESTION.
abide by its decision; but it is difficult to see how
such a view can be entertained by practical men.
Supposing a minority in a recalcitrant trade were
changed to a majority, the new majority would con-
sider itself unjustly treated if it were debarred from
applying the law. Again, supposing a trade found
that the application of the law caused them a loss in
wages, how could it be proposed that the law should
be enforced if the masters and men were alike willing
to return to longer hours ?
I can well understand why the more zealous advocates
of the restrictive law should be opposed to the permissive
principle, for from their point of view it will stultify
their plan. With an Eight Hours Law going and not
going in this trade and that trade according as busi-
ness seems to fluctuate, it will be impossible to test or
verify their thesis that a general restriction of hours
will increase the demand for labour; and the arbitrary
fluctuations of output that must needs result would
go far to derange production all over. Yet the
alternative to this state of things would be a no less
arbitrary influence upon production in general, since
the workers themselves admit that an Eight Hours
Law, if general, is bound to affect different trades in
very different degrees. The dilemma is thus com-
plete; and yet the spokesmen of the workers do not
12
least do nothing to resolve it
III.
There is, finally, the problem of the peculiar position
of the miners. It is established by the return drawn
THE HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT.
up by Mr. George Howell, M.P.,1 that “in no district
except South Wales” do miners, “working at the
face (i.e., hewing the coal), work more than 48 hours
per week, allowing 39 minutes as the average time
for descending, travelling underground, and return-
ing to the surface; and even in South Wales the time
from bank to bank is put at 497 hours.” 2 Barring
errors in the figures, it is anything but clear why the
miners should be selected by the trades in general as
hours; and it is much to be regretted that Messrs.
Hadfield & Gibbins, who have "little doubt” that
before long a Miners Act will be passed, should be
content to notice the "curious fact” that the miners
have least to gain from such an Act, without making
any attempt to find out why then they want it. On
the other hand, Messrs. Webb & Cox are content 4 to
say that it is absurd to suppose the miners would ask
for an Eight Hours Law if they had already an Eight
Hours Day. Both pairs of inquirers leave us to settle
the problem for ourselves. According to Messrs.
Hadfield & Gibbins, “nearly one-half” of the total
number of miners have declared in favour of an
Eight Hours Law, which only a few of them seem to
need; while, as we have seen, the Trade Union Con-
gresses are especially ready to support a Miners Act,
in the teeth of the opposition of the other half of the
miners.
i Printed by Messrs. Gibbins & Hadfield, p. 20. 2 Ibid.
pp. 20, 21. 3 They apparently clash with those given by
Messrs. Webb & Cox (p. 85); but the difference is one of day
measurement and week totals. 4 P. 86,
24
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
What, then, are the explanations ? As regards the
miners, two may be suggested. (1) An Eight Hours
Law for all mine employees would probably mean
less than eight hours from bank to bank for many of
the hewers, inasmuch as their work depends on that
of other hands, who at present often work ten or
more hours when the hewers work eight or less. In
that case an Eight Hours Law would be a means of
restricting output, which is naturally the object of
the miners generally, but which is almost inevitably a
source of hardship to other industries; and as the
miners' representatives who demand the law are stead-
fastly opposed to permitting double shifts, it would
seem that this theory goes in the right direction.
(2) On the other hand, it would seem that many miners
want an Eight Hours Law by way of preventing the
present voluntary irregularity of hours." The average
number of working days varies from 5 to 51 days,
and it thus happens that miners in general spend
several days of the week in idleness, working hard
on the others to make up for lost time. The idleness
is said to involve intemperance; and many are said to
want either to force others, or to be themselves forced,
to work a certain number of hours on each day, by
making it impossible to exceed eight hours from bank
to bank on any one day. Assuming either or both of
these explanations to be valid, one can only say that
they are rather far aside from the motives by which
an Eight Hours Law for mines is popularly supposed
to be justified. There is no need to take the invidi-
ous course of asking whether the mining industry is
specially injurious to health; for it would seem that
THE HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT.
25
A
an Eight Hours Law can make almost no difference
in that regard save such as the men at present are
free to make, unless the effect of the law is to be a
reduction of the hewers' day to considerably less than
eight hours.
As regards the view taken of the miners' case by
the workers generally, again it would appear that
small consideration has been given to the probable
effects of an Eight Hours Law for mines on output
and on the manufacturing industries. It would seem
rather that the miners' case is taken as one particu-
larly feasible for legislation, in view of the simplicity
of its conditions. It may be also, indeed, that a
powerful motive is a generous and disinterested sym-
pathy, such as the workers generally are quick to
feel, for the men of an industry which more often
than any other, save the little-considered craft of the
seafarers, has to record dreadful calamities, in which
hundreds of men are destroyed at a blow. But the
generosity and nobility of this feeling will not suffice
to decide the matter for those of us who feel that half
the miseries of life spring from action undertaken
with motives either benevolent or genial.
CHAPTER IV.
THE VARIOUS SCHEMES.
I.
If the subject of an Eight Hours Law is to be
thought out at all, it must evidently be dealt with, for
one thing, as a question in economics: 1 It is indeed
a double problem ; and when it has been viewed on
the side of economics it still falls to be studied care-
fully on the side of politics; but the economic inquiry
is plainly indispensable to any rational and valid
judgment on the matter. Unfortunately some of
the workers, having given their voice for an Eight
Hours Law as an apparently direct and simple way
34): “Even the political economists were forced to recognise
the growing feeling in favour of a limitation of the hours of
labour"-as if either the economists were supposed slow to
recognise a feeling when they saw it, or the feeling affected the
economic question. If Messrs. Webb & Cox wish it to be
understood that they are not economists, they might do well to
say so plainly. They go on to speak of "the political econo-
mists” as coming to a particular conclusion when they have only
recorded that one economist offered a "guarded opinion.” This
is certainly not the style in which political economists are ex-
pected to write.
26
THE VARIOUS SCHEMES.
of improving their position, are apt to accuse of
hostility to labour anyone who undertakes the econo-
mic inquiry save by way of finding arguments on
their side. This attitude is, of course, not peculiar to
working-men in controversy, but in their case it is
perhaps specially unfortunate, as it tends to deprive
them in great measure of the benefit of friendly criti-
cism, and to procure for them a superabundance of
mere partisan support. They will always find politi-
cians ready to chime in with them : they are not
so sure of finding politicians who, while sincerely
democratic, are yet prepared to argue against what
they believe to be popular mistakes. When Mr.
Bradlaugh first met the Eight Hours Movement with
arguments to show that it was such a mistake, he was
promptly met, not with counter argument, but with
the charge that he was unfriendly in his treatment of
popular aspirations—this after a life nearly worn out
in unremunerative propaganda among and for the
people. And this kind of tactic is resorted to by
educated Socialists, who might have been expected to
see the peculiar importance of independent judgment
and criticism within the democratic party. Similarly,
my friend Mr. G. B. Shaw, in his debate with Mr. G.
W. Foote on the same question, said-probably with-
out thought, but none the less objectionably--that
" the opposition to the Eight Hours Bill is altogether
due” to the self-interest of capitalism. Thus en-
couraged, by those who ought to be their scrupulous
teachers, to throw mere angry taunts at whoever
differs from them on policy, some workers are only
too likely to disregard or contemn any fresh investi-
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
gation such as the present, and to accuse the writer of
unfriendliness or Toryism. Such risks must be faced
by somebody if the air of democratic politics is to be
kept wholesome. I know one or two good economists,
good Radicals—I must call them good—who, while
convinced that an Eight Hours Law is unworkable,
have thought it right to countenance the political
movement as expressing a wholesome aspiration to-
wards leisure. I cannot think this is how such mien
should act, and I must needs take another course.
On a careful study of the arguments for a general
Eight Hours Law—for this is what the agitation
broadly calls for-I can discover little ground for
believing that it is a wise project, and many grounds
for apprehending that, if enacted, it will not only
collapse, but give occasion to an injurious Conserva-
tive reaction, by destroying faith in progressive
measures. My reasons for this view I will attempt to
set forth. :
TI.
TTT
At the very outset, the gravest reason for distrust
is found in the extraordinary contradictoriness of the
arguments by which the Eight Hours Law is advo-
cated. It is hardly too much to say that almost no
two writers who have argued for it are even sub-
stantially agreed on their reasons.
1. Messrs. Webb & Cox, of the Fabian Society, in
their treatise entitled “The Eight Hours Day," state 1
that the rapid progress of the Eight Hours Move-
S
1 P. 22.
THE VARIOUS SCHEMES.
29
ment is “due largely to the energetic labours of Mr.
Tom Mann.” Now, the arguments of Mr. Tom Mann,
however they may relate to those of Messrs. Webb
& Cox, are in the strongest contradiction to those of
their colleague, Mr. G. B. Shaw. Mr. Mann in his
pamphlet 1 expressly contends that an Eight Hours
Law will increase the income not only of the workers
but of their employers :
1
VI
1
“Improved methods of production have so increased the out-
put, that the employers can pay a higher wage for fewer hours'
work, sell the articles cheaper, and still obtain a larger income
for themselves. There is 110 reason to doubt that similar
results will follow a further reduction of hours."
9
What Mr. Mann so confidently declares there is no
reason to doubt, Mr. G. B. Shaw not only doubts, but
meets with the proposition that one of the main
benefits of an Eight Hours Law will be to lessen the
share of wealth going to the landlords and capitalists,
and that only in this way can the worker gain in
wages. Yet these gentlemen alike win votes for an
Eight Hours Bill. And Mr. Mann specially com-
plains 2 that “many Eight Hours advocates are doing
the cause great harm” by not recognising that the
proposed law will lessen instead of increasing the total
cost of production.
2. This issue touches closely on the other as to
whether in an Eight Hours Day the workers generally
will produce per head as much as they did in a longer
day. Mr. Mann appears to think they will not, since
he says "a reduction of working hours lessens com-
171
1 P. 6.
? P. 10.
30
.
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
11
petition for employment,” though he does not at all
connect this view with his thesis that cost of produc-
tion will lessen and profits increase. But other
supporters of an Eight Hours Law expressly argue
that in an Eight Hours day the workers in general,
in the manufacturing industries, will produce as much
per head as they do in a longer day. This was the
emphatic contention of Mr. F. G. Jones, of the Social
Democratic Federation, when he recently debated the
question with ine at Northampton. But Mr. Hynd-
man, of the same body, appears to hold otherwise ;
and Mr. G. B. Shaw, in his debate with Mr. Foote, 1
repeatedly declares that if the view specified should
prove correct, he will at once commence an agitation
for a Seven Hours Law.
3. The question of relative output, again, touches
closely on that of deliberate restriction of output. All
of the above-cited writers agree in desiring an in-
creased output of articles of ordinary consumption ;
yet it is pretty clear that the miners, in so far as they
demand an Eight Hours Law, do it with the hope
of restricting the output of coal. Mr. W. Abraham,
their Parliamentary spokesman, strongly resists the
restriction of output is confessedly the aim of many of
his followers. Yet the advocates of the Eight Hours
Law generally incline to legislate first of all for the
miners. It must be admitted that they show great
good faith in incurring the risk of an industrial check
as the first fruits of their measure.
i Pp. 8, 20.
THE VARIOUS SCHEMES.
31
4. Yet again, while most of the advocates of an
Eight Hours Law assume, with Mr. Shaw, that it will
increase employment in industries in general, Mr.
Shaw expressly contends that it will destroy a num-
ber of industries which minister to the rich, while
Messrs. Webb & Cox anticipate that it will destroy
several poor industries. Mr. Shaw specifies 1 among
the industries which will be "deprived of their
market” those which produce “carriages, yachts,
plush, velveteen, and other luxuries of the rich ;"
and among the “other luxuries” we may presumably
include high-class furniture, carpets, good houses,
artistic metal - work, jewellery, good watches and
clocks, pictures, and books which are not low priced.
I shall deal later with the sociological or political side
of Mr. Shaw's doctrine ; but I wish to note here that
his view is quite opposed to that of the workers in
the industries specified, so far as these want an Eight
Hours Day; and that he is really forecasting a pro-
cess which would at once go far to nullify the extra
demand for labour which, he says, an Eight Hours
Law will produce, by throwing idle at the instant
thousands of workers (not to mention the artists) who
will have to compete for new employment at a dis-
advantage. At the same time, according to Messrs.
Webb & Cox, certain low-class industries will be
destroyed by being made unprofitable-a view some-
what contrary to Mr. Shaw's general thesis, that the
effect of the proposed law will be to raise wages with-
out raising prices, by forcing investors to be content
1 Debate cited, p. 23.
2 P. 118.
32
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
with less interest, and landlords with less rents. It
seems doubtful whether Mr. Shaw reflected long on
the economic consequences of his hypothetical destruc-
tion of industries, whatever Messrs. Webb & Cox
may have done.
5. In connection with this agitation, many Socialist
writers are found asserting a general upward progress
in the condition of the workers in modern times, as a
specific result of the gradual reduction of the hours of
labour. Yet when Mr. Bradlaugh used to allege such
progress, he was vituperated as a Conservative by
writers of the same party, they denying that there
had been any. And while nearly all the Socialist
speakers take the line of attributing good results to
the past reductions in the hours of labour, Mr. Hynd-
man, in his debate with Mr. Bradlaugh on the Eight
Hours Question, contended 1 that the physique of the
workers has markedly declined in the last fifty years.
6. There is the great question of overtime. An
Eight Hours Law, with permission of overtime, is
simply a measure to control wages—a thing which,
perhaps, no economist will defend. Yet it is certain
that thousands of workmen desire an Eight Hours
Law in order to make overtime pay begin sooner.
7. Some Socialist supporters of the movement avow
that a measure of Protection will have to follow on
an Eight Hours Law in order to save some industries
from injury by foreign competition. But not a single
leader of the movement professes to conceive of such
a possibility, though there are many grounds for ex-
1P. 8.
THE VARIOUS SCHEMES.
33
pecting that Protection will be demanded if an Eight
Hours Law be passed.
8. Others protest that if the Eight Hours Law is
to be worth anything it must be international; and
some of these, holding this view, support the English
movement, most of whose supporters do not trouble
themselves about an international law.
9. Much stress is laid by many advocates of the
Eight Hours Law, and latterly by Messrs. Gibbins
& Hadfield, on the fact that certain employers who
have voluntarily adopted an Eight Hours Day in their
works have found it to be profitable. It does not
seem to occur to these reasoners that if it be really to
the advantage of masters in general to run an Eight
Hours Day, it must be utterly needless to pass a law
on the subject. Laws to make employers put money
in their pockets have not hitherto been held necessary
in our polity. But the same reasoners are found in
many cases (e.g., Messrs. Webb & Cox) arguing that an
Eight Hours Law will cause a fall in profits, and con-
tending that masters ought to be forced to submit to
loss in the interest of the community. Then it must
be recognised by the writers that an Eight Hours Day
is profitable only in a few special industries; and yet
the experience of employers in these special industries
is put forward as justifying a general law, or a law
for other industries.
III.
It is at least clear that a number of the foregoing
mutually destructive arguments must be fallacious;
and such a chaos of contradiction at least gives ground
34
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
VII 1
for questioning whether the proposition they are em-
ployed to support has a valid argumentative basis.
When the advocates of a measure are seen to be
vigorously contradicting each other, they might surely
admit that those who contradict them all have about
as much chance of being right as they. If five doctors
all pronounce for amputating a patient's limb, and all
the while take five irreconcilable views of what the
effects will be, a sixth doctor who proposes a different
course is presumptively worth listening to. And this
the more readily because there are many reasons for
attributing other than scientific impulses to the others.
After the imputations which have been thrown broad-
cast by the advocates of an Eight Hours Law, there
need be no scruple about saying that many of them
seem to have given their adhesion first and looked for
their arguments after. The wish is too palpably
father to the thought in their reasoning. In itself the
wish may be not only harmless but creditable ; but
bad reasoning is entitled to no mercy when it is fallen
into by writers who are ready to impute sinister feel-
ing where they are at a loss to demonstrate fallacy.
Here, however, I may explain that I am not pro-
posing an absolutely different course from that which
is loosely specified in the phrase "an Eight Hours
Law.” An Eight Hours Law may be made (or sought
to be made) general, or it may be particular. There
may be an Eight Hours Law for public (State or
municipal) employments alone. Many who oppose a
universal Eight Hours Law are willing to have this.
Mr. Bradlaugh was. He further admitted, as did Mr.
Morley, that the railways, as being State monopolies,
7
THE VARIOUS SCHEMES.
might justly be legislated for in the matter of the
working hours of employees. This, we shall see, is
what is finally contended for by writers who asperse
these politicians as reactionary. For, even if the
arguments in support of a general Eight Hours Law
were consistent, which they are not, there is finally
extreme conflict as to what the Eight Hours Law is
actually to be. The Eight Hours Bills are as con-
tradictory as the economic arguments for an Eight
Hours Law. It is not a mere difference of machinery
or policy aiming at the same end : it is a sharp opposi-
leading advocates of an Eight Hours Law neither pro-
pose the same law nor agree as to what the effects
of any law would be.
ᏟᎻᎪᏢᎢᎬᎡ Ꮩ .
THE BEST ACCREDITED PLEA.
I.
AT the close of their elaborate work on “The Eight
Hours Day," Messrs. Webb & Cox, after arguing
throughout for the feasibility of a general Eight
Hours Day, explicitly admit that a general Eight
Hours Law is impossible. They propose only (a) the
Permissive Bill of the Fabian Society, which would
enable the majority in any occupation to call for an
Eight Hours Law; and (b) the establishment of an
Eight Hours Law in public employments, mines, and
public monopolies, such as railways and gas works.
They say:1
“ There are certain occupations in which the direct inter-
ference of Parliament is justifiable and desirable, in order to
secure at once a maximum 48 hours week, accompanied with
a maximum 10 or 12 hours day. These occupations are the
following: all Government work, whether direct or by contract;
all work in mines ; all work on railways, trainways, gasworks,
and other local monopolies. To refuse the Eight Hours Day in
these cases, on the ground that it is inapplicable in other cases,
is childish."
What is here termed childish appears to be the posi-
tion of the popular Socialist party. Debating with
1 P. 237.
36 ,
THE BEST ACCREDITED PLEA. .
37
Mr. F. G. Jones at Northampton, I pointed to State
employments and public monopolies as cases in the
nature of which a restrictive law was economically
workable; and Mr. Jones indignantly protested, amid
applause, against legislating for a few privileged occu-
pations. It was not, I think, that he and his friends
saw the difficulty of enforcing such a law, a difficulty
which I, for my part, had not then contemplated, but
that they objected to benefiting any class of workers
singly. Mr. Jones further referred somewhat de-
risively to the “pliilosophy” of Messrs. Webb & Cox.
And yet these Fabians on the one hand, and the
Social Democrats on the other, alike help to swell the
cry for an Eight Hours Law, while thus utterly op-
posed as to what it shall mean, and to raise the popu-
lar hue-and-cry against all politicians who attempt
to show what a confusion the Eight Hours Movement
is. Mr. Webb, in his work of collaboration, as in liis
original essay,+ ends by admitting that a general Eight
Hours Law is impracticable. Such a conclusion to
such a polemic as his is memorable. A. book of
nearly 300 close-printed pages is written ostensibly to
justify the Eight Hours Movement; and it turns out
that in the end it proposes a course which, as we
have seen, will in no wise satisfy those who chiefly
constitute that movement. Mr. Webb 2 is sensitive
about the ungenerousness of pointing out to working-
men that they are mistaken; but he seems to have
no misgiving about leading thousands of them to the
bitterest disappointment.
1 In the “Contemporary Review," December, 1899.
2 Article cited, p. 865.
38
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
It is not difficult to understand that even stronger
feelings than derision may be felt for the position of
the Fabian Society on the Eight Hours Question by
those workers who have joined the general movement.
The Fabians are about the only Socialists who have
looked into the economics of the case, and they see
the impossibility of the popular proposal. But they
recognise that it is “a good cry," and they are con-
cerned—at least some of them visibly are—to be
popular somehow. They accordingly proceed to de-
nounce those politicians who put forward criticisins
which they cannot answer, while coinciding with those
politicians as to their practical proposals, save in the
single matter of their own Permissive Bill.
Of that measure it is somewhat difficult to take a
serious view. It proposes that a bare majority in any
occupation may call for a law fixing its maximum
hours of labour at fifty-four or less (down to forty-
five) per week. This is not an Eight Hours Day, to
In
tary of State, when called upon by any trades union
(or, in the case of trades without a union, a trades
council or congress), shall “cause a public inquiry to
be held in the principal district or districts in which
such trade or occupation is carried on, or cause a poll
to be taken of the persons employed in such trade or
occupation, or take such other means as he may deen
fit." Thus the trade is not even to take its own poll;
and the Secretary of State is allowed the most hand-
THE BEST ACCREDITED PLEA.
39
some latitude as to what he shall consider a sufficient
pretext. Besides, a trades council may, if it pleases,
demand a poll for an Eight Hours Day among journ-
alists or domestic servants; and the Secretary of State
shall thereupon be bound to set about it. Once passed,
the law is not to be enforced until after three months;
but from that date every employer contravening it
shall be fined £10 or less for each contravention, the
employee going scathless, even if he had desired to be
employed as he was. And if it shall be found by the
majority of the trade in question that the law they
have obtained is injurious to them in any way, they
shall not be at liberty to change it for a year,--unless
they can persuade the Secretary of State to let them.
For it is “provided that a Secretary of State shall not,
except for special reasons approved by him, institute
any such inquiry within a period of twelve months
from the date of the holding of any previous inquiry
in respect of the same trade or occupation."
Whatever may be the position of the minority of
workers whose hours and (by consequence) wages are
thus settled for them, nobody will deny that the
Secretary of State enjoys a wonderful amount of free-
dom in the discharge of his functions. If he finds he
has erred in liis poll-taking or "such other means” as
he saw " fit," he has only to get up a different statistic
and declare that arrangement legal which the other
day he pronounced illegal. He may even make and
unmake his law before it is time to enforce it. If he
finds that the law lowers wages to a serious extent, he
may see "special reasons.” to take a poll or “other
means ” to abrogate it within a month of its promul-
40
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
gation. Or, if he chooses to punish the trade for
giving him so much trouble, he may force them to
hold for a year by an arrangement which they very
much want to repeal after a fortnight.
In ordinary course this pleasing scheme of legisla-
tion might be dismissed with the epithet above cited
from Messrs. Webb & Cox. But it is important to
notice that the framers of such an absurdity do not
scruple to heap contumely on more judicious poli-
ticians who resist them, while they themselves pose
as the representatives of the latest political science.
Their own hill is probably the most irrational that
has been framed since that of Lord Randolph
Churchill for dealing with tradesmen's accounts.
The alternative to their bill, that proposing a general
Eight Hours Day in all occupations, they admit to
be quite impracticable. But that alternative is the
thing desired by most of the workers for whose sup.
port they are catering; and all the while the treatise
of Messrs. Webb & Cox passes for an economic justi-
fication of a general measure.
III.
What is mainly done in Messrs. Webb & Cox's
treatise is (1) to dwell at great length on the evils of
overwork, which nobody denies, and (2) to argue
vaguely that an Eight Hours Law would not lower
wages. With a good many readers, the just protests
on the first head probably pass for arguments on the
second. When, however, the arguments are analysed,
it is found that they contain no economic reasoning
THE BEST ACCREDITED PLEA.
41
whatever to show that the enforcement of an Eight
Hours Law would not lower wages either in those in-
dustries which have to meet foreign competition or in
those which have not. On the contrary, in regard to
the latter occupations, the evidence is the other way.
I confess myself somewhat taken aback by the testi-
mony candidly adduced as to the lowering of wages
concurrently with a reduction of hours on the Hud-
dersfield municipal tramways. Enthusiastic readers
must have expected to be shown that the employ-
ment of extra men kept up wages by increasing
the demand for labour. But Messrs. Webb & Cox
producel official testimony to the effect that whereas
the Huddersfield drivers and conductors were respec-
tively paid 32s. and 26s. per week on a working day
of 12 hours (14 hours with meal intervals), they are
paid for an Eight Hours Day only 26s. and 21s. re-
spectively. Messrs. Webb & Cox state that "the
men usually seemed to prefer the shorter hours, even
at the cost of lower wages; but there has not yet
been time to see whether the fall in wages will be
less temporary than that at Preston, on the passing
of the Ten Hours Bill."
Here we have a fair sample of the way in which
Messrs. Webb & Cox shelve the economic problem.
They do not ask how it came about that there was
first a fall and then a restoration of wages at Preston
under the Ten Hours Law. In this connection they
makes the statement that “the play of economic
forces" brought about a rise after the fall. But what
0
2
1P, 264
P. 102.
3P, 113,
1:
42
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
forces ? Not a hint is dropped. We are left to re-
flect that "argal, he that is not guilty of his own
death shortens not his own life.” If a thing happens
it must have happened somehow. Je vous apprends
que votre fille est muette. It would be hard to find
in economic literature a more simple-minded evasion
of a difficulty.
Need I urge that the inquiry really begins where
Messrs. Webb & Cox have here left off? So much
lies on the face of the case; and yet these gentlemen
have produced the most copious and the most labori-
ous of the treatises dealing with the Eight Hours
problem. They have undertaken to provide a manual
of fact and theory for the politicians and labour
leaders who have to deal with the question ; and it is
evident that they have done this in a very disin-
terested spirit. Their only bias is the bias of socio-
logical inclination, and their personal disinterestedness
CY
D
altruistic bias is quite as fatal in science as a mer-
cenary one would have been, inasmuch as it is even
more likely to blind and mislead. The result is that
the whole theoretic ground must be worked over
again, in the interests of pure science, if any of us
there be who has these interests purely at heart.
One can but essay.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PLAN OF PARTICULAR LEGISLATION : RAILWAYS
AND MINES.
THE most considerate and comprehensive survey of
the case made by advocates of an Eight Hours Law
having ended in a suggestion that an Eight Hours
Law should be made for particular industries, it will
be well first to consider that proposal. It may be
followed up from the starting-point of the data given
as to the Huddersfield tramways, which, though un-
favourable to, is not conclusive against, the plan of
legislating for selected industries. A shortening of
hours in one limited industry may easily bring such
an influx of competing labour that wages may be con-
siderably reduced; whereas a general shortening of
hours in all railways, tramways, and gasworks at once,
may not cause such reduction of wages, because the
redundant labour supply may then be fully absorbed.
And if I, for one, did not expect that it would be thus
absorbed, I should be less ready than I am to vote for
a legal restriction of hours in all public and monopoly
occupations. It is a point for the men to consider.
It is all very well for Messrs. Webb & Cox to say 1
that the Huddersfield men, who had previously been
.
iP. 133.
43
44
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
paid more than the market rate, were satisfied to take
a lower wage; but how would men stand in other
places? I conversed lately with a London 'bus
conductor as to his position before and after the late
strike. The hours remain very long, but the wages
are considerably higher; and he declared that he pre-
ferred the long hours with the better wages, because
he could now maintain his family so much better.
This brings us to the final economic probabilities.
When all is said, even if a legal restriction of hours in
all public and monopoly employments should serve to
absorb for the time being the redundant labour in the
market, there will probably be a tendency to a reduc-
tion of wages in the occupations so controlled, in so
far as the advantage of shorter hours will attract a
certain amount of labour thither by preference. But
this preference will be partly dependent on the “play”
of an “economic force” which is probably in operation
at Huddersfield, namely, the capacity of the men to
work at other occupations in their freed hours. And
if this be so, the question arises whether the upshot of
the restriction in the specified occupations will not be
just to set up equalising readjustments throughout the
labour world generally, so that the men with sliort
hours in any one occupation not involving extra strain
or skill will either have to live on low wages, or have
to eke out their wages by other work in their off
hours. The likelihood of such a result seems great,
since already the process is seen at work in connection
with the State shipbuilding yards. I learn frorn
working-inen at Portsmouth that in that town painters
who work the (often) short day in the national yards
THE PLAN OF PARTICULAR LEGISLATION.
45
are known in the season to rise at three or four in the
morning and do some hours' work for masters or other
persons outside, before they begin their regular work;
· while the carpenters are equally given to working for
outsiders after dockyard hours. Here then are cases
in which wage-earners are placed in a position of
privilege by a short working day in the national
workshops, only to turn this privilege to the account
of competition with unprivileged workers in their off-
time. The same thing would naturally arise under an
Eight Hours Law for railway employees, whether
skilled or unskilled ; the skilled men taking work to
their homes, as in the case of carpenters, or going out
to jobs, as in the case of painters, or to workshops, as
in the case of mechanics; and the unskilled competing
with all sorts of unskilled or semi-skilled labour.
When the unprivileged workmen complain that this
is unfair to them, it is impossible to gainsay them.
The fact that the majorities in the Congresses have
not yet complained does not cancel the grievance of
those who do. It would be necessary in justice, from
their standpoint, to accompany an Eight Hours Law for
railways with a provision that the railwaymen should
not do any other work. But such a provision would
be practically incapable of enforcement; for, first, every
employee would have to be “shadowed," and finally it
would be impossible to settle what was and what was
not a legitimate use of his leisure time. Would he be
free to help friends who would otherwise have had to
employ hired labour, or even to make for himself
articles which otherwise he would have had to buy ?
If the unprotected trades object, as already the outside
46
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
workers object at Portsmouth, to an unconditional
protection for any sets of workers, such protection
becomes impracticable. At Portsmouth the outside
workers urge that in State workshops the hours and
the wages alike should be those current in the same
trades outside or in private dockyards. I can see no
valid rebuttal.
The only sort of answer that can be offered to such
a demand is that in the case of protected railwaymen
the wages of the protected men will fall in natural
course, so that they will really be no better off than
the unprotected. But this reduces the Eight Hours
Law to absurdity, inasmuch as it is admitted there
will finally be no shortening of hours save in the case
of men who cannot get the extra work they want, and
have to live on less wages in consequence. Yet this
is one of the cases specially selected by friends of legal
restriction as a practicable opening.
The other favourite case-with many the favourite
case- is that of the miners. It naturally seems less
favourable to principled Radicals, because mines are
not State-conferred monopolies, as railways and tram-
ways and waterworks are. To interfere with mining
hours is from this point of view the same thing as
interfering with the hours of agricultural labourers or
cutlers. Therefore the first thought of Radicals
anxious to better the lot of the miners—my own first
thought, I may say-is to nationalise the mines, and
then fix for them such working hours as we see fit.
3
y
CU
GUU
difficulty that we have seen arising in the dockyards,
and sure to arise in the railways: at least it seems un-
THE TT
47
TOT
UTINI
.
PLAN OF PARTICULAR LEGISLATIONlikely that miners with an Eight Hours Day would
want to compete with other labour in their leisure
time, or would be able to do so to any serious extent.
But the more one considers the practical problem
of mine nationalisation in the sense of the State
working the mines), the more clear does it become
that the mining industry would be one of the very
hardest to work on State lines. Railways, gasworks,
waterworks, tramways — all these are much more
practicable industries for nationalisation, because, like
the Post-office, they render services which are in
pretty equable demand, need be little affected by
variations in prices, and exclude competition. But
the moment we come to deal with the production of
consumption goods, and especially consumption goods
for export, we are in an insurmountable difficulty.
A socialised State could, of course, manage its mines
as easily as anything else; but a very partially
socialised State like ours, with many competitive
industries, could not manage them at all. It must
either run them as they were run before, in which
case (a) it would not be worth doing, and (6) workers
and employers alike would be always protesting; or
it must run them under fixed restrictions of output
and export, which would derange all ordinary in-
dustrial operations. Mine nationalisation, then, in the
sense of State management of mines, can only come
late in the process of nationalisation (socialisation),
and is for the present out of the question. The
true course for Radicalism in regard to mines is the
same as in regard to land, to wit, the nationalisation
of the economic rent. That is to say, mining royal-
48
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
ties, which some miners ask to have abolished, should
be taken over by the State. To "abolish” them would
only be to put them in the pockets of all those mine
lessees who work the mines above the lowest grade of
workableness. And nationalisation of the economic
rent of mines would leave the question of working
hours as before.
An Eight Hours Law for mines, then, is to be con-
templated in the existing industrial connections.
Broadly speaking, the tendency is for miners' wages
to fall to the point below which men cannot be got to
work in mines; and the hardship of the life is thus
one of the main causes why wages in it keep higher
suming, then, that the majority of the miners now work
over eight hours a day, an Eight Hours Law would
(a) bring more ·labour to the mines seeking employ-
ment; and the natural effect of this extra competition
could only be prevented by very active, not to say
case, there would be no relief to labour in general,
save in so far as (b) the restriction of hours made it
necessary to employ more hands to keep up the out-
put. But the increase of labour in mines being a
matter of extension, not intension, either (a) the new
hands would be set to work where just before no coal
was being hewn, or (b) they would be employed in
second shifts. In the first case, a rise in prices is
clearly implied. If this rise is not maintained, the
extra employment will cease. But equally the
running of second shifts is compatible only with a
rise in prices, unless there is a fall of wages; for
THE PLAN OF PARTICULAR LEGISLATION.
49
TA
1
where 100 men formerly worked nine hours, and now
work eight hours, there will be required a second
shift of 12 or 13 men to make up the same quantity
(assuming, that is, that miners get proportionally less
coal in eight hours than in nine). If consumption
remains the same, either the 112 men will get less
wages per head, or prices will have to rise, in view of
the normal relations between mine-masters and men.
On the other hand, a rise of prices will check de-
mand for coal unless there is some extra demand for
manufactured goods. Then if there is not extra out-
put with the old or lower prices and lower wages,
there must be less employment. More employment
will mean lower wages.
Thus, if an Eight Hours Law were really to lessen
the average working hours in mines, the effect would
be either to lower wages or to raise prices and lessen
employment. Already the striking - power of the
unions has got down profits as far as is feasible ; and
in point of fact the ideal of the men is to restrict out-
put in order to raise prices and wages. There is no
reason whatever to suppose that they would be con-
tent with less wages as the price of more leisure.
They even expressly oppose the permission of double
shifts, because that would tend to force increase of
f
A
YY 1
wages. They wish to keep up wages by restricting
production. How. then will the rest of the workers
adjust themselves to this case ? It is open to them,
if they believe that miners are among the greatest
sufferers from unhealthy toil, to agree to make an
Eight Hours Law for mines, with single shifts, know-
1
D
50
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
.
2T
IV
ing that the effect will be raised prices for coal and
metals. If the majority of the workers of all sorts
really came to this decision, they could not be gain-
said, for they would themselves have to bear the
worst of the burden, in hardship of many kinds.
They will have thrown some miners idle, to compete
with themselves; and they will tend to lessen their
own employment, by raising cost of production—un-
less they can somehow bring about increased con-
sumption with raised prices. But is it likely that
they will desire to do this? It would be strange if
they did. They would be leaving the general labour
trouble in a more acute stage than before"; and it is
the general labour trouble that has given breadth to
the Eight Hours Movement. The irresistible pre-
sumption is that those non-miners who ask for an
Eight Hours Law for mines, are doing so in the belief
or hope that such a law will be followed by one for
their own trades, or for some other trades. The
Radical economist, then, as I see the matter, is not
free to vote for an Eight Hours Law for mines, since
by so doing (assuming the law to be workable) he
would be helping either to disappoint the miners
themselves or to inflict grievous hardships on the
workers in general. We must seek a better way.
capable of benefiting all alike.
There remains the possibility that the majority of
the workers might decide to pass an Eight Hours
Law for the monopoly industries, such as railways
and tramways and waterworks, and for all State
employments, in the knowledge that they would thus
set up protection for the men of these industries as
1
THE PLAN OF PARTICULAR LEGISLATIONXID
51
.
720
against themselves. I confess I am ready to vote for
the specific restriction if the majority of the workers
wish it; because it seems well to make a beginning
in the way of shorter hours where public responsibility
rests directly on the electors, and where they have the
clear moral right to set up legal restrictions. In pub-
lic employments, they are the true employers; and
where they grant monopolies, as in the case of rail-
ways and tramways, they have the right and the duty
to specify the conditions of granting. I do not think,
however, that they are likely to insist on an Eight
Hours Law for the monopoly industries alone, or for
all State employments. They would be creating a
class of privileged workers. A Ten Hours Law for
railways would be a more practical scheme, as secur-
ing some measure of protection for signalmen, guards,
drivers, and others, who would not be at all likely to
turn that amount of protection to the disadvantage of
other workers. But even a Ten Hours Law, much
more an Eight Hours Law, for railwaynen, might in
time have the effect of lowering wages.
Thus already we find that the problem is far harder
than the professed believers in the proposed legislation
seem to realise; and that the solution will be a much
more complex business than they suppose. The prefer-
able solutions I have sought to set forth elsewhere, and
shall briefly repeat later on; but first it will be
necessary to point out how completely all the advo-
cates of the Eight Hours Law have overlooked or
ignored the most important “economic forces” in the
matter as regards the other industries which would be
affected bya general law.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PROJECT OF GENERAL LEGISLATION: THE
MAIN ECONOMIC FORCE.
1.
THE Socialistic authors of “The Eight Hours Day,"
we have seen, end by declaring that a general Eight
Hours Law is impossible. Nevertheless, multitudes
of the workers are looking for a general Eight Hours
Law, and their demand must be discussed. Indeed,
it is open to them to argue that the collapse of the
case for particular legislation, as it is set forth in the
last chapter, is an argument for general legislatiorf.
The whole case must, therefore, be gone into; and that
is no easy matter.
The most judicial survey of the case for a law in
restriction of working hours, so far as I know, is that
of Professor Marshall. Unfortunately it is scanty and
wanting in precision. It may be conveniently taken
from the chapter which he entitles “ The Influence of
Progress on Value," in his late volume of “ Elements
of the Economics of Industry," which abridges the
first volume of his “Principles." To Professor
Marshall's treatment of the questions with which be
deals under the very general head of “The Influence
of Progress on Value," careful and thoughtful though
52
THE PROJECT OF GENERAL LEGÍSLATION.
53
it is, I have first of all to object that it still has the
shortcoming which made his earlier “Economics of
Industry” in some respects so disappointing. It is
his great merit to keep his economics directed towards
sociology, and this in an increasing degree; but he
always seems to me to come short of being sociologist
enough. In the earlier book he in the most singular.
way avoided grappling with the population question,
after virtually conceding its fundamental importance,
passing it over with makeshift expressions which
defied alike analysis and inference; and in the present
work, though he does not do the same thing, he still
fails to bring the law of population into radical con-
nection with his social prescriptions; while in dealing
with the practical problems of British industry he
never seems to face the fact that that industry as a
whole is, so to speak, a more eminently artificial
system than any other. Much might be gained if
such a candid reasoner would only draw back to a
point of more general survey, and contemplate the
forest instead of the trees. As it is, the value of
his examination of the question of restriction of hours
of labour is sadly curtailed by the fact that he never
asks whether the English industrial systein can in the
nature of things be maintained on its present scale
and footing for an indefinite time.
II.
ITT
I have elsewhere? sought to show that, while the
ordinary notion of the possibility of indefinitely adding
1 In “The Fallacy of Saving.”
UTE
HA.
THÉ EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
to national wealth by mere saving of money-credits is
a hallucination, it does hold true that there is a gain
to this country in so far as its accumulators of credit
have lent their credits (transformed into British pro-
ducts) to foreign States, and are paid an annual
dividend therefor in perpetuity. Such dividend
necessarily comes in goods, which are necessarily
cheapened to the consumer; and though our labour-
power might conceivably produce so much more as to
earn annually that extra amount of imports, as a
matter of fact it is at present unearned, and really
represents in a manner a return on investments paid
to the entire nation-or at least to those who make
demand for the products that the interest-paying
States can give in meeting their liabilities. It follows,
then, that if foreign States were so well governed that
their populations did not have to pay annual tribute
to aliens for borrowed capital, if all foreign national
debts were rapidly paid off, and if in addition the
extensive owning of lands by absentee Englishmen
in America and our colonies were prevented, as is
being done and will be done further; and if, finally,
the draining of India were checked, as it eventually
must be, it would be utterly impossible that our
population should go on increasing as it has done and
is at present doing, even if present inequalities of
division of wealth could be rectified. Yet the econo-
mic prospects of the country are invariably discussed
as if our enormous manufacturing system were a per-
fectly stable development. Temporary expansions,
largely representing the exportation of lent-credit as
goods, are regarded as processes of normal growth.
THE PROJECT OF GENERAL LEGISLATION.
50
It is rarely asked, even by sociological economists,
what will be the industrial outcome of the gradual
exhaustion of our coal and iron supply, which has
hitherto constituted our greatest manufacturing ad-
vantage as against other countries. It is hardly even
considered whether our own National Debt, relatively
a light burden so long as our profits were high, does
not tend to be a more and more serious drag on com-
petition with other industrial States. And sanguine
Socialists, like Messrs. Webb & Cox, describe the
“economic force" of foreign competition in the lump
as a “bogie."1 Whatever that means, it would seem
to imply entire confidence in our capacity to maintain
our industrial system on an increasing scale.
It is this optimistic presupposition, no doubt, that
accounts for Messrs. Webb & Cox's contentment in
citing figures as to the expansion of industry after
former restrictions of hours of labour. We saw how
a fall consequent on the Ten Hours Law was due to
the “play of economic forces.” Let us see for our-
selves what these economic forces were, since Messrs.
Webb & Cox seem unable to tellus. Professor
Marshall saves us any great trouble by one para-
graph of generalisation :2
“The rate of interest, which was vaguely reported to be 10
per cent. during a great part of the Middle Ages, had sunk to
3 per cent. in the earlier half of the eighteenth century; but
the immense industrial and political demand for capital raised
it again, and it was relatively high during the great war. It
1 Work cited, p. 5.
2 5 Elements," p. 353.
56
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
fell as soon as the political drain had ceased; but it rose again
in the middle of this century, when railways and the develop-
ment of the Western States of America and of Australia made
a great new demand for capital. These new demands have
not slackened; but the rate of interest is again falling fast,
in consequence of the great recent accumulations of wealth in
England, on the Continent, and above all in America.”
C
I suppose Professor Marshall means that the demand
for new "capital” in America tends to be increasingly
met by American accumulations. In any case, it
follows from his conspectus that there have been
great variations in the relative foreign demand for
British goods; because the lending of British credit-
capital necessarily meant the extra exporting of
British goods. Now, if the British population had
not rapidly increased under the stimulus of that very
demand for labour, it would not have suffered even
from the inevitable check to the expansion of demand,
inasmuch as the annual return of dividend in the
shape of goods is a clear gain, albeit a morally un-
satisfactory one. But the rapid increase of popula-
tion did take place; and at the very time when
sciolists were announcing that the Malthusian doctrine
was exploded, its main law was in palpable operation.
For among the economic forces" whose "play"
affected wages both before and after the passing of
the Factory Laws, is one which is never even
inentioned, so far as I have noted, in the whole 280
pages of Messrs. Webb & Cox's book,—to wit,
EMIGRATION.
1
THE PROJECT OF GENERAL LEGISLATION.
57
III.
I will not go so far as to say that in the statistics
of emigration we have the corollary of either the
national output or what Professor Marshall calls the
national dividend; but I do say that emigration is.
one of the main factors in the adjustment of labour
demand and supply, and that it is monstrous that it
should be left out of account as it is in every
advocacy of an Eight Hours Law. Even Professor
Marshall does not seem to deal with it in his discus-
sion of the general question of labour restriction. Yet
the factor of emigration is one of the main considera-
tions in support of Professor Marshall's general
protest against the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy
in the discussion of restriction of labour hours. He
turns this protest, as it happens,1 solely against those
who argue as to the tendency of labour restriction to
cause trade depression. Now, as a matter of fact, the
argument of post hoc ergo propter hoc, “after this,
therefore because of this,” is hardly used in that
connection at all; and there seems reason to suspect
that Professor Marshall had begun to argue on one
line and altered his mind and took another. It is the
advocates of an Eighű Hours Law who commonly
argue that, since wages have risen after the Factory
Laws, they have risen because of the Factory Laws.
Their opponents argue for the most part deductively.
If I were to say, on the other hand, that emigra-
tion alone was the cause of rise or restoration of
1 P. 371.
. 55
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
wages, I should be ignoring the extensions of foreign
demand for goods. But we shall include, I think, all
the main economic forces of the case when we say
that rise of wages with an increasing population is a
function of increased demand, home or foreign, for
labour, and that if emigration goes on alongside of a
fluctuating process of advance in wages, the emigra-
tion is reasonably to be connected with the fluctua-
tions. If, then, wages fall after a restriction of hours
of labour, and rise later, the natural hypothesis is that
either the fall caused emigration, or there chanced to
be an increase in foreign demand. Now, as a matter
of fact, the emigration from Britain, which was at the
average rate of 28,000 per annum in the years 1815-34,
rose to 113,00 per annum in the years 1835-50, and to
205,000 per annum in the years 1851-60. The matter
is complicated by the fact that much of the emigra-
tion was Irish; so much, that out of 9,861,000 British
emigrants in the 74 years from 1815 to 1888, the Irish
numbered. no fewer than 5,081,000. These are the
figures of Mr. Mulhall. Kolb, again, divides the
period so as to show an average emigration of 52,254
per year between 1815-46; 305,600 per year in 1817-
54; and 160,128 per year in 1855-59. Either way,
it is evident that there was a very high rate of cmigra-
tion about the middle of the century; and even
though it was largely of non-artisan Irish, that would
mean a reduction in the British supply of unskilled
labour which must bave tended to relieve the higher
labour market. All this on the one hand, and the
special cause of industrial expansion on the other,
Messrs. Webb & Cox ignore, in common with all other
THE PROJECT OF GENERAL LEGISLATION.
59
supporters of the Eight Hours Law whose arguments
I have met with.
Emigration, of course, goes on unceasingly ; and it
may be argued that since that relief is always open,
it is neither here nor there as regards an Eight Hours
Law. But in the eight years 1881-88, the total British
.
261,000 per annum; a great increase on the ten years
1871-80, when the total exodus was 1,678,000, or
168,000 per annum. In the decade 1861-70, the
numbers were almost exactly the same. But for this
recent extra emigration the labour market of late
years must have been much more congested than it
really has been; and the pressure of need must have
been great to cause such a movement, in the absence
of special foreign inducements. Had most of the
emigrants stayed, wages must needs have fallen in
some employments, unless they had all been living
at the subsistence margin, which we may safely
assume was not the case. This being so, there is a
plain presumption that the British proletariat is
increasing at a rate far in excess of the normal
opportunities of employment; and that an attempt
to relieve the market pressure by an Eight Hours
Law, as regards the industries with foreign com-
petitors, will either permanently lower wages or
force increased emigration. And as forced emigration
always means preliminary distress, we may take it
that there must be a fall of wages before the relief
takes place. If it does so take place, with a con-
sequent restoration of wages, we shall be told that
the Eight Hours Law has done all the good; and the
.
60
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
distress and expatriation will be ignored. But it may
be that the possibilities open to emigrants shall be-
come so small that only extreme distress can force on
the relief. Of this contingency not the least heed is
taken-naturally so, when the very fact of emigration
is ignored. The movement goes on blindfold, on the
general assumption that things must come right some-
how. It is imperative that economic investigation be
made if we are to know what forces we are meddling
with.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CLASSES OF INDUSTRY SEPARATELY CONSIDERED,
11
PASSING from the general question and coming to the
particular phases, we have to inquire how an Eight
Hours Law will affect the different classes of in-
dustry, all round. For this inquiry they inay be
divided into three main sorts.
1. Industries which incur foreign competition.
2. Horne distributive and other industries com-
peting together.
3. Virtual monopolies, such as railways, some tram-
ways, gasworks, etc.
It is in regard to the first class that most discussion
has taken place ; but I do not find that the economics
of the problem have yet been fully stated. We saw
how opinion clashes among the advocates of the
restrictive law; and even the opinions cited do not
represent the whole of the confusion; for, as before
mentioned, I find in some Socialist circles an opinion
that an Eight Hours Law will. so affect the com-
petitive powers of certain of our industries that it
must be followed by a strong measure of protection
if these industries are to be saved. That this would
61.
62
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
0
be so seems to me extremely probable ; 1 but the possi-
bility has not once been contemplated by any of the
writers I have cited, though it is insisted on by out-
siders who are as zealous as they for the Eight
Hours Law.
II.
The first point to be considered is whether there
would or would not be as much output per head in
the manufacturing industries in an Eight Hours Day
as in the longer days now worked. In the last
section, I argued on the view that an Eight Hours
Law is expected to cause extra demand for labour
all round. We have seen that Mr. G. B. Shaw
declares he will agitate for a Seven Hours Law if it
be found that the output of an Eight Hours Day is as
great as that of a longer day. It would not greatly
matter if Mr. Shaw were so to agitate : I merely take
the utterance as showing how the hopes of some run.
On the other hand, however, we have seen that some
Socialists believe there will on the whole be as much
output per head in the shorter as in the longer day.
This view is in many respects not ill-founded, having
regard, not so much to the few voluntary experiments
in special industries in which masters are said to have
found that reduction of hours did not reduce output
per head, as to the well-demonstrated possibility of
making machinery do more and more work.
It seems clear that the case will stand differently
in different industries. Messrs. Webb & Cox quote 2
1. On this compare Professor' Bastable, “ The Commerce of
Nations,” p. 168.
? Appendix II.
THE CLASSES OF INDUSTRY CONSIDERED.
63
the testimony of Burroughs, Welcome & Co., manu-
facturing chemists, who reduced their men's hours
from nine to eight per day, with the result that the out-
put was “nearly, if not quite, as great.” But the
firm go on to explain that they at the same time
raised the wages, though at first “this was money
out of pocket and a loss to us; ” and they further in-
troduced the system of profit-sharing. This then is
not at all a test case. The men evidently have been
led to work much harder, which brings us to the old
question whether profit-sharing does not lead to
general overstrain. Besides, the making of chemicals,
to begin with, is recognised as a specially trying
industry, hence the old hours had only been nine; and
it may be that in such an industry eight hours is
really about the limit of valid work, while in many
other industries it would not be. One of the worst
features of the Eight Hours Movement is that it
takes no heed (a) of the very great differences in
strain in different industries, and (1) of the possibility
that variations of hours may in many cases be the
most healthy arrangement.
Other testimonies cited by Messrs. Webb & Cox,
and Messrs. Gibbins & Hadfield, are equally incon-
clusive. A firm of manufacturers of alkali and soda,
an industry which necessitates continuous working,
employ men in shifts of eight hours, three shifts to
the twenty-four hours. This is very easily under-
stood : it is the most workable shift, save possibly one
of six hours. A firm of type-founders, again—an
industry in which the competition is not severe-have
been able to reduce hours because of improvements in
(D
64
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
I
fi
machinery; and an engineering firm, strongly opposed
to trade unions, have been able to give their men an
Eight Hours Day, they say, because the men are not in
the society of their trade. These employers find that
by abolishing the breakfast-hour they get the men to
work in better condition (having breakfasted before
coming), and save the loss of work in slacking off and
catching up again, and the loss of energy in walking
to and from home for breakfast. This may well be,
though it is not clear that the loss of two walks in
the day is wholly a gain to the men's physique. But
it does not follow that the same compensations would
arise in all industries. In some the loss of working
power at each break will be much less than in others.
Besides, the gain from having breakfast before be-
ginning work is not bound up with the Eight Hours
Day, and presumably accrues already in some cases
where a longer day is worked. A friend of my own,
however, on proposing many years ago to shorten the
working day by this means, was met by the obstinate
opposition of his workers (women).
Other employers consulted by Messrs. Webb & Cox
testify to complete failure, having found that with an
Eight Hours Day they cannot meet competition. Mr.
Mark Beaufoy, M.P., a manufacturer of vinegar,
British wines, and jains, does indeed testify to success;
but this again is a limited and peculiar industry, not
subjected to foreign competition at all as regards the
“ British wines," and very little as regards the jams;
and the former system of breaks in the working day
had been very ineconomical.
One of the explanations given where success has
THE CLASSES OF INDUSTRY CONSIDERED.
65
0
been attained, is that the men become more intelligent
and efficient from increased leisure; and this is ob-
viously reasonable as regards specially skilled and
delicate industries such as the making of chemicals,
drugs, beverages, etc., where, besides, much depends
on conditions of atmosphere. But it does not at all
follow that there would be similar gain in more
mechanical industries, where ventilation may be
equalised and workrooms kept uniformly healthy. In
many cases a day's work is determined by the length
of time that men can work up to a machine going
regularly.
And yet again, I have before me the detailed testi-
mony of a firm of chemical manufacturers who tried
the Eight Hours Day, and for a time made it pay,
though at increased cost of production, because of
good trade, but later were unable to give their men
wages enough to live on in comfort on the short-day
system. The facts must be taken together. If some
masters can make an Eight Hours Day profitable, so
much the better: may they have many imitators.
But it has never been found that employers needed
much pushing to do what it would pay them to do; and
it stands to reason that those who will not try an Eight
Hours Day have, as a rule, no prospect of making it
pay.
III.
We have, then, very little reason to suppose that
shortening of hours to eight would yield in general
the same output per worker, while machinery and
processes remain the same. Experience of the main-
. E
66
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
tenance of output when hours are reduced from, say,
twelve to ten, is clearly no argument. It is quite
conceivable that an average worker may do as much
in ten hours as in twelve; but he may not at all be
able to do as much in eight hours as in nine or ten.
It stands to reason that as we come nearer the mean
capacity, the gain from reduction becomes more and
more problematical. I am speaking, of course, not of
the intellectual gain from leisure, as to which I am
thoroughly in accord with the warmest advocates of
the Eight Hours Law, but simply as to the economic
question of output...
We are thus driven back to the conclusion that if
output were to be maintained per head under an
Eight Hours Law, it would be in the main by reason
of the forcing-on of improvements in machinery. But
such forced improvements can never be instantaneously
carried out; and when they are resorted to it is,
broadly speaking, because employers find it more and
more difficult to compete profitably with their rivals,
at home and abroad, or to produce goods cheaply
enough to cause increasing demand. In the case of
an Eight Hours Law being established, such difficulty
must at once be extensively experienced, since the
output per head would (as we have seen) be lessened.
It is thus an open question whether there would even
be extra demand for labour in the manufacturing in-
dustries, since manufacturers would be slow to take
on extra hands to make goods which they had only a
doubtful prospect of selling. Many, probably, would
at once set about improving their machinery, with the
object of employing fewer hands. This course is even
D
THE CLASSES OF INDUSTRY CONSIDERED.
67
(
contemplated by some defenders of the Eight Hours
Movement, looking only to the improvement in
machinery as helping output, without any thought of
the displacement of hands. In the one case, men are
thrown idle; in the other, prices rise. And whereas
demand might increase for ordinary consumption
goods, in respect of purchasing power given to un-..
skilled labourers formerly unemployed or ill-employed,
but now taken into employment in the railways, etc.,
it would not increase for “higher class " goods, in the
trades producing which there would therefore be
depression.
Nay, we have seen one Socialist, Mr. Shaw, reckon-
ing on the destruction of a number of these trades:1
He appears to suppose that their hands may be easily
drafted off to the production of goods in ordinary de-
mand, and that there is no limit to the possibility of
employing labour profitably (that is, competitively) in
the production of such goods. This is a grievous
hallucination. Machinery even now is always tending
to outrun the demand for common goods, and the
transference to them (were it practicable) of the new
labour anticipated by Mr. Shaw would very speedily
bring about over-production. It is only by raising the
functions of the labour whose products are demanded
-by rising from easily-made goods to artistic goods-
that over-production can be perpetually avoided.
And the only way to meet effectually and promptly
the present congestion of the labour market, I once
1 Cf. Professor Bastable as cited ; and Messrs. Webb & Cox,
who (p. 119) are prepared to see some sweated trades killed out.
68
THE EIGHT HIOURS QUESTION.
more submit, is to set new tasks to labour by under-
taking the reconstruction of cities, scientific sewage,
and analogous works, while at the same time guarding
round prudence in procreation, and taking means to
encourage the heightening of the standards of con-
sumption by providing systematically for old age.
The notion that an ever-increasing proletariat can be
employed in perpetuity in producing only the simplest
goods and rendering the simplest services, is really a
return to the sentimental empiricism of last century,
which proposed to abolish luxury instead of diffusing
it. It is even a worse fallacy; for in our day a large
proportion of the workers are employed in making (a)
articles of luxury, and (6) goods for export which
must needs buy foreign articles of luxury, since they
more than equate with the import of simple neces-
saries.
Such fallacies can only subsist while men refuse to
look at the industrial problem in the mass and in re-
lation to fundamental laws. Last century English
reformers ignored the problem of population because
it had not sufficiently been forced on their notice. In
this century they mostly have set it aside because of
the great expansions of industry which have from
time to time absorbed the superfluity of raw labour
power—though all the while over-population was
i Compare Wallace's "Dissertation on the Numbers of Man-
kind" (Edinburgh, 1753) and Hall's “Effects of Civilisation on
the People," 1805, both so able books in their way–or, at least,
the latter-that my phrase "sentimental empiricism” may seem
a hard saying
THE CLASSES OF INDUSTRY CONSIDERED. : 69
painfully apparent to the observing eye. They con-
tinue to reason on the assumption that such
expansions of industry are endless, and this in the
face of the fact that not only American but European
resources are being increasingly availed of, that we
are losing our start, that a hundred forms of produc-
tion formerly special to us are arising elsewhere, that
we are meeting more and more foreign competition
not only abroad but at home, and that those extensive
borrowings of our capital by foreign States, which
meant extra export of our goods and the return of an
annual surplus of foreign goods, represent a very
peculiar and transient phase of political development.
The very spirit which makes an Eight Hours Move-
ment must tend to mean the disappearance of National
Debts-unless all goes ill.
IV.
Mere restriction of hours, then, in industries sub-
ject to foreign competition, will tend first to create
trade depression by raising prices, and next to limit
employment by forcing on a more rapid improvement
of machinery. This conclusion can only be resisted, I
believe, on one of two lines, namely, (1) the denial
that foreign competition is to be feared, even when
our workers further restrict their hours; (2) the con-
tention that it is not prices that will rise but profits
that will fall.
The second thesis, with which I shall deal first, is
maintained by Mr. G. B. Shaw in his debate with Mr.
G. W. Foote. I quote his own words :
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
“One of the immediate effects [of the proposed law] un-
doubtedly will be that the Eight Hours Bill will be made an
excuse for running up prices in all directions. You will find
that the persons who sell coals to you in the streets will immedi-
ately increase the price, and lay the blame on the Eight Hours
Bill, just as they do now whenever there is a strike, or even a
threat of a strike, among the colliers. But when they try on
those tricks now they very soon have to come down again.
When they raise the price of the hundredweight of coals, they
find that people buy less coal. Thus the profits grasped at by
increasing the price, disappear by the reduction of the quantity
sold ; and the coal merchants can only bring back the sale to its
former extent by bringing down the price to its former level.
That is exactly how the employer will be checked if he attempts
to raise the price of his commodities after the Eight Hours Bill
becomes law. He may try it on-very likely he will ; but in
the long-run he will find that the same laws of supply and de-
mand which regulate prices at present will regulate them then,
and that if he wants to get the same volume of trademand it
will be necessary for him to get the same volume of trade, and
even a greater, as I shall try to show—he must keep the price
at about its present figure. ... Here is the employer, who
must get the same amount of commodity produced, and who can
only get the same price for it as before. ... Therefore the
employer is in this dilemma : he finds that he has to take on
more men than before, for about the same product. What is
the result? He finds that he has less money than before to
divide up between himself, the landlord, and the capitalist.” 1
S
v
It is reasonable to make some allowance for the
laxities of oral debate, in which there is a great
temptation to the speakers to argue exaggeratedly;
but there seems no reason to suppose from the varia-
tions of language in the foregoing passage (such as
substituting “very likely” for “undoubtedly” in re-
1 Debate cited, pp. 7, 8.
THE CLASSES OF INDUSTRY CONSIDERED.
71
stating a proposition) that the speaker will not de-
liberately stand to his main thesis. He returns to the
point,1 and argues not only that it is possible to put
the increased cost of labour on rent, but that it is
possible through successive restrictions ultimately to
“squeeze the landlord out altogether," by making the
payment of rent out of profits impossible; and
furthermore to “squeeze the capitalist out altogether.”
He proceeds yet further to allege that the same policy
may squeeze the employer out, (“supposing you could
do without him "); but we have perhaps enough to
discuss without contemplating that contingency. Mr.
Shaw has committed himself to these three proposi-
tions: (1) that prices of articles of which the supply
is extensible can never be raised ; (2) that rent can be
made to disappear by restricting working hours, and
so increasing cost of production ; (3) that money-
capitalists can be got to lend money-credit at a risk
for no interest; and that thus they cease to be capi-
talists.
This is perhaps the worst extravagance of economic
fallacy that has arisen in the discussion of the subject;
and yet Mr. Shaw is not only an intelligent econo-
mist, bụt one who had seemed specially awake to the
importance of the law of rent, which he has repeatedly
forced on the attention of Socialists and Anarchists
who ignore or misconceive it. I can only explain his
present development as an example of what men can
come to in argument when they want very much to
prove that what they wish to happen must happen.
1
IL
1 Pp. 10, 11, 31,
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION..
It seems necessary, however, to expose the three de-
lusions in detail.
1. The argument as to coal is astonishingly lax-
lax not merely in expression, as oral argument may be
expected to be, but lax in conception. Mr. Shaw argues
as if, in the case of a coal strike, prices must begin to
fall towards their old level the instant there is slacken-
ing of demand. There is no such necessity, either in
theory or in practice. Mr. Shaw does not seem to
realise that the men often hope to raise prices by re-
stricting output. While the strike continues, prices
simply cannot return to their normal level, unless
more coal is imported. The adjustment of price will
be as between the restricted number of buyers who
either are very loth to consume less or must consume
as before, and the dealers. During a strike, dealers
will as a matter of course try to hold on. When the
strike is over, if wages have been increased or output
lessened, there is not the least likelihood that prices
will resume their former level. They will almost
certainly stand at a rise. Only special circumstances
can prevent their so standing, such as abnormal stress
of competition among dealers, or continued restriction
of consumption. After a time, coal prices may
gradually sink all round, but this can only be in terms
of a general lowering of profits in which coal dealers,
like others, must participate. And this general lower-
ing of the profits of capital still tends to be relieved
by the resort of capital to other countries, just as the
tendency of wages to sink is relieved by emigration;
and it is further relieved by waste of credit-capital in
bad enterprises. And the two relief tendencies are
LU
THE CLASSES OF INDUSTRY CONSIDERED.
73
correlative. While profits are tending to sink through
capitalist competition, wages are tending to sink by
the multiplication of the proletariat; and unless an
Eight Hours Law is very promptly followed by in-
creased emigration (which implies multiplied hardship
as motive power) it will mean either raised prices or
lowered money wages.
Save for the difficulty of foreign competition in the
first of the three classes of industries before mentioned,
raised prices may conceivably co-exist for a time with
maintained or raised wages; and this might conceiv-
ably be the expectation of the supporters of the Eight
Hours Movement. It might be argued that the raised
wages would compensate the workers for the raised
prices; and that the raised prices would be a just tax
on the non-workers. High wages and high prices are
the ideal of the workers in the United States, and of
the coal-workers here. But while the coal-workers
certainly want to restrict output and so raise coal
prices, it is noteworthy that save as regards a few
articles, or a few trades, the advocates of an Eight
Hours Law profess to be convinced, like Mr. Shaw,
that prices will not be raised. And this attitude may
be taken to imply the perception, by those who take
up Mr. Shaw's ground, that raised prices would mean
loss of market through foreign competition, either at
home or abroad, or in both cases; and the further
perception, by those who predict an unreduced out-
put per head, that unless there be maintenance of out-
put the law will be a failure.
Whether wages and prices rise together or not, it
is unlikely that ground rents will fall; but it is simple
74
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
nonsense to argue, as Mr. Shaw does, that rents will
fall while the employment for labour is greatly in-
creasing. One of the first effects of such increase
would be to cause immigration ;1 and between this
and the demand for better houses among the better-
employed generally, rents in towns must necessarily
rise instead of falling. The manufacturer therefore
will be unable to throw his loss on the landlord: in
fact, if he is able to employ more labour, he is likely
to have to extend his factory, and so will contribute
directly to the raising of rents. Factory rents are
determined by the demand for building sites gene-
rally, and a landlord will not take less rent for a
factory when the site is coming to be worth more for
houses. The manufacturer must stay, with the pro-
spect of paying still more rent, or else he must move
to a cheaper suburban site, thus putting new expense
on his workers—or, finally, he can stop business, thus
throwing his men idle. Then, perhaps, rents would
fall; but the loss had first of all fallen not on rents
but on wages. And if landlords were to reduce factory
rents for no economic reason, there would still be the
house rents paid by the workers themselves. In fine,
Mr. Shaw's notion of “squeezing out” the landlord
by the simple process of successive restrictions of
1 Of course laws may be made to restrict immigration ; but it
does not seem to have occurred to a single literary advocate of
the Eight Hours Law to stipulate for such contingent laws.
Some of the labour leaders, I understand, propose to restrict
immigration ; but they are not at all facing the problem of
emigration. If we restrict immigration, we shall be lucky if we
are free to send out as many emigrants as we please.
THE CLASSES OF INDUSTRY CONSIDERED.
75
S
labour hours, is the most gratuitous hallucination that
has appeared in recent economics; and it is the more
astonishing in view of his previous writings on econ-
omic rent.
3. Wbile interest is on the whole gradually sinking,
we are a very long way from the state of things in
which interest will be at zero. And at that point, if
ever it be reached, the capitalist will hardly lend his
money to a manufacturer who stands a fair chance of
losing it, even if he has to pay a banker in order to
have it taken care of. But if he did, he would still
be a capitalist. Barring other social changes, men
would still save for future consumption, and for their
own advantage in commerce.
11
I
V.
In connection with the foregoing issues, however,
we have still to consider the possible effect on wages
of an increased demand for labour in the non-competi-
tive or monopoly employments, such as railways,
tramways, and gasworks, by reason either of an Eight
Hours Law in these occupations, or of a General Law.
Even in such occupations themselves, it should be
noted, the increased employment would not be in the
direct ratio of curtailment of hours; for not only
would such labourers as dockers, as Professor Marshall
points out,1 be able to do more work in a shorter day
if better fed, but such labourers as railway shunters,
as Messrs. Webb & Cox point out, actually work much
CA
1" Elements," p. 365.
2 Work cited, p. 103.
76
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
Y
11
better in the earlier than in the later part of their
long day. Still, an Eight Hours Law in these em-
ployments must cause some considerable increase of
demand for labour, presumably with higher wages ;
and such increase must tend to affect other occupa-
tions, whether or not these are subject to legal restric-
tions also. Professor Marshall remarks 1 that the
lowest grade of workers are the “one class” “whose
wages might be raised considerably at the expense of
other classes by a mere diminution in the supply of
their labour;" but I for my part am not prepared to
make the assumption here implied, that the wages of
low-grade workers can only be increased at the ex-
pense of other wage-earners. I will rather assume
that their scarcity will improve the position of labour
generally.
We have already considered the effects of a law
applying to the competitive industries; but there now
arises the question of the effects on them of a law
affecting only the monopoly occupations. By calling
off from the competitive industries some of the less
skilled labour of these, it would lower the total supply
relatively to the demand, and wages would tend to
rise. Then would arise the former problem: Would
prices rise, or would they not? On the lines of reason-
ing formerly laid down-always excluding the factor
of foreign competition--prices would rise; but it would
not follow that they would rise so much as to counter-
balance the gain in wages all round. If they did not,
there would be gain all round; and while rising prices
1 As cited, p. 366.
THE CLASSES OF INDUSTRY CONSIDERED.
77
1
held, the workers in the competitive trades might even
successfully demnand shorter hours, despite the pre-
sumptively increased demand for products, as manu-
facturers might run double shifts. But there is the
old per contra. On the one hand there is the
obstacle to rising prices presented by foreign com-
petition; on the other hand there is the instant
multiplication of the workers by immigration (often
the return of emigrants) when labour is in high de-
mand. The running of double shifts, too, would soon
put supply ahead of demand in many industries; and
all the wbile there is the continuous tendency of new
machinery to evict hands. Thus we come back once
more to the fundamental difficulty—the rapid increase
of population. Unless that is checked, no restriction
of hours of labour can be more than a momentary re-
lief; and even with a partially restrained birth-rate
and restrained immigration, while the standards of
living would certainly be raised for the workers, other
measures, and new forms of consumption, would be
needed to prevent the chronic congestion of the labour
market, relatively to the raised standards, by reason
of the tendency of machinery to replace hands in
manufacture.
CHAPTER IX.
INDUSTRIES SEPARATELY CONSIDERED : FOREIGN
COMPETITION,
We now come to the case of those who may deny that
foreign competition is to be feared as an obstacle to
raised prices; though as none of the before-cited
advocates of an Eight Hours Law appear to admit or
suppose that there can be a rise in prices, it is not
necessary to examine the point as against them.
Excepting in the cases in which they are Protectionists,
and agitate for new duties, they either hope that
foreign competition will prevent prices from rising, or
assume that under restriction of hours there will be
as much output per head as at present, and accordingly
no need either to raise prices or to lower wages. The
latter view we have already considered. On the other
hand, the view that foreign competition will prevent
a rise of prices in the industries concerned involves
the contention that the extra cost of production re-
sulting from an Eight Hours Law will cut down pro-
fits. The question thus comes to be whether in general
those industries subject to foreign competition can be
carried on at all for much less profit than at present -
78
FOREIGN COMPETITION.
79
.
-
whether a restriction of hours in many cases would
not mean a collapse of such industries.
A great deal of what is said on behalf of an Eight
A
that manufacturing profits in general are so large that
if divided among the workers they would constitute
a great rise in wages. This appears, on inquiry, to
be a serious misconception. I am not aware that any
trustworthy analysis has yet been made of the
sources of income of the upper and middle classes
generally; but there is much evidence going to show
that manufacturing profits are far from being so
large a source as is commonly assumed by Socialists.
Rent, interest on loans and home and foreign national
and municipal debts, dividends of railway, banking,
gas, and insurance companies, constitute an immense
number of incomes apart from direct profit-earning.
In some industries competition cuts down manufac-
turing profits so much that production is at times
carried on at a sacrifice of share capital which an
individual manufacturer would consider preventive of
working. Mr. Bradlaugh, in his debate with Mr.
Hyndman, pointed to the case of the Limited Liability
Mills in Oldham, in which, in the five years to the
end of 1889, share and loan capital amounting to
£6,750,000 was found to have paid all over a little
less than 33 per cent.1 Profits like these, though
large in inass, clearly do not constitute a “wage
1 The profits in these mills in 1891 are stated by Mr. Samuel
Smith at about 4 per cent. The saine writer, in a published
letter to Mr. Hugh Price Hughes, states his own average return
on his investments in cotton-spinning at 3 or 3.1 per cent.
80
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
fund” on which workers can count to any serious
extent. Advocates of an Eight Hours Law forget,
again, that as things go at present there are many
strikes in which employers close their works for
many weeks on end rather than consent to raise
wages as asked. The economic meaning of this is
clear. A master here and there may "cut off his nose
to spite his face," but masters in general will not
forego opportunities of making profit. An unsuccess-
ful strike is a virtual proof that in that case it pays
employers better to close their works than to produce
at raised cost. And this is so for two main reasons:
(1) supply of machine-made goods tends easily to
outrun demand; and (2) such goods are in general
made for markets, home and foreign, in which foreign
competition is felt in varying degrees.
By many people it does not seem to be realised
that an immense amount of British-made goods is
made for foreign consumption. Mr. Jones of the
Social Democratic Federation, in debating with me at
Northampton, expressly argued that the home market
is much more important than the foreign. But even
if the total home demand be greater than the foreign,
the continuation of the foreign demand makes all the
difference between going trade and ruinous collapse
for our industries generally. Now, foreign competi-
tion in foreign countries tends naturally to become
more and more energetic. Even if it be true that
English workmen have some advantage over many
others in respect of a greater energy, the result of
climate and a meat diet, none the less foreign work
in the mass tends to catch us up. We had primordial
· FOREIGN COMPETITION.
81
a
1
advantages in our closeness to coal and iron supplies ;
but other countries have such supplies, and are more
and more utilising them; and, besides, the cheapening
of transport takes away from our manufacturing ad-
vantage. American competition grows more and more
efficient, largely by reason of greater use of machinery;
protective tariffs disadvantage us as sellers in many
markets; and some of our industries, as, for instance,
the flax-spinning industry in the Leeds district, which
once employed some 15,000 hands, have actually been
extinguished by foreign competition, which produces
better goods than ours at lower prices. It is of no
avail to argue, as do Messrs. Webb & Cox, that since
we must always produce some things more cheaply
than others, it does not matter if we are undersold
for certain of our own products in our own markets,
and that an Eight Hours Law would not alter the
economic law of the development of the industries
which are relatively most advantageous. Much de-
pends, to begin with, on the nature of the things in
which our superiority is greatest. If these things be
in large measure coal and iron, it is plainly only a
question of time till we are at the end of our tether.
And the old argument about the Bermudas importing
potatoes when they themselves grow better ones, in
order to concentrate themselves on the production of
the best, will not solve the problem of a country with
i See Mr. Bradlaugh's “ Labour and Law," p. 46. Cp.
Messrs. Webb & Cox, p. 106, note.
2 [ have seen and compared some of the goods, and can
testify.
3 Pp. 116, 117.
82
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
an ever-increasing proletariat, especially when other
countries are altering the conditions by protective
tariffs, which systematically develop industries where
under Free Trade they would be at a disadvantage.
In fine, it is not possible for any country to have in
perpetuity a general advantage over other countries
in trade; and if our wits were only ethically sharpened
we should see that our selfish hopes on that head are
vain. Nor is it, on the other hand, possible for a
population increasing as ours does to count on finding
undiminished employment in those industries which
have a relative advantage over others. Labour is
only with much friction and hardship transferable
from one to another type of industry; and the decline
of any one under foreign competition is only a
hastening of that hardship which, as before observed,
is always tending to arise from the displacement of
labour by machinery. Suppose that one of our
relatively advantageous industries be steel-making.
Under the operation of the economic law under notice,
we shall export more steel while exporting less of the
things in which our natural advantages are relatively
less. But exporting more steel does not mean em-
ploying proportionally more hands in tbat trade.
Always we come back to that fundamental difficulty.
7
II.
It must have struck many students of late years
that, while one of the axioms of Free Trade is the
necessary mutuality of gain among exchanging
nations, English economists appear mostly to reckon
FOREIGN COMPETITION.
83
.
1
1.1
upon and prescribe for a superior advantage to Eng-
land, whether other nations trade freely or not. Again
and again an optimistic argument is wrought out as
to what happens to us in trading with foreigners,
without any apparent perception that the argument,
if sound, should suit the foreigners just as well in
regard to us. Very few even among Free Traders
seem to act faithfully upon the maxim of Dudley
North: “That the whole world as to trade is but one
nation or people, and therein nations are as persons.”
Much light might be thrown upon the present dis-
cussion if we went back to the old illustration of
Cobden and Bastiat, and asked how an Eight Hours
Law would work if tried in Lancashire as against
Yorkshire. If Lancashire durst not try any such
thing in the present state of industry, why should all
Britain be asked to try it as against other peoples ?
If we are to experiment, as some of the neo-Liberals
propose, why not do it with our own counties? The
only answer I can see is that one county with a time
law in a free-trading country cannot compete success-
fully with another that has no time law, but that a
free-trading country as a whole may so succeed
against protectionist countries.
Perbaps the problem may be brought home to open-
minded readers by raising the question put by Mr. J.
A. Hobson in his very suggestive paper, “Can Eng-
land Keep her Trade ?”1
O
U
OUL
IUL
“May we not expect the same rapid rise and fall of the com-
mercial importance of countries which we have seen in the
1 “National Review,” March, 1891, p. 4.
84
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
counties of England ? Is it absurd to suppose that England her-
self may sink, like Norfolk or Huntingdon, before the power of
some vast new Lancashire? Is it so grossly improbable that
India might become the Lancashire of the British Empire, or
even, perhaps, will China become the workshop of the world ?"
It may be answered that India and China will
never yield so much human energy as Britain can,
man for man; but then, if these climates can sustain
life very much cheaper than ours can, our greater
energy, as Mr. Hobson points out, may not be pro-
portionally cheaper; and in that case, on the principle
of " differential advantage, industry will grow where
the fundamental natural advantage is greatest. It is
strange that just when the need for controlling and
resisting natural tendency is beginning to be so widely
felt, Socialist economists, who recognise it in one
direction, should in another rest everything on the
beneficence of natural adjustments.
III.
The optimist theory as to foreign trade, however,
is so tenaciously held by many Economists, who, to
my thinking, overlook one half of the industrial
case in reasoning on the other, that it is necessary
to analyse it further. Men who are not at all in
favour of an Eight Hours Law are still of opinion
that such a law “would not affect our foreign trade.”
When in a discussion I pointed out that in Messrs.
Webb & Cox's argument (that the differential ad-
vantage of certain trades must remain under a general
law) we might establish a One Hour Day without
FOREIGN COMPETITION.
85
Y
c
affecting our foreign trade, an able economist, not an
Eight Hours partisan, answered that a One Hour
Day would not affect our foreign trade. This, I take
it, must mean one of, or a combination of, two
economic propositions : either (a) that since exchange
must go on, other nations offering to sell to us, and
our goods being our only means of buying, the in-
dustries with differential advantages would absorb
from the others all the necessary labour and go on as
before; or (b) that even a considerable restriction in
the output of our exporting industries would only
raise the price of the exports to foreign buyers, who
would get less of our goods in return for theirs. Or
it may be meant that both things may happen con-
currently.
The former is the theory that seems to arise out
of the old Free Trade doctrine, usually set forth by
James Mill's illustration about England trading in
corn and cloth with Poland, or that of the Bermuda
(or other) Islands, which could raise potatoes for them-
selves more cheaply than they import them from
the United States, but which prefer, nevertheless,
to raise only that produce on which they make the
greatest profit of all. This still passes for orthodox
doctrine; and that it should do so is a striking proof
of the strength of the tendency among the older
economists, and disciples of theirs like Mr. Webb, to
reason on industrial facts in vucuo. Obviously the
action of the Bermudese, in the case put, depends upon
the possibility of applying the bulk of the Bermuda
soil and of Bermuda labour (unless there, too, there is
an unsolved labour problem) to one species of culture;
86
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
and it does not at all follow that every community or
country can in the same way concentrate all its
strength on one species of industry.
Suppose the most advantageous forms of English
production be those of coal-raising, and iron-smelting,
and steel-making, and weaving, and cutlery, and that,
in the words of Mr. Webb,1 “We weave our wheat on
Rochdale looms, grind our meat on Sheffield stones,
and hew our wool in Durham coal-pits.” That does
not alter the fact that there remain other natural
resources in England which it is much easier to utilise
than it would be to turn ever more and more men to
mining and grinding and weaving and smelting. The
ideal Free Trade England (which is apparently also
the ideal Fabian England), on the old theoretic lines,
would be one wholly given over to the "favoured”
industries, with its country districts turned to wilder-
nesses; just as the ideal Canada on the same principles
would be one wholly given up to wheat-growing and
timber-growing. It is the sociological barrenness of
this ideal that gives the Canadians their best pretext
for going to the other extreme in their protective
policy. But in any event the principle of population
would overthrow the fanatical ideal, as it overthrows
better ones. It is impossible to find room for ever-
increasing numbers in the "favoured” industries
alone; and the increasing swarm must take to the
marginal industries, whether under Free Trade or
under Protection. But under Free Trade, all buying
as cheaply as possible, a slight difference of advantage
1 P. 116.
FOREIGN COMPETITION.
87
will serve to destroy an entire industry—as for
instance, the flax-spinning industry of Leeds, which
has been beaten by Bavarian and other foreign com-
petition, because the foreign competitors are nearer
the best flax, or put in better machines, or get their
labour cheaper, or for all or some of these reasons
together.
Does it then follow that all the labour that was
employed in the beaten industry goes to the "favoured”
industries which supply the exports that pay for the
extra flax and goods we now import ? Not at all.
Where we now import flax goods, there will, no doubt,
be extra demand for some of our other export goods;
but for the extra quantity of these there will not be
an absorption of labour to the extent of the labour
displaced. In the terms of the case, the exporting
industry is one of those with a differential advantage,
that is to say, labour in that industry produces pro-
portionally greater results than in the beaten one.
Then, even if there be no improvement forced on in
its machinery as a result of the raised demand, it will
absorb less labour than has been displaced. But as
the displaced labour, to a large extent, by reason of its
nature, cannot be instantly turned to the favoured
industry, the tendency in the latter will be to improve
machinery, thus leaving still less opening for the dis-
placed labour, supposing it to be ultimately or
gradually adaptable. Meanwhile, the displaced
labourers must greatly restrict their consumption,
which means that there is less demand for certain
goods of both foreign and home production; and less
demand for foreign goods will tend to mean lessened
YTT
88
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
demand for home-made goods. Finally, whereas
formerly we exported some flax goods, and in return
received certain imports, these imports will not now
come, and the kinds of articles in question will to that
extent be dearer. Thus the chain of trouble completes
itself, and even the volume of our trade is diminished. 1
IV.
And all this is really implied in the statement of
Messrs. Webb & Cox,2 that certain "sweating"
industries will be snuffed out by an Eight Hours Law.
They quote an "experienced philanthropist’s as saying,
“I would pay a heavy price to extinguish these
sweated East End industries, at whatever temporary
risk to the workers in them." They had previously
declared 4 that “philanthropists have no right to in-
flict suffering on one section of the community in order
to heal the ills of another;" but they appear to think
1 After jeering, as before noted, at “the political economists,"
Messrs. Webb & Cox attempt to prove, by merely alleging "the
unanimous judgment of economists” (p. 117), the proposition
that “the total export trade could not be affected” by an Eight
Hours Law, "and that any variation arising would be merely
an alteration in the proportion in which the aggregate of exports
was made up." Thus they contemn “the economists," or swear
by them, as it suits their argument. But they do not prove even
the alleged unanimity when they merely cite the words of
Cairnes : “A rise or fall of wages in a country, so far forth as it
is general, has no tendency to affect the course of foreign trade."
There is here no statement about totals, and no reference to the
case of a rise of wages forced by a time law. But in any case
Cairnes' dictum is rebutted above.
2 P. 119. Cf. p. 132, 3P, 119, note. #P, 87.
89
7
that in this case the risk would be very short, assert-
ing that “the money hitherto spent on these blood-
stained commodities [of the sweated trades], the capital
hitherto employed in their production, and the labour
devoted to their manufacture, would alike be trans-
ferred-mediately, if not immediatelyt-to other
industries " under an Eight Hours Law. But they do
not put this on the law of differential advantages.
They go on to say that “the necessity for increasing
the staff in all industries, which a reduction of hours
would probably involve, would at once enable these
workers to be absorbed, possibly at higher wages, and
certainly under better conditions than they had
hitherto enjoyed." And this optimistic doctrine they
carry even further. After stating 2 that the effect
upon prices of a general shortening of hours would be
"neither a general rise of values nor of prices, but a
disturbance of both, some values rising and others
falling," they affirm on the very next page that “price
is probably the most rigid of all the possible economic
variants likely to be affected';” and then they quote
this extraordinary deliverance of Mr. Thorold
Rogers :-
“It is really the case, however, that the liberal reward of
labour is followed by a material enhancement of price. No one
believes that if the London seamstresses, tailors, and matchbox-
makers received double the wages which they do at present, there
zvould be an appreciable difference in the price of the products sold,
on any prescrit risk that any of these industries would cease to be
plied in this country.'' 3
2 P. 114,
1 I do not know what this phrase means.
3 “Work and Wages,” edition cited, p. 203,
90
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
)
This passage is primarily instructive as showing how
far the pursuit of the “historic inethod," so-called,
may lead an economist out of sight of economic law.
As it stands, it is almost meaningless. Everything
depends on how the rise of wages comes about. If
the seamstresses and match box-makers get the rise by
reason of greatly increased demand for their labour,
or restriction of their own number, prices certainly
will rise. If they get the rise because prices have
already risen by reason of defect of raw material,
then clearly their rise of wages is not followed by rise
of price. If they get the rise by reason of a sudden
increase in the efficiency of their industry, they being
able by their unions to force from the employers a
good share of profits, then, indeed, their rise of wages
need be neither preceded nor followed by a rise in
prices. But in that case labour and capital will
assuredly rush into the new field, prices will fall,
and wages will fall likewise. Professor Rogers' pro-
position, when worked out, is economically null,
because he cannot have been thinking of a rise of
wages enforced by law. Yet Messrs. Webb & Cox
quote it in italics as above, when all the while they
are affirming, as we have seen, that certain industries
will cease to be plied when the employers are forced
either to pay the same wages for shorter hours or to
work shorter hours at all. They themselves deny
what, in the quotation from Mr. Rogers, they have
affirmed.
As for their claim that the labour and capital
thrown out by crushing the sweated industries will
be “at once," or "mediately if not immediately,"
FOREIGN COMPETITION.
91
(whatever that may mean,) absorbed by other indus-
tries, it has not a leg to stand upon. The other in-
dustries, on their own showing, would be the ad-
vantaged industries, in which labour goes much
further than in the lowest marginal industries, so
that even if much more labour were needed in them
Za point on which, as on so many others, Messrs.
Webb & Cox contradict theinselves 1—and even if
-
Webb & Cox themselves admit2 it is likely to be, the
labour called for would not be absorbed in the ratio
of the displacement of the labour that has been work-
ing to the least advantage. Besides, if a number of
the lowest industries are at once crushed, the extra
hands thus thrown on the other industries will more
or less suffice to prevent wages from rising. Finally,
if there is not an increased demand for products,
whether home or foreign, prices and wages cannot
both be kept up. And it is always the tendency,
under the regimen of saving and investment, to cut
dowel consumption when prices rise.
7
)
TY
YI
l'e
113
a rise in the prices of the products of our ad-
vantaged exporting industries will not lessen our
imports. Here perhaps there is the greatest risk
-
-
-
1 They affirm that in many cases the output in an Eight
Hours Day is as great as in a longer one ; and they also make
the contrary statement above quoted. * 2 P, 110,
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION. .
_
of confusion in our reasoning. Mr. Scott Moffat (of
whom I must always speak with gratitude for help to
right thinking on some leading economic issues, while
forced to reject some of his doctrines) works out the
question in his “Economy of Consumption "in a way
that suggests the rising of difficulties on his view as
he proceeds. In that work, which is much less known
than it deserves to be, he urges on the workers, in a
very interesting section, a “time policy," not in the
shape of an Eight Hours Law, but by way of a
voluntary plan of always working shorter hours when
wages fall, and lengthening them only when wages
rise. I will not here stay to discuss that proposal,
but will quote the passage in which, after fully ex-
pounding it, Mr. Moffat goes on to meet the possible
objection of injury to foreign trade. Let the reader
note the bearing of the italicised passages :-
S
“ There are two things of which foreign competition
can never deprive a community : its natural resources
and its industry. No foreign competition can, in the
first place, drive our industry out of our own markets.
Foreigners will not come to our markets unless they
want something there. They will not sell to us, un-
less they wish to buy from us; and the more efficient
their industry is, the more they will have to give for
what they want from us." [If so, then vice versa.]
“ Suppose the productiveness of the industry of any
or every other community was increased twofold,
and ours was to remain as it is, no commodity which
we produce for our own use would lose any of its
efficiency by the change; and the intrinsic value of
FOREIGN COMPETITION.
93
the whole of this part of our production would remain
unaltered.” [All this is neither here nor there.] “If
any part of our home produce was, owing to the
superior productive power of foreign countries, re-
placed in our market by a foreign product, it would
be because the foreign producer offered us more of it
in exchange for our other productions than we could
give ourselves, thus enabling us to apply our in-
dustry to greater profit.” [The orthodox thesis
that any amount of labour can be applied to any
given industry.] “There is one case only in which
the superior producing power of another community
can injure us, when we go to the market of a third
community to purchase some commodity which we
require, and the rival community goes to the same
market to purchase the same commodity with the
superior appliances of its productive power. Even in
this case the injury is contingent, not inevitable.
Provided the commodity with which we and our
rivals attempt to purchase is the same, or that the
commodity of the rival community is in equal demand
in the purchasing market with ours, our rival will
certainly purchase cheaper than we can ; but it does
not therefore follow that the price to us will be higher
than before. If our rival's demand is large, and the
supply is limited, the price to us will certainly be
raised; but it may happen by-and-by that this very
demand produces a great increase in the supply, and
that we, without any additional exertion on our part,
may purchase cheaper than before. Or, if there is
any commodity of ours which our rival requires, the
rival community itself may be able to purchase the
94
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
commodity of the third community both for itself
and us, and to sell it to us cheaper than we could
have bought it for ourselves. A community whose
natural resources suffice for its maintenance has thus
nothing to dread from the superior industry or skill
of other communities. Their possession of these
it harm in none, except perchance that, in the way
indicated, it may have to pay a little dearer for some
luxuries with which it is able to dispense."!
Here, it seems to me, Mr. Moffat has set out with
the intention of broadly answering “the cry of danger
from foreign competition," and, after working a cer-
tain distance, has found he is not meeting the case.
For there is really no community such as he finally
describes ; and least of all is Britain such a com-
munity. He has thus left on paper, to small purpose,
the mere out-throw of his first excavation. Thus are
books made very big. Nor is the method up to Mr.
Moffat's best level. To assume that every producer
who supplies is wanting to buy, is the method of the
earlier analysts, who overlooked the fact that men
habitually want to sell without buying, by way of
accumulating not wealth but claim-to-wealth, and who
said that since the seller in effect had to buy, all his
supply was demand. The wish to sell without buy-
in foreign as in home trade. Again, nothing is gained
by putting the case of two communities trading with
a third, for the economic is the same all over, if we
1 “Economy of Consumption," 1878, pp. 562-4.
FOREIGN COMPETITION.
95
TY
accept the maxim of Dudley North. But it is need-
less to criticise Mr. Moffat's preliminary paragraph
further, for he goes on to put the British case with
much force and accuracy.
“It is otherwise with the communities which possess
the exceptional industrial advantages. As already
observed, every industrial advantage which is a mere
saving of labour is a pure gain. But when the saving
is differential, when one community possesses advan-
tages which other communities do not possess, there is
generated an unnatural growth of production, an ab-
normal increase of population. This population de-
pends not on the natural resources of the country, but
on its artificial [sic, but query] advantages ; and as
these are continually liable to forfeiture, it is in con-
stant danger of having its means of subsistence with-
drawn. To a community in these circumstances, foreign
competition is a subject of real alarm.”I
By "artificial advantages," I presume, Mr. Moffat
must mean special temporary industrial advantages as
distinguished from permanent ones; and Britain
would, I presume, be classed by him as one of the
communities he now describes. Thus he finally ad-
mits that our position is a precarious one. It is true,
he goes on to argue very justly that there is the more
reason why we should extract ourselves from our
impasse, protesting against the doctrine that since we
are already in a false position, “our only remedy is
the desperate expedient of pushing ourselves into it
still further.” In that protest we can all join. But
1 Ibid. p. 564.
96
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
the practical question is, How are we to get out ?
And I cannot see that Mr. Moffat gives any counten-
ance to the expedient of an Eight Hours Law, which
is in no sense a check on the impetus carrying us into
our fix. Mr. Moffat's own scheme is, on the face of it,
much better, for it implies calculated and adjusted
action on the part of the workers; and he clearly re-
cognises that the solution of thrift is of no avail. I
will sum up the issues, as I see them, by saying that
to get out of the impasse there is needed an all-round
policy of (1) raised standards of consumption ; (2)
restrained breeding; (3) national provision for old
age; (4) national operation on social relations to the
end of nationalising one by one all the present
sources of idle living, including ground rent, which
Mr. Moffat would not nationalise; and (5) immediate
operation on the congested labour market by way of
true public works—all these lines of action to be as
far as possible concurrent.
0
nn,
LUI
VI.
To bring out the central economic issues, let us say
briefly that the increasing command of natural re-
sources might be made to yield an increasing share of
wealth all round if every body adopted a rising
standard of consumption, and if States provided
systematically for old age ånd sickness, and if at the
same time population were controlled. In that case
we need have no fear of the emigration of mere
capital. I have argued this at length elsewhere. But
there is no prospect whatever of a rising standard of
FOREIGN COMPETITION.
97
consumption being speedily resorted to, and the
economics of the Eight Hours Question is the econo-
mics of the present situation, in which everybody,
broadly speaking, tends to restrict his consumption in
order to accumulate future claim. This is the frustra-
tion of that indefinite multiplication of hand-work
which the supporters of the Eight Hours Movement
count upon. Messrs. Webb & Cox declare 1 that “the
notion that labourers depend for their employment on
work being 'found' for them is a widespread but
stupid fallacy ;” and they further state, as we have
seen, that money formerly spent on commodities now
rendered impossible of profitable production, and "the
capital hitherto employed in their production, and the
labour devoted to their manufacture, would alike be
transferred-mediately, if not immediately—to other
industries." The argument in the context is that in-
creased demand for labour in other industries under
an Eight Hours Law would absorb the workers
thrown idle: nothing has been advanced to show how
the capital would be similarly absorbed But the
general statement about the “stupid fallacy” of the
notion that work must be found for labourers remains
to mislead the student. It is not a fallacy, but a fact,
that labour depends upon demand for services or
commodities : the fallacy lies in the orthodox doctrine
that it does not.?
S
1 P. 119,
2 Mr. Webb was one of those who, five years ago, derided the
London alderman who contended that a Lord Mayor's Banquet
was good for trade. Mr. Webb, Socialist as he then was, took
the orthodox position that if the money were put in the bank it
98
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
0
Messrs. Webb & Cox's epithet will be found, as it
happens, to strike at Professor Marshall, who ex-
pressly argues ? that the raising of the wages of
tramway servants by the operation of a law re-
stricting hours of work would check tramway exten-
sion, and therefore check the demand for the labour
which makes tramway plant. I am not prepared to
go so far as this : it does not seem to me to follow
that tramways, under present conditions of life, may
not go on at increased fares, or that capital may not
be invested in them at lower rates of interest: but
the argument surely counts for something against the
summary conclusion of Messrs. Webb & Cox. If
they mean to endorse the new and true doctrine that
demand for commodities does mean demand for labour,
but at the same time to contend that the labourers
make their own market, they are overshooting the
mark. It is going too fast, I fear, to assume with
Messrs. Muminery & Hobson 2 that all increase in
would be “productively expended”-as if the industrial trouble
were want of money-capital for profitable undertakings. I
understood Mr. Webb later to have abandoned this fallacy of
the schools, were it only because it so completely undermined
his Socialism. Yet here he seems to be again embracing it-
unless, indeed, he means his expression to signify, as another
passage in the same book (p. 150) suggests, that it is not capital
that is wanted to "find work” for labourers, but that deinand
for goods will suffice. In that case he would be describing as
“stupid” his own confident teaching of a few years ago.
1 “Elements," p. 368.
2 Messrs. Webb & Cox represent these able writers as argu-
ing thus, but I cannot find the passage in their book. I under-
stand their view to be that the wage-earners tend to spend
FOREIGN COMPETITION.
99
wages will mean increased consumption. The ideal
of saving is ever before the workers. But in any
case the mere increased consumption of common goods
by the workers cannot suffice to keep the demand for
labour always on the increase. There must be higher
consumption. This is the answer to tlie optimism of
Mr. Gunton, cited by Messrs. Webb & Cox1 as
arguing that the mere demand of better-paid labour
will“ lead to economies in production, thence to the
cheapening of products, and thence to increased con-
sumption." Let our past history supply the test.
Wages have risen ; there have been economies in pro-
duction by way of new machinery which threw
labour idle ;2 and still consumption has been mainly
restricted to the goods which machinery too easily
produces.
To divide consumers, again, as Messrs. Webb &
Cox do, into "the million” and the "wealthy few,''
and to say that the latter practically cannot increase
their consumption, while the former may do so in-
S
increase of income in a higher proportion than other classes ;
and this is no doubt true.
1 P. 149.
2 I may here lay down the doctrine, which one would have
expected Socialists to lay down for themselves, that our rapid
advance in machinery is substantially anti-social while in pro-
gress, or, at least, that it means perpetual sacrifice. A Social-
istic community would rightly supersede old machinery at a
much slower rate than does an individualistic community, unless
it found it had an immense surplus of labour - power. Its
principle would be the economising of the total labour-power at
any given moment. The present system means the destruction
of the forces and the well-being of thousands to benefit the rest.
100
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION. ·
i
definitely, is to obscure the whole problem, to my
thinking. Between the “wealthy few” and “the
million," to begin with, there is the great middle and
“lower middle” class. But the rich as well as the
middle class can "increase its consumption," econo-
mically speaking, just as easily as the poorer classes
can. The rich man can either demand higher artistic
products, such as statues and pictures and finely
carved furniture and plate and metal and stone-work;
for himself, or consume by way of presenting galleries,
libraries, and objects of art to the public, instead of
heaping up more capital out of his income. The
middle-class man can raise his kinds or standards of
consumption in a hundred ways. And if these things
be not done, the mere increased consumption of
machine-made goods by the workers will never solve
the industrial problem. Ultimately, of course, the
rich man as such should disappear; but that is not
the present issue.
CHAPTER X.
INDUSTRIES SEPARATELY CONSIDERED: HOME
COMPETITIVE INDUSTRIES.
THE foregoing reasoning, I think, will be found to
partly cover the case of those industries which, in
chapter viii. § 1, I specified as “home distributive
and other industries competing together;” inasmuch
as questions of the relation of price to consumption
are there on the same footing; but a glance at some
of these industries separately, and apart from the
railways, may be useful. Messrs. Webb & Cox allude 1
to "countless” industries in which “there can be no
question of foreign competition ;' and they specify
“the railway industry and other internal means of
transport; building and engineering trades ; baking,
modities; the theatrical and newspaper industries;
all the forms of artistic or personal service, and in-
numerable other departments of the industrial army."
It would appear from this that Messrs. Webb & Cox,
though they reject the idea of a general law, con-
template a possible restriction of the hours of labour
1 P. 118.
IOI
102
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
in nearly every form of occupation, including domestic
service, picture painting, and acting. Mr. Shaw
declares 1 that he “should not hesitate to go for an
unconditional Eight Hours Bill all round.” I sup-
pose, however, that we need only discuss trades pro-
per for the present, since even the Socialist wing does
not yet appear to contemplate an Eight Hours Day
for domestic servants and novelists.
S
II.
Industries that would certainly be covered by a
“general” Eight Hours Law are the food-supplying
and shop-keeping, and their case is worth special
attention. Let us take, for instance, the food-
supplying trades. Their distribution is carried on, as
regards some foods (grocers' goods, etc.), through
wholesale and retail dealers; as regards others (milk,
bread, and butcher-meat), through retailers either
dealing almost directly with the first producers of the
article, or retailing their own product. In none of these
trades are individual profits high. Many retailers'
clear incomes are no higher than those of many work-
men, and many of them do their work themselves
without subordinates save those of their own family.
But if an Eight Hours Law is to be enforced in the
shops where there are paid hands, it must be enforced
in those where the shopkeepers do all their own work,
otherwise the law would be simply a measure in
favour of small shops against large. As a matter of
1 Debate cited, p. 74.
HOME COMPETITIVE INDUSTRIES.
103
:
20
IN
fact, many small shopkeepers can only hold out against
the large by keeping longer hours; and this is one of
the reasons for that opposition to legal restriction of
shop hours which Mr. Shaw condemns 1 without the
slightest consideration of the details of the case.2 In
any view, a general Eight Hours Law in such trades
would infallibly raise prices. Mr. Shaw's simple
theorem that prices would be forced back by stinted
demand can soon be disposed of here. If the milkman
is forced to adopt an Eight Hours Day, he must
either shut shop about 2 p.m. or even earlier, or
set up two shifts in his shop and raise his
prices. He might, indeed, close during mid-day
hours and open again in the evening, but this, too,
would mean endless inconvenience; and the incon-
venience would fall more on the working class than
on any other. The result in several trades would
certainly be a new opening for the itinerant coster, in
which case the shopkeeper would have a very clear
grievance. So with the butcher. Present prices can-
not be maintained on a double shift; prices must rise
because the article is so nearly necessary; and the
shopkeeper can not beat down his landlord, because,
i Debate cited, p. 76.
2 A striking sample of the irrational empiricism of labour-
regulating philanthropists is the recent proposal to regulate
women's hours in shops. Its effects would be first to advantage
married men whose wives and daughters helped them, and
widows and spinsters keeping their own shops, as against bache-
lors whose women-hands were hired ; and next to drive women
out of employment. Yet this absurd measure was applauded in
the Liberal press.
104
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
1
while the supply of butcher-meat is slowly extensible,
the supply of ground space is not. In the case of the
baker the same law will hold good still more emphati-
cally. On Mr. Shaw's view, the price of bread could
never rise. But it rises and falls frequently, according
to wheat prices; and an Eight Hours Law would
operate like a scarcity of wheat in raising cost of
production. People must have bread, and most will
rather pay more than consume less. Now the
smallest-coin-increase in the price of a loaf is a
serious deduction from real wages in a workman's
family; and the stinting of bread is pure hardship.
It may be indeed that the bread-making industry is
one in which more work could be turned out per head
in eight-hour shifts than in longer ones; but in that
case there is clearly no gain in respect of employment
disappointed. And the bread-selling business being
all the while under the operation of an Eight Hours
Law, either prices must rise on that score, or the
working-class public must endure much incon-
venience. The thing is inevitable. And this is the
answer to the suggestion of Professor Marshalli that
the net produce would be increased in some branches
of industry by introducing two shifts of eight hours.
The effect would simply be to employ the same or
even fewer hands in fewer factories, and to lessen
relatively the demand for machines of a given kind-
a much more serious consideration than the lack of
skilled labour, posited by Professor Marshall as an
1 “Elements,” p. 366.
HOME COMPETITIVE INDUSTRIES.
105
obstacle to the rapid adoption of double shifts. In
the case of such services as those of omnibuses and
tramcars, again, double shifts, so far as can be
gathered from a calculation of profits, must mean
either lowered wages or raised fares; and here the
working classes would be hit the most heavily of
all. Thus once more the hopes of the workers
would be foiled. It remains to be considered whether
one more expectation founded on a prospective Eight
Hours Law would be any better fulfilled.
CHAPTER XI.
THE EFFECTS OF FIXED HOURS ON TRADE
I.
ONE of the most catching pleas for a fixed legal
working day, the most attractive, indeed, next to the
primary plea for leisure, is that it would go far to
correct the present fluctuations of trade. Thus in
Messrs. Gibbins & Hadfield's treatise,l we find Mr.
Hadfield-
-
"Strongly inclined to think that shorter hours would eventu-
ally lead to more uniform output, and, to some exterit, assist in
modifying the serious fluctuations of business, which are baneful
alike to master and man. ... Under the present system, too
often there is extreme high pressure at one time, followed by a
reversal which is exceedingly disastrous to all concerned. Trade
suddenly expands, machinery is wanted in haste, telegrams fly
to and fro, promises are made which often cannot be performed.
If an order of importance is given, probably penalties are
specified. The nianufacturer is in a state of feverish anxiety
until the matter is cleared off his books. Overtime must be
worked, and there is high pressure all round. If a uniform day
existed, and overtime were made more difficult, all employers in
each particular branch being on the same footing would alike
work under the same conditions, and would not have the tempta-
tions as at present to outbid one another and work at such high
1 "A Shorter Working Day," pp. 116-7.
106
TRADE FLUCTUATIONS.
107
.
pressure. Probably under such an altered state of conditions,
the original requirer of the machine ordered, in inaking up his
plans, knowing the impossibility of breaking the law, would not
be in that chronic state of tension that now so often exists. He
would know that all manufacturers from whom tenders were
invited were on the same footing, and that if overtime was
worked it would probably be at such excessive rates as to make
him think twice before specifying an unreasonable time for
delivery. It would act in the same way with the manufacturer,
who, in order to tender at the lowest price consistent with
profit, would not be tempted to reckon upon overtime.”
Messrs. Gibbins & Hadfield tell us that they are re-
spectively man of business and economic student. If
one had not had some real assistance from their book,
one would be tempted to say that in it the man of
business has been unduly influential in loosening the
style and confusing the argument; and the economic
student unduly apparent in defective knowledge of
facts, e.g., the repeated intimation that "for some
reason or other” the miners want a legal Eight
Hours Day when for the most part they have already
got an Eight Hours Day, the reason being left a
mystery to the last.
Mr. Hadfield here sets forth what appears to me to
be a mere confusion of ideas. He repeatedly tells us
that under a fixed day manufacturers would all be
“on the same footing.” Well, are they not all on the
same footing now, when their freedom is the same?
Mr. Hadfield first says the fixed day would“ lead to "
more uniform output, and then that it would “to
some extent assist” in modifying fluctuations of out-
put. What is it to assist ? He speaks of overtime
as a possibility after he has assumed a fixed legal day,
108
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
leaving it wholly in the vague how overtime is to be
“made more difficult," if it is allowed at all. The
implication is simply that overtime should be fixed at
high rates, which is a proposal that wages should be
controlled by legislation. This Mr. Hadfield himself
has admitted to be out of the question. He says that
the orderer would “know that overtime would pro-
bably be at such rates as to make him think twice.”
Would not the orderer know what the rates for over-
time would be ? If not, could not the manufacturer
tell him ? Would anybody know? If not, overtime
would certainly be “difficult," but so would business
be, I fancy.
1
Perhaps the best way to meet Mr. Hadfield's very
mixed proposition is to ask in a business-like way
what would happen under an Eight Hours Law (a)
with or (b) without overtime, when somebody wanted
machines or goods in a hurry. That such demands
would arise, it seems unnecessary to prove. They
arise, at present for this among other reasons, that
openings for profitable investment of capital are
eagerly competed for; and this competition exists
because in our social system men seek to provide for
old age, or leisure, or their families, by means of in-
terest from investments. This state of things remain-
ing, the competition would remain under an Eight
Hours Law. Orderers then would still at times
want to have work done very quickly, and they
would know that makers could meet their wishes
by calling in extra hands, if there were unem-
TRADE FLUCTUATIONS.
109
TITY
ployed hands to call in. Now, an Eight Hours Law
will either cause absorption of the unemployed, or it
will not. I think not. But even if it does, that
consummation will (1) attract unemployed from other
countries, and (2) stimulate population, unless a check
is put on immigration, and the workers are taught in
some newly-effective way to put a check on their
families, neither of which safeguards seems to be
dreamt of by the advocates of an Eight Hours Law.
Then there would be an unemployed fringe, and
batches of sudden orders would simply mean sudden
employment for that fringe, and sudden influxes of
inmigrants, and this in a much higher degree than
happens now. Where overtime is freely allowed,
sudden pressures can be in large part met without
altering the number of men in employment. Where
overtime is not allowed, sudden pressures will call for
extra hands, and will encourage the growth of a pre-
cariously-employed class. In that respect we should
simply be out of the frying-pan into the fire.
There remains the alternative of permitting over-
time, but making it “more difficult."1 I repeat that
the only meaning I can attach to these words is the
fixing of extra high rates for overtime; and that this
1 Messrs. Webb & Cox, pointing out (p. 157) that with one or
two specific cases of exception, no overtime at all is now per-
mitted in English textile factories, remark that it is “obvious that
an Eight Hours Law which did not exclude habitual overtime
would be simply delusive, ' but add that it is equally obvious
that there are emergencies in which it ought to be permitted.
They would, however, exclude overtime for the mere purpose
of meeting a press of orders.
110
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
is virtually a fixing of wages, a thing which Mr. Had-
field says Parliament has never succeeded in doing,
and probably never will succeed in doing. But let
us suppose it tried. Suppose it to be enacted that
overtime must'always be paid for at triple rates per
hour. Will not masters and men together either con-
trive to evade such a law by bogus money-transac-
tions, or agree to bring down the normal day-wages
in order to admit of overtime? Let us suppose they
do not. Then either the working of overtime will
be so difficult that it will rarely occur, in which case
there will just be that increase of a precariously-en-
ployed class above described, or overtime will be
worked pretty frequently, with greater gain to the
workers than now happens. Trade in the terms of
the case fluctuates just as before.
CN
III.
There is another problem which comes under the
general head of trade fluctuation, namely, the exist-
ence of “season trades.” When you point to these as
a difficulty in the way of a general Eight Hours Law,
Socialists tell you that they want to make season
trades impossible, that is, they want to get rid of the
“ demoralising” state of things in which many people
are very busily employed for some weeks or months
at a particular trade, and during the rest of the year
are either slackly employed at it or have to take to
t
1 It fluctuates at present in those textile industries in which
Messrs. Webb & Cox point out there is no overtime.
TRADE FLUCTUATIONS.
111
YA
other occupations. But the effect of an Eight Hours
Law would not at all be to make an end of these
irregularities. An Eight Hours Law for house-build-
ing or chimney-sweeping, or straw-hat-making, or
cycle-making, or skate-making (I suppose we need not
consider harvest-work, which even the zealots of uni-
formity do not propose to restrict), will simply en-
courage the employment of more hands in these
industries at the busy times of the year. As things
are, a chimney-sweep works hardest in the cold
months. In summer he may take to other jobs. (I
do not know the practice.) But if an Eight Hours
Law should force more men into his trade in winter,
even if his wages do not fall, there will be so many
more men looking for other jobs in summer. If they
get them, well and good: it does not appear thať
regular changes of occupation are so very bad. But,
for good or bad, the season trades will remain as
before. If they are demoralising, there will be more
people demoralised.
The only ways in which ups and downs of demand
for special articles can ever be modified are (1) the
development of unwonted self-denial among consumers
as regards some articles, and (2) the accumulation of
stocks of some other articles under a distributive
system (say, a socialistic one) which excludes the pre-
sent motive of the dealer's objection to long-insold or
doubtful stock. And even then there would still be
industries in which irregular hours must be worked,
were it only because the weather is not under legisla-
tive control.
CHAPTER XII.
THE POLITICAL SIDE OF THE CASE.
We have thus looked cursorily and inadequately, but
still, I hope, a little more circumspectly than has been
done on the opposite side, into the pure economics of
the Eight Hours Question. But it was observed at
the outset that there is a strictly political as well as a
strictly economic side to the question; and if the
study have not already exhausted the reader, he will
perhaps bear with a final examination of the former.
There is a science of politics as well as a science of
economics; but one would expect an economist to
make the most and not the least of the frequent
dependence of politics upon economic knowledge.
Yet we find that Professor Marshall, whose resistance
to the contentions of the Eight Hours party has been
above noted, suddenly concludes his economic argu-
ment with a "caution against crude arguments from
facts," i directing the caution not against the enthu-
siasts, who have advanced crude arguments innumer-
able, but against those who analyse these arguments;
and he sums up by saying that "all this tends to
16Elements," p. 371.
I I2
THE POLITICAL SIDE OF THE CASE.
..113
show that a general reduction of the hours of labour
is likely to cause a little net material loss and much
moral good”-in respect of increased leisure. Even
this summing-up he qualifies by the distinct avowal
that the problem “is not adapted for treatment by a
rigid cast-iron system, and that the conditions of each
class of trades must be studied separately." Unfortu-
nately, many philanthropic people, and most advocates
of the Eight Hours Law, are almost certain to take
the proposition about a “general reduction of the
hours of labour” without weighing the qualification,
and to stake everything on the hoped-for “moral
good.” Thus is politics confounded instead of being
elucidated by economists of standing. Professor Mar-
shall was anxious to introduce his moral sympathies
into the exposition somewhere, and the result is a
maximum of inconsequence and a minimum of en-
lightenment.
It is with regret that I dispute Professor Marshall's
power of sound prescription in the matter. He has
diagnosed the case without once recognising (what
he is otherwise aware of) one of the main conditions,
namely, increase of population; and he endorses a
“ general” reduction of hours, which he cannot possibly
reduce to particulars, without a glance at the inevit-
able sequelo. I can foresee nothing but harm from
such a prescription. Every right-thinking person
would be willing to suffer "a little net material loss”
in order to win “much moral good” for the mass of
the population, if that were the whole of the case.
But the net material loss contemplated by Professor
Marshall is not anything like the loss that would
S
THE EIGHT HOUI
TI
accrue from an Eight Hours Law, for he is really ex-
cluding the operation of an Eight Hours Law, though
he only says so by a generality; and the moral good
he contemplates would be neutralised by the moral
evil which he overlooks. He ends the chapter under
notice with a paragraph on the injury done to the
young by joyless homes, concluding thus:-“Not only
the individuals concerned, but society as a whole
has a direct interest in the curtailment of extravagantly
long hours of duty away from home, even for mineral
guards and others, whose work is not in itself very
hard.” The effect of this remark taken by itself would
probably be to encourage a law for the restriction of
the hvurs of railway servants. Taken more broadly,
it only reaffirms the unquestioned advantage of
leisure, without recognising the main obstacles in
thoughtless human practice to the general acquisition
of leisure.
Lau
II.
7
The most plausible, in seeming, of the arguments
for a time law, is the plea that the method of strikes,
which is the only alternative one, is injurious to social
peace. At a time when so many of us have come to
feel the gross impropriety of allowing what are now
the real highways of the country, the railways, to
remain closed for weeks or months while companies and
men are fighting out a private war, this plea must
make some impression. Messrs. Webb & Cox1 observe
that-
1 P. 128. Cf. p. 172.
THE POLITICAL SIDE OF THE CASE.
115
.
"It is interesting to note that those who advise the miners
to shorten their hours by trade union action are advising them
to tax the public for their own advantage, without seeking the
public's consent. This appears to be as much open to ethical
criticism as the action of landlords in maintaining the Corn
Laws, or that of the capitalists who formed the Chicago "Wheat
Corner' or Paris Copper Ring.""
Here, it will be observed, it is admitted that the effect
of an Eight Hours Law for mines will be to raise the
price of coal; a burden which the same writers on
the same page say the public are willing to bear. It
is difficult to see the difference between one section of
the public saying that the rest will be ready to pay
more for its coals when a strike raises the price (for
this is really what is done by those who recommend
the method of strikes), and another section saying that
the rest is willing to pay extra as the result of an
Eight Hours Law. Either way, “the public," as a
collective entity, has never been polled ; and if an
Eight Hours Law is carried, a large section will have
its views set aside.
But the weakness of the anti-strike plea yoes deeper
than this. Those who feel the proved risk of blockade
of the railways, under private management, to be a
reason for nationalising them, have to face the difficulty
left, that under national management a general strike
is still conceivable. But at least they can claim that
it would be much more unlikely, and they can hope
to evade any such crisis by making any general
grievance of railwaymen a parliamentary question.
An Eight Hours Law, however, would really give no
security whatever against strikes. The sincerity of
116
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
/
the argument on this head can easily be tested. It
will not be disputed that the great majority of strikes
are strikes for wages. Then, if the argument for
legislative as against trade action be valid, it would
involve à fortiori the settling of wages by law, a thing
which no writer on the subject has yet ventured to
propose. And, in point of fact, there is every likeli-
hood that the passing of a time law would precipitate
strikes. Messrs. Webb & Cox, in arguing against
leaving the matter to the method of strikes, expressly
put it that “employers who see their chances of doing
a profitable trade suddenly dashed to the ground
by a cunningly-timed strike, will find it difficult to
repress feelings of bitter indignation." Either the
writers expect that an Eight Hours Law may operate
in this way, or the argument as against a strike for
shorter hours is quite irrelevant. But in any case, a
reduction of wages, we have seen, is likely to be one
of the first effects of a legal restriction of hours. This
is in part implicitly admitted in the argument that
any gain of shorter hours by strikers “would be re-
lentlessly cancelled in times of depression.” Then
would the workers, or would they not, be prompt
to strike when first, under the new time law, the
masters sought to balance the shortened hours by
lower wages ? Obviously they would. If they could
afford to take shorter hours with lower wages, they
might in many cases have had them ere now. Then
the pretence that a time law would avert strikes falls
to the ground. We should probably have more
1 Ibid. p. 173.
THE POLITICAL SIDE OF THE CASE.
strikes than ever. And the matter would not end
there. Already some labour leaders are talking of a
wages law, though none of their literary backers have
ventured so far. But a wages law would be justi-
fiable by the same set of arguments as they are using,
if these arguments are good for a time law. We
should have to proceed from one interference to an-
other, and always on unscientific and uneconomic
lines. In the effort to regulate industry we should
be getting further and further from real control of
its forces and tendencies.
III.
The perception of this, it is clear, underlay the op-
position offered to the Eight Hours Movement by Mr.
Bradlaugh, whom Messrs. Webb & Cox seek to con-
fute by the inexpensive devices of twitting him with
“bygone Liberalism” and “Manchester economics,"
and with inconsistency in view of his own Truck Act.
We have seen that Messrs. Webb & Cox (or one of
them) again and again resort to the mere dicta of the
Manchester school to make good their own case; but
their inconsistency here is not worse than their eva-
sion of the plain distinction drawn by Mr. Bradlaugh
between the political significances of different sorts of
interference with industry. He sought to show (a)
that a time law would derange industry, and (6) that
it was an attempt to protect the men, not against the
mere individual rapacity of employers, but against
the very laws of the economic situation. There is all
the difference in the world between an attempt of this
UU
118
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
sort and the act of protecting scattered groups of
workers against the unfair and sinister action of
special sets of employers, who force their men to take
their wages in goods, or at public-houses, where they
are almost bound to drink; and it argues either un-
candour or shortsightedness to say that the minor
interference logically leads in politics to the major.
Messrs. Webb & Cox by that argument have lightly
placed themselves in a grave dilemma. If any one
act of interference with industry suffices politically to
justify any other, there is (once more) a clear political
case for a wages law. Are they prepared to urge
that? Do they or do they not admit that it is a mis-
take to make the workers think that Parliament can
guarantee them good wages, they themselves doing
nothing to alter the economic situation ? If the
critics admit it, they are taking up exactly the posi-
tion of Mr. Bradlaugh, who all his life had his own
doctrine of how the workers were to gain a better
position, and to that end bore infinite odium from the
middle classes, a course in which his censors are not
likely to emulate him. I am not endorsing his
economics, from which I diverge, but simply claiming
that his sociology, his politics, was much sounder than
that of his assailants.
IV.
I will not here attempt to set forth at length the
very real social dangers of an all-round interference
with the hours of labour; but it is necessary to de-
THE POLITICAL SIDE OF THE CASE.
. 119
clare with emphasis, in the face of the fashionable
empirical Sucialism, that there are such dangers. I
do not deny that often the opposition to a legislative
interference with freedom is instinctive, the aversion
to such interference being felt before the arguments
against it are formulated; but it is equally true, for
one thing, that the desire for interference is often the
outcome of a happy-go-lucky inclination, which de-
cides its policy first and seeks justifications after.
And in the latter case the instinct is certainly no
weightier than in the former. It does not follow that
because many workmen, leading hard lives, and ac-
customed to the necessary coercion of their unions,
are ready for wholesale legal restriction, the restric-
tion would therefore be salutary. The instinct of
freedom, if often astray, must necessarily be often
right. Many people are now proceeding from a per-
ception that laissez-faire has involved misery, to an
uncalculating determination to abolish laissez-faire
anyhow. They begin to delight in restriction for
restriction's sake, thinking they establish human
solidarity by every act of the kind. “Fabian"
writers are found claiming that all individual facul-
ties are the property of society. But that is precisely
the doctrine of the most fanatical of the Jacobins of
the French Revolution, whose blind coercive action
weakened social solidarity instead of increasing it.
The evil is that humanitarians so often refuse to
think out the real effects of their interferences. To
go back to Spencer's illustration, they hammer directly
on the bulge in the iron plate, and then they refuse
to recognise that they have merely driven the bulge
LV
IL
120,
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
to the other side. When, after listening to the claims
made for the beneficent operation of the Factory Acts
in the past, I go to the factories and see the human
beings who are multiplied under these protective
laws, I am involuntarily filled with a sombre derision
for the philanthropists who thought they were set-
tling the problem by such devices as these. Claiming
to resist laissez-faire, they merely closed a few of the
side paths which blind human instinct had opened for
itself, not only leaving open the turnpike road of
sexual instinct and procreation, but saving new
YY1
S
destruction.
These spasmodic acts of philanthropy are really
often recognisable as attempts to evade by a legal
expedient the responsibility of personal action on the
part of the philanthropists. Much might now be
done to lessen overwork by conscientious individual
and collective action apart from the law. The case of
the hospital nurses, dwelt on by Messrs. Webb & Cox,
is one in point. The class who subscribe to the
hospitals could easily force a reform if they would ;
but it is so much simpler a course to order their
Member of Parliament to vote for a new law.
I am not arguing against the rational regulation of
human life. I an pleading for it. But the methods
now being proposed by our Socialists and philanthro-
pists are no more a rational regulation of human life
than was the system of dules of food to the Roman
populace by the tyrants who debased while fostering
it. Let short-sighted Socialists deny it a hundred
times over, it remains unalterably true that the one
7
THE POLITICAL SIDE OF THE CASE.
121
1
security for human elevation is the consciousness of
self-rule, self-reliance, and self-determination. And
to think to secure this attitude all round by legis-
lating for the protection of masses of helpless workers
without showing them the essentials in which they
must help themselves, is only to prepare such a col-
lapse for our civilisation as others have ended in, or
at best to prolong the desperate probation of the pre-
sent. I find Professor Marshall avowing? that.“the
progress of sanitary science has kept alive many
people who are unfit for any but the lowest grade of
work," without once, so far as I can see, telling how
this "evil paradox” is practically to be solved. And
where some of us, seeing the paradox, seek our way
to a scientific solution, in the teeth of the crude op-
position of ascetics, hypocrites, pietists, and optimist
Socialists, there are plenty of others who, caring too
little to find a solution, merely turn the paradox
against the cause of humanity all round. For them,
every failure of a blundering humanitarian expedient
is an argument against all humane expedients, all
regulation whatever. Nay, there is arising a new
class of not inhumane men who, seeing how blunder-
ing the mass of humane expedients hitherto have
been, are conscientiously opposed to all extension of
the sphere of regulation. Such men, if sometimes in
alliance with the other sort, are becoming a party in
the State. Optimistic Socialism, unprescient of de-
feat, faces them all with a light heart, secure in the
very helplessness of the masses whose blind force it
(D
.
? “Elements," ?: 275.
122
HOURS QUESTION.
TI
THE EIGHT hopes to use; and careful to avoid even the suggestion
that in the most fundamental matters of individual
action the workers can control their own lives. It
will be denied, doubtless, that this is the position of
Socialism. I will then attempt to show from Socialist
handling of the Eight Hours Question that it is really
So. But first of all the economic bearing of the law
of population must be re-stated in the present con-
nection.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE POPULATION CRUX.
7
At no time, perhaps, has the scientific doctrine of
population been more misconceived and misrepre-
sented than it is at present in this country, though at
no time has the practical recognition of it been more
widespread. Not once, but a score of times, I have
met with journalistic and other assertions that the
thesis of Malthus has been overthrown, and the fear
of over-population proved groundless. In hardly a
single case will it be found that the assertion is made
by anyone who has studied Malthus; but the denial
is none the less effective for popular purposes. It
generally takes the form of one of three propositions :
(1) that Malthus did not foresee the increase in the
amount of grain produced in the United States and
elsewhere; (2) that there is now food enough, and
may always be food enough, for the whole human
race if only wealth be properly distributed ; (3) that
immense territories are still unpeopled, or only slightly
peopled. The last has been the empirical answer to
Malthus all along, and is always made in disregard of
two facts-(C) that many deaths are due to over-
population here and now, and (b) that only great
1
V
123
124
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
1
1
i
distress can supply the motive force for. deporting
surplus population wholesale to foreign countries,
whether or not the deported population can thrive or
live there. For artisans the possible openings are
certainly not large ; and where it is possible in a new
country to earn a livelihood by primary methods, the
settler has to work a good deal more than eight hours
a day to manage it. This, of course, is no argument
against deporting surplus population to new soil; but
when there is no machinery for such deportation, and
no prospect of it, the insistence on the possibility is a
peculiarly worthless answer to the stateinent that
population tends naturally to excess, and needs to be
restrained by prudence when it is not restrained by
destructive and other preventive checks.
The appeal to the increased cultivation of cereals in
new countries, and similarly the appeal to the
possibility of improved agriculture everywhere,
misses the very essence of the Malthusian state-
ment, which is that population tends to increase
in an excessive ratio to food. The proposition
is, not at all that we have got to the end of the
world's food resources, but that if population is
by new food supply made free to increase, and is un-
controlled by prudence, it will tend to increase faster
than the food supply is increased. That is to say,
more children will be born than can be properly
reared, and their early death will be the means by
which the net population, from census to census, is
kept within the food limit. The elasticity of the
standard of nutrition will permit of a larger number
being reared at one time than at another on the same
YIT11
THE POPULATION CRUX.
. 125
amount of food; but, allowing for this--which means
higher or lower efficiency of feeding the existing
food supply is the limit of population. There is much
unintelligent repetition, in this connection, of the pro-
test that wealth is increasing faster than population;
many publicists pointing to this as a confutation of
Malthus. But the estimated increase of “wealth” is
in large part indistributable and illusory, mere in-
creased values of unchanging objects, as sites and pic-
tures, being reckoned as national gain. The basis of
population is not money-values, but food, room, and
other necessaries; and it lies in the nature of the case
that the faster people multiply the more they trench
on the sources of food by covering more land with
dwellings.
Supposing, then, the yield of the “Mississippi
valley” could be decupled, population, barring pru-
dential restraint, will tend to be decupled still faster;
and the faster population spreads in the said valley,
the more land will be withdrawn from possible culti-
vation. The only way to prevent over balance is to
secure that the instinctive forces which increase popu-
lation shall be kept in check by prudence, so that the
blind natural force shall not outrun the intelligent
force of industry. Hitherto, the blind force, with ups
and downs caused by famines and plenties, pestilences
and wars, has always tended to outrun the intelligent;
and this has held true of periods in which the net
population of a given country has not been increasing
at all. Gross increase may go with net decrease-
the decrease in that case representing the play of
destructive checks. Even gross decrease does not
126
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
e
clash with the law of population. Among preventive
checks, that of hindrance to marriage of young people
--so common in the Middle Ages—may seem to negate
the tendency of population to increase, when it is
really part of the proof.
And the law holds good no matter what be the
efficiency or equality of the distribution of wealth.
For if the lot of all our poor were so bettered within
a year that fair comfort became universal, one of the
results would be (unless the lesson of prudence were
learned in the meantime) that the population would
increase much more rapidly than before, because not
merely of new births and immigration, but of the
much greater proportion of infants who would be
kept alive. With such general distribution of wealth
as we all wish for, population would easily double in
twenty years, unless the lesson of prudential restraint
be learned step for step with the improvement. And
this is the answer to the old argument from the Irish
famine. Had the Irish peasants for a generation
before all owned their land, and multiplied up to
their increased power of rearing offspring, there
would have been twice as many of them, or more, to
suffer from the famine, and the margin of produce,
which in the actual event represented rent for ex-
portation, would not have existed.
1
(0
II.
Du
While the law of the instinctive increase of popu-
lation is combated all round on one or other of the
THE POPULATION CRUX.
127
theoretical grounds above considered, the practical
action of the majority of the workers recognises or
implies it. No matter what a good trade unionist
believes as to the possibility of increasing food supply,
he takes care that the number of apprentices entering
his trade shall be restricted. The astonishing thing
is that while doing this he does not, as a rule, yet
recognise that the number of his own children ought
to be restricted for exactly the same reasons. Too
often he procreates children who, in the terms of the
case, go to swell the number in excess of the labour
openings. That is to say, he applies restriction only
where it means the maximum of misery, when he
might apply it where it means prevention of misery.
Of the necessity of the restriction there can be no
question. A few years ago there was formed a new
union of unskilled labourers—the dockers, and the
demotic and other journals hailed the circumstance
as the dawn of a new era. But in a very short time
the Dockers' Union had to close its roll; and then
some (not all, of course) of the same journals de-
nounced them, though they were only doing in their
way what the skilled unions do in theirs, and what
every union must do if it is to subsist, in a society
where population is not sufficiently controlled by
prudence. What none of the popular journals saw or
said, was that the true cure for the case of the dockers
is restriction of rate of breeding, whether with or
without the restoration of some part of the town
population to the land.
But it is not only among the hand-workers that the
factor of population is denied in theory while it is
O
128
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
perceived in practice. The surplusage of persons is
visible in the struggle of the shopkeepers, who are so
visibly in excess of the economic needs; of the middle-
men; of the professional men. Hundreds of middle-
class fathers “ provide” for their sons by giving them
a lump sum and sending them to America or the
colonies, where there is at least land for stock-
rearing. And yet these fathers will in many cases be
among the last to admit that there is over-population,
partly because they for their part can “provide" for
their sons (the case of the daughters may be left to
the imagination), and partly because men are naturally
loth to admit that they have lived inconsiderately.
They will rather take credit to themselves for having
contrived somehow to rear a large family, putting out
of thought what it has meant in restriction of free
life for the child-bearer in the partnership, or, where
the family is poor, what it has meant in restriction of
life for the children.
III.
Happily, the lesson is at length being learned by
many. Those who denounce or deride neo-Mal-
thusianism little know how much of misery it has
already obviated. But for its propaganda, the in-
dustrial situation in this country at this moment
would be much worse than it really is. During the
years 1886-1890 there has been a marked decline in
the number of births, along with an increase in the
THE POPULATION CRUX.
129
number of marriages. The figures were, for England
and Wales :

Year.
Estimated
Population.
Total Births,
Deaths.
Marriages.
1886
195,806
200,175
1887
1888
1889
1890
27,521,780
27,826,798
28,135,197
28,447,014
903,216
886,017
879,263
885,179
869,937
537,078
530,577
510,690
517,968
562,248
213,696
223,028
Thus, while in 1890 there were 27,222 more mar-
riages than in 1886, there were 33,279 fewer births.1
marriages as in 1886, the number would have been
1,028,785, or 158,848 more than have actually taken
place. The decrease in 1890, no doubt, was partly
due to the influenza, which so greatly increased the
mortality here, as in France, where its ravages have
been a main cause of that fall of the birth-total below
1 The birth-rate in 1890 (30-2 per 1000 persons living) was
the lowest yet recorded ; the maximum (36:3 per 1000) having
been attained in 1876. In 1891, however, with only 3000 more
marriages than in 1890, there was a sudden increase in the
birth-total from 869,937 to 914,157 (31:4 per 1000). That pro-
portion is noted by the Registrar-General as “still below the
average” ; but the rise is so great as to suggest the influence of
panic over the French statistics. The Registrar-General, in
ascribing the increase to the marriages of several previous years,
admits that it is impossible to bring the birth-rate and the mar-
riage-rate into “harmonious correspondence.”
130
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
Y
the death-total which has given rise to so much uncom-
prehending comment. 1 But that much must also be
due to domestic prudence is clear from the continuity
of the decline, broken though it is by the birth-rate
of 1891. Yet even with the decreasing birth-rate
the annual increment of population has been too
great for the elasticity of the industrial system; and
in the five years under notice it lies on the face of the
figures that the population is finally 524,544 less
than it would have been if the excess of births over
deaths had all been added to the net population.2
That is to say, a balance of about half-a-million of
emigrants over immigrants, broadly speaking, have
found the struggle for existence here so hard that
they have sought their fortunes elsewhere. And had
the birth-rate of 1886 been maintained, there would
have been so many more hundreds of thousands of
children who, for part or the whole of these five years,
would have shared more or less in the hardships of
the majority, the chances of those destined to survive,
among the poorer classes, being thus worsened all
round, and the standard of comfort among the workers
being proportionally prevented from rising.
i The decline in the number of French marriages for a num-
ber of years had also something to do with the commercial loss
involved in the destruction of the vines. The number of mar-
riages in 1891 was 285,458, being 16,126 more than in 1890, and
the highest number since 1884. The births were 28,318 more
than in 1890, when the great fall in births as well as the increase
in deaths was mainly attributable to the grippe.
2 The Registrar-General, in his Report for 1890, observes that
“ had the rate of growth in 1871-1887 been maintained, the
THE POPULATION CRUX.
131
IV.
The desperate fact that hundreds of thousands of
these children have died or will die children, from
sheer want of proper sustenance and healthy sur-
roundings, is a main part of the tragedy of over-
population, and yet their disappearance seems to blind
many people to the tragedy altogether. While they
are dying in the darkness of the slums and the wilder-
nesses of huddled houses, the philanthropist and the
politician tell us that there is no over-population-
this with the mobs of unemployed in chronic congre-
gation, and nothing but the map of the sparsely-
inhabited areas of the planet to sustain them. The
wheat-raising power of the Mississippi valley is to
balance the actual existence of the men who have
been raised and the children who have been begotten.
And the very Socialists who voice the hunger of the
hungry must needs proclaim that nothing but“ redis-
tribution of wealth” is needed to put all right; that
the world is built to go prosperously if only the
instinct of individualist competition be checked; the
other animal instincts being in no need of regulation.
Now, there are some of us who are eager to do
something for the unemployed out of hand; who
would do it, if we could, by far more direct means
than an Eight Hours Law is even pretended to do.
population in the middle of 1890 would have amounted to
29,407,649, whereas the results of the recent census reduce the
estimate to 28,762,287, showing an excess of the earlier over the
later estimate of no less than 645,362.” This, I presume,
allows for emigration, and points to birth-restriction.
132
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
1
And yet if we had our way, unless we realised our
hopes in the matter of bringing home to the workers
the need of prudence in procreation, we should only
be on the road to a vaster and more desperate problem
still, for which there would be none but a deadly
solution. For the lesson of family prudence is only
beginning to be learned among us; and there is
always the terrible risk that a rapid improvement in
the lot of the worse-fated workers will mean a blind
increase in procreation. In a former period, from
1821 to 1861, the rate of increase of population per
decade declined from 18.1 to 11:9 per cent. ; but it
again rose under the stimulus of prosperity from 1861
to 1881. In the present state of knowledge the risk
of a fresh increase among the helped workers is
obviously great. I am not arguing that because of
that risk their lot ought not to be improved at once.
To argue so, indeed, would only be to imitate the
reasoning of some Socialists who point to the prim-
eval struggle for existence as a civilising process,
which would have been frustrated if the primeval
men had practised family prudence. 1 But these are
the arguments of thinkers who, for once or for always,
read the problem of evolution backwards. It is our
plain expediency, as well as our plain duty, to im-
prove the lot of the wretched at once by national
action, accompanying the action by a general recogni-
tion of the necessary safeguard. But the true line of
1 See Mr. Gronlund's "Co-operative Commonwealth,” author-
ised edition, p. 128. Mr. Gronlund is so reckless as to repeat
the twenty-times exposed untruth that Malthus had eleven
children. Such are popular Socialist tactics.
THE POPULATION CRUŽ.
133
action and the safeguard are equally beyond the range
of vision of those most concerned, legislators and
agitators alike, and we are offered instead a line of
action which at best cannot secure the result aimed at,
and this with no suggestion of safeguard whatever.
V.
YTY
And at this moment there is especial need of the
most strenuous propaganda to prevent a wholly false
alarm and a deplorable reaction. The case of France
is constantly being pointed to, both in France and
England, as that of a nation on the way to extinction
through over-restriction of births; and the anti-
Malthusians in England triumphantly ask why, with
such excessive restriction, France suffers at all from
poverty. They are closing their eyes to half of the most
essential facts. France is one of the most heavily-
taxed countries in the world, sustaining an enormous
debt, an enormous army, and a large bureaucracy, and
all this under a strong regimen of "saving," which,
by curtailing consumption, constantly tends to mini-
mise production, in the teeth of the very motive it
brings to production. Yet with all this, France is re-
latively one of the most prosperous of states, with
less rural poverty than Germany and Italy, and much
less town poverty than England. Poverty it must
have, with its terrific burdens, and its late heavy
losses from the phylloxera ; but its poverty is not at
all proportional to its burdens; and this just because
its population has increased so slowly. Let the
burdens be lessened, and the marriage-rate and birth-
14
134
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTIỄN.
rate will increase as mueh as it is desirable they
should, as they have increased before for similar
reasons. As it is, the figures which have caused the
alarm are in large part to be explained by the in-
fluenza, which influenced our own birth-rate as well as
our death-rate, and which struck France more heavily
than it did England. In 1891 there was a general
movement back towards the higher birth-rate of pre-
vious years, there being more children born than in
1890. But human perversity zealously draws the
wrong set of conclusions, and the case of France is
turned to the account of unreason and the reign of :
ignorant instinct, even at a time when reason bad
made some visible headway.
In the same way, optimistic economists among our-
selves refuse to admit the benefit arising from re-
straint of population in our own newer colonies, even
denying that ratio of labourers to employment has
anything to do with wages. Messrs. Gibbins &
Hadfield, notingi the statement of the Victorian
Government statistician as to the spread of parental
prudence in that colony, meet this and other data with
the dictuni that wages depend,“not on protection, or
Malthusianism, or the peculiarities of a new country
-or, at any rate, only to a limited extent—but on
the power of the workman to produce commodities,
and his ability to obtain a fair share of what he pro-
duces.” It is difficult to infer what economic purport
Messrs. Gibbins & Hadfield attach to the italicised
clause, the gist of which they repeat? as if it were
either an axioin or a demonstration. As it stands, it
i Work cited, p. 70.
2 P. 83.
THE POPULATION CRUX. .
135
is a truism, counting for nothing; but their denial
that" Malthusianism” and protection have any bear-
ing on wages amounts to saying that the ability of
the worker to get a fair share of the produce is wholly
a matter either of the efficiency of his unions, or of
his power to legislate. And this is refuted by the
writers' own admission that wages fell in Victoria
before in a period of depression, after the Eight
Hours Day had become pretty general, though with-
out involving a relapse to the longer day. If wages
fell, it must have been because employment grew
scarce relatively to the number of workers. Then re-
striction of the number of workers tends to keep the
quantity of employment relatively high, if demand is
not at the same time stinted ; and it is perfectly clear,
economically speaking, that the continuance of high
wages in Victoria is thus far due either to one or
other or to all of the three factors of (a) migration
or re-emigration, with restraint of Chinese immigra-
tion, (6) extention of field of demand by the continued
opening up of colonial territory, and (c) protective
tariffs, which partly restrict demand to native in-
dustry, and keep up its prices; while the practice
of family prudence enhances the benefit thus far
by limiting the number of helpless consumers, and
will tend to secure it in the future by keeping down
the rate of multiplication of competitors for employ-
ment. In fine, the comparatively successful working
of a voluntary Eight Hours Day in Victoria is one of
the best explanations of the difficulty of attaining it
here, where the conditions are so different. It proves
exactly what Messrs. Gibbins & Hadfield loosely deny.
YI
AM
CHAPTER XIV.
SOCIALISM AND THE POPULATION QUESTION.
THE references made to the population question by
Socialist advocates of an Eight Hours Law are few
but significant. Messrs. Webb & Cox touch on it
thus :-
“Many thousands of our countrymen are by nature physical
and mental weaklings. The moving force that is to enable these
men of their own accord to protect themselves does not exist.
To leave them simply alone, and tell them to fight their own
battles, is comparable to the advice of Mrs. Dombey' to make an
effort.' Mrs. Dombey answered by dying. But that, unfortun-
ately, is what our weakling class will not do. Feckless and
infirm of purpose in every other direction, they have animal
energy enough to breed. Half of their children die, it is true,
but the other half live, and in a few generations the feeble species
is almost doubled. ... The application to them of a coercive
law may be defended on the ground that it is the sole means of
lifting them from that degradation which is so injurious to the
whole community. A legal limitation of their hours of labour
would raise them as it has raised the textile operatives. ...
In time this feckless race will develop into a higher type, even
as the men and women of Lancashire, themselves once equally
degraded, have under similar coercion developed."
There is here, indeed, scant recognition of the
136
Tos
SOCIALISM AND THE POPULATION QUESTION. 137
ILLU
general tendency of inconsiderate people to breed ex-
cessively; but there is a glimpse of it. The question
is whether Messrs. Webb & Cox maintain that the
men and women of Lancashire have under “coercion”
learned to restrict their families. That they should
stand to this seems incredible; and yet that thesis is
the only supposable alternative to their having simply
evaded the population question after having re-
cognised that such a question exists in respect of the
breeding of the unfit. I am aware that Mr. Webb,
whom at one time I understood to recognise the law
of population, has lately, in the Economic Journal,
taken refuge in the old fallacy that over-population is
a future and not a present problem--this while he
knows that the working-class death-rate is high cor-
relatively with the birth-rate. If his adoption of this
view is to regarded as the explanation of his evasion
of the subject in his and Mr. Cox's joint treatise, I
can only submit that these gentlemen are shutting
their eyes to the fundamental problem of the case
they are dealing with.
ІІ
But still more significant is the position taken up
by Mr. G. B. Shaw in his debate with Mr. Foote. Mr.
Shaw has never repudiated the principle of restraint
of population: he only tries to keep it in the distant
background. Here is his admission in the debate in
question (p. 21);-
“If you pass your Eight Hours Bill, and do nothing else-
which is not what I advise you to do--you will find that in the
138
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
:
long-run the increase of population will make wages as low and even
lower than they are at present. But I am only dealing with the
Eight Hours Bill as a step to other measures which will meet
the population question."
Here is a distinct admission such as, so far as I know,
no other advocate of an Eight Hours Law has made,
that restraint of hours is vain without restraint of
population. And yet Mr. Shaw, like his Fabian
colleagues, makes no attempt to bring the need for
restraint of population home to the workers. They
assume that everybody can understand restraint of
hours, but act as if no worker could at present under-
stand restraint of families. And to justify this policy
Mr. Shaw resorts to a pretext that is familiar to neo-
Malthusians :-
"I will venture to say, further, that the condition in which
the long hours of work and the number of unemployed keep the
workers at the present time, directly encourages the spread of
population. (Hear, hear.) Men who are demoralised by un-
steady employment, ground down by long hours of labour when
they get work, and vagabondised by loafing about when they
cannot get it: these are the men to whom it is no use preaching
prudence. As a matter of fact, they do not listen to you ; and
you find that all your preaching on the population question
really touches only the skilled artisan, the man who is in steady
employment. You cure actually sterilising the best class of worker's
at the same time that the poorest classes are multiplying with-
out any sort of restraint.” (Applause.)
Here we have two propositions : (1) that the poorer
workers cannot learn prudence, because the males are
demoralised by unsteady employment; (2) that the
SOCIALISM AND THE POPULATION QUESTION. 139
A
-
learning of the lesson of prudence means sterilising
those who learn it. I have to say that the first pro-
position is idle and the second worse. The first is the
common refuge of those philanthropic persons and
Socialists who, knowing the profound importance of
the population question, are yet afraid to deal with it
practically, for fear of odium. It is a feeble subter-
fuge. Procreation among the poor as among the rich
is a matter concerning both sexes--it is necessary to
dwell on this elementary fact—and gestation and
parturition are more and not less burdensome to poor
women than to rich. And if the wives of the poor
were taught, as they could be taught if the Malthusian
League were properly supported, how to prevent con-
ception, or at least if they had the means put within
their reach, the poorest and most shiftless of them would
learn that much of self-preservation. Only female
drunkards would be beyond control; and these are a
minority; and as it is, their children are either imbecile
or still-born.
As to Mr. Shaw's phrace about sterilisa'ion, I only
abstain from adequate comment on it because I cannot
believe he will stand to it. He must know that it is
untrue; that the workers who learn prudence simply
have fewer children and rear them better. His reck-
less words work the complete stultification of his own
argument, for he is all the while arguing that the
workers must learn prudence if all is to go well. He
goes on :-
“We must hold that any improvement in the condition of the
working classes will really improve our chance of dealing with
the population question."
.
17110
VI
140
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
So that if neo-Malthusian teaching is sterilising the
best workers, Mr. Shaw's aim would, in the terms of
his own assertion, mean the sterilising of all.
More rational is the following :-
“ Above all, considering what a very important question that
of population is, we must be careful how we make it a barrier
there is hardly any reform that you advocate on this platform
that might not be met by the argument that the increase of
population will nullify its good effects, unless, indeed, it were a
State measure dealing directly with population itself.”
But the answer to this is plain. A reform tending to
promote increase in an ignorant population may be
made safe if the mass of those demanding it recognise
the need for teaching the necessity of prudence, and
actually do so. I have elsewhere urged such reforms
on such a condition. But we have not that condition
precedent here ; and Mr. Shaw is merely closing his
eyes to the prospect when he says that "any improve-
ment” in the condition of the workers will “improve
our chance of dealing with the population question.”
Would he, if an Eight Hours Bill were passed to-
morrow, begin to instruct the workers on the subject ?
I must say I do not believe he would ; and I am very
sure that if he did he would have few of the advocates
of the Eight Hours Law to help him. Most of them
have no glimpse of the sociology of the case; and
those who have are mostly afraid to speak out.
And to what lengths the fear of being unpopular
among the proletariat on this subject 1 will lead an in-
1 In his brilliant propagandist comedy,“ Widowers' Houses,"
Mr. Shaw takes the ingenious course of putting the phrase, “It's
SOCIALISM AND THE POPULATION QUESTIONNE
. 141
telligent Socialist, is shown, I regret to say, by another
passage in a speech of Mr. Shaw's in the same debate
(p. 33) :-
(D
“I thought we had given up the notion of trying to restrict
the population by self-command. I understood that it had been
found practically that this particular sort of self-command was
not going to be exercised. As a matter of fact, it is a little
hard, you must admit, when you grind down an unskilled
labourer to such a point that he has only one thing left in life
that he can call a pleasure-his domestic affections—to ask him
to give up that pleasure too. I understood we had given up
asking him to make that sacrifice, and proposed—the neo-
Malthusians at least-to try to make him acquainted with
methods by which he could limit his family without such a sac-
rifice. I thought we had arrived at that as the only practical
solution. But when you come to recommend these methods to
the labouring classes you will find that they are not adopted
becarise they involve a certain small expenditure, and a certain
family privacy. They may be within the means of the artisan
who has a room or a couple of rooms all to himself to live in ;
but when you go to the poorest of our population, living several
families in one room, with no privacy, and with very little
money indeed, even for the smallest expenditure, then, taking
these circumstances along with the recklessness which their
miserable condition produces, you will find there is no use in
preaching limitation of numbers to them at all, either by way
of self-command, or anyway else."
all the increase of population," in the mouth of his most offen-
sive snob. Nobody knows better that such a snob would be one
of the last people to avow a belief in neo-Malthusianism. All
the while, Mr. Shaw knows also that population will have to be
controlled if London is to be reformed, as his play implies it
may be, by the County Council. But he only confesses his know-
ledge when cornered in debate : in his play he virtually teaches
the slummers that the law of population is a formula of
humbugs.
142
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
UIT
Observe the course of the argument. First, Mr.
Shaw professes to have given up a notion he had
never professed to hold, putting the notion in such a
way as to make it signify the first or old-Malthusian
view, which he knows is not what he has to deal
with. Then he comes to the neo-Malthusian position,
which he ought to have come to at once, instead of
making capital out of the old thesis that the poor
worker should deny himself the pleasures of family
affection. On the neo-Malthusian position, he com-
mits himself to the amazing pretence that the use of
checks is not adopted among the poor because it in-
volves a certain privacy, when the intercourse itself
goes on without such privacy! It would be hard to
find a stronger illustration of what can be reached in
the way of sophistry, when a clever man is deter-
mined to make out his case anyhow.
On the point of expenditure, Mr. Shaw is only less
self-confounding. He had previously said that only
the skilled workers would practise prudence. Now
he grants that a man with one or two rooms may
practise it. Thus he implies that the danger of over-
breeding lies only with the lowest grade of all. Now
this is patently untrue, save in the sense that there
the resulting mortality is greatest. The lowest grade
of all have the heaviest infant death-rate. Over-
breeding is going on constantly among the workers
who can afford the small necessary outlay and have
the necessary measure of privacy. And despite all
that Mr. Shaw and his colleagues may choose to say
about the incurable “recklessness” of poverty, this
over-breeding goes on because of ignorance. If these
AY
SOCIÁLISM AND THE POPULATION QUESTION. 143
gentlemen would take a little pains to discover the
facts, they would find that the immense majority of
the poorer workers and their wives have no knowledge
of the means they might use to prevent conception.
As to this the evidence is overwhelming. It is the
shocking fact that thousands of poor women in East
London chronically resort to the use of drugs to pre-
vent the results of conception. And all the while
philanthropists of the Fabian and other schools quiet
their qualms of conscience with the formula that it is
no use teaching the poor anything on the subject.
They have never tried to teach the poor anything on the
subject. They have not even tried to teach the middle-
grade workers. They affect to believe that neo-Malthu-
sian propaganda is sufficiently before the workers of all
grades, and that it fails to influence more than a few;
when the overwhelming difficulty is, as they might
easily ascertain, to extend the neo-Malthusian pro-
paganda, precisely because so many people are as
slack as themselves, and so many more who aim at
philanthropy are utterly uninformed on this matter.
It is not easy to be patient with those who talk of
the present inutility of neo-Malthusian propaganda
while thus abstaining from moving a finger to help it.
In view of the plain fallaciousness of their way of
reasoning, I cannot refrain from concluding that it is
their reluctance to face the question openly that
primes their argument. I have not the least belief
that they would be a whit more forward in facing it
if an Eight Hours Law were carried. They would
evade the risk of odium as before. And I say this
with great regret, because the Fabian writers above
I
UU
144
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
cited, and others who act with them, are among my
personal friends, and I am well aware of the moral
sincerity of their desire to help the workers, as apart
from the intellectual sincerity of their method.
CHAPTER XV.
INDUSTRY AND ART-CONCLUSION.
(D
IT ought not to be necessary to remind the reader that
while the principle of population has been above
argued from in refuting the theory that an Eight
Hours Law would improve the condition of labour,
the refutation has not depended solely on the assump-
tion that population will continue to increase. It has
been further shown that the English industrial system,
even at the present point of population, is one depend-
ing on impermanent conditions, and that the only
valid reform will be one which at once controls popu-
lation and sets up the beginnings of a system that
shall be capable of permanency. I am aware, of
course, that Socialists demand an Eight Hours Law
as one of the preliminaries to such a system. What I
am trying to show is that that plan would only
worsen the present situation, in defect of a general
prescription and acceptance of the principle of family
restraint, which the advocates of the Eight Hours
Law never say a word about if they can help it. And
a part of the proof of this lies in Mr. Shaw's notable
contention that the Eight Hours Law would lead to
better things by way of overthrowing all or many of
the industries which now make the luxuries consumed
145
146
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
That proposition needs to be considered politically
as well as economically, as it indicates what appears
to be a somewhat popular social ideal. The economic
comment was that if such industries were thrown
idle by an Eight Hours Law, the situation would at
once be desperately aggravated, because thousands of
workers would be thrown idle, and necessitated to
seek new work. Mr. Shaw argued that they would
find work in producing necessaries for other workers.
But that could not be, unless machinery were aban-
doned. The extra consumption, by the workers, of
boots,' clothes, furniture, and such machine-made
goods, would easily be overtaken; and the extra de-
mand for food, if less easily met, would still not lead
to so much extra demand for labour in this country
as would make up for the abolition of a number of
skilled industries. New land laws might indeed put
people on the land; but the workers are putting their
main hopes on an Eight Hours Law instead of agi-
tating at the same time for land law reform; and if it
takes years of agitation to secure the former, it will
take years more to secure the latter. They are taught
to vote against Mr. Morley and Mr. Broadhurst, who
are for land law reform and ground rent taxation,
because they are not for an Eight Hours Law. And
meanwhile the workers multiply.
Much employment, again, might be created by the
rebuilding of the worse parts of cities, and of workers'
houses generally; but this will not be brought about
by an Eight Hours Law. All new building means
increase of rents; and instead of arranging for the
interception of rents by taxation, with a view to
INDUSTRY AND ART-CONCLUSION.
147
municipal expenditure which would improve cities,
and to the relief of rates paid by themselves, the
workers, as aforesaid, stake everything on legal re-
striction of hours. They will rather return a Tory
member of Parliament, who will have no reform
whatever, than one who seeks reform by any other
method. And the gentlemen of the Fabian Society
call them on.
But not only is the method thus ruinous in terms of
economics: it is ruinous in the light of sociology.
You cannot promote civilisation by destroying half
the arts of civilisation in the name of abolishing
luxury. That is the theory of a hundred years ago,
the theory of Wallace and Hall and the average
ascetic. Civilisation is all of a piece. If you abolish
its luxurious arts, you will involve in the destruction
some of the highest functions of mind and hand. Mr.
Shaw's principle would abolish all the best art, all the
highest literature, all philosophy, as well as beautiful
decoration, and beautiful clothes and furniture, and
yachts, and Pullman cars. And supposing men should
consent to mutilate their lives in this fashion, what
prospect is there that the sacrificed things would ever
be regained ? If it is, as Mr. Shaw argues, difficult
to teach the workers family prudence now, it would
then be impossible to inculcate it on anybody, because
there would be no visible “higher standard of com-
fort” to aim at. A population all employed in making
necessaries would be the maximum population possible,
from the point of view of all schools. But a maximum
possible population so employed would be one in
which no arts could grow. The leisure gained for the
-
148
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
workers-supposing such leisure to be preserved,
which it would not long be—could only be spent in
the crudest enjoyments, unless they chose to define
“necessaries” as including artistic amusements, which
would be a curious upshot to Mr. Shaw's argument.
But there is no case on record of an artistically re-
fined society where there was not a cultivation of all
the known arts of production. Greeks indeed might
live more simply in many ways than rich English-
men do; but in Greece there was a constant demand
for artistic things; and the new ascetic ideal would
put down that as well as “high-living," oddly so-
called. The fact that Greek culture rested on slave
labour does not alter the sociology of the case. In
the United States, indeed, before the war, there was
in the northern states a comparatively high standard
of intellectual life with a low standard of luxury
in other things; but that was because the States pro-
fited by the literary culture of the Old World. And
one result of the situation has been a relative back-
wardness in the native intellectual product, save in a
few branches of amusement-giving literature.
Why not say rather that since yachts and draperies
and carved furniture and pictures are good things,
they ought incessantly to be multiplied ? Why not
aim incessantly at such multiplication? Such a
course is possible, if only men will face the problem
scientifically and not empirically; if they will take
counsel of knowledge and not of ignorance. Even on
the Socialist side there are many who set before them-
selves the saner ideal of the universal diffusion of
luxury; but such Socialists—wituess Mr. Bellamy's
INDUSTRY AND ART-CONCLUSION.
149
“ Looking Backward”-do not any more than the
others think out the problem scientifically in detail.
Thus on the field of Socialism itself the “ignorant
armies clash by night," with the old prospect that
in the end the scheme of the most general ignorance
will overpower all others. In the blind clutch at
the shadow of compulsory restriction of competi-
tive working hours, the substance of equalisation
of wealth is being lost; for first the operation
and next the failure of an Eight Hours Law will
multiply the resistance to all lines of social recon-
struction. It is folly to ignore the fact that a hard
and fast restriction of hours of labour is precisely the
most irritating of all proposed methods of bettering the
lot of the workers. Such a law will at once set up
endless forms of evasion; and to meet evasion there
will be necessary a multiplication of the means and
forms of interference, all setting up new friction,
and generating anti-social feeling. And the workers,
instead of learning any lesson of self-help, will only
call more and more for the delusive help of coercion.
As we have seen, labour leaders have talked of a wages
law to follow upon a time law; and those who know
a wages law to be a chimera, join with these in ask-
ing for the time law; though the mass of the workers
will be just as likely to insist on a wages law next
when the time law works ill. Thus we shall be
further and further from a scientific social system,
the political beginnings of which are in part even
now laid down in the programme of the Liberal party.
And all this because, first, the majority of the workers
do not think out economic and social problems; and,
17
LI
150
THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION.
next, those who can think them out choose so often
to adopt the "cry” that happens to be popular rather
than try to win popularity for a wiser proposal.
The one hope of wholesome progress lies in the
good sense of the more thoughtful workers, who ought
to be the means of guiding aright the rest, they them-
selves listening to economic and sociological reason
rather than to the blind impulse which attacks the
symptom instead of the cause. If only they were
enlightened by their instructors, instead of being con-
fused, they would go straight enough. It is not the
wiser workers who hurrah for Mr. Shaw's scheme of
destroying the industries which produce luxuries.
But even the wiser workers may be led in that direc-
tion by a crude Marxian economics, unchecked by
even elementary sociology ; and the less wise add to
primary error a temper of resentment against those
who seek to criticise their course, attributing all
opposition to sympathy with capitalism. Arguments
such as those of the foregoing pages have been de-
scribed as “annoying ” by partisans of the Eight
Hours Movement. I have only to say, once for all,
that in all human history I have seen only one kind
of security for the solution of any kind of problem
whatever, and that is the combination of zeal with
knowledge. Much reasoning may fail to bring the
true knowledge; but the zeal which will not stay
to reason needs no reasoning to rebut it.
710
THE END.
Printed by Cowan & Co., Limited, Perth.
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