D

THE SHORTER WORKDAY-ITS

PHILOSOPHY

By SAMUEL GOMPERS

ECREASING the hours of labor is a revolutionary force. Contrast the life of the toiler who works twelve hours with that of one who works eight hours. The difference in the workday affects personal habits, standards of living and social relations.

The man who works twelve hours spends perhaps one hour going to and from work, and surely sometime for meals-the rest of the day is for sleep and-shall we say-opportunity for self-improvement. Twelve long hours of work exhaust physical strength and fill the whole body with the poison of fatigue. The time for rest is sufficient only partially to counteract the fatigue and so the deadening effect of the poison is cumulative. There is neither energy, inclination, nor opportunity for the man or the woman who works twelve hours-the worker becomes only a work machine. The darkness under which he creeps to and from work hides his misery and his poverty from the world and often from himself. Daylight and a chance to see, stir up discontent necessary to arouse action.

The individual who works eight hours or less does not each day exhaust his energy. He has time for recuperation and something more. His mind is more alert and active. He is capable of more vigorous and more effective work. He goes to and from work at a time when well-dressed people are on the streets. He really has time and opportunity for making comparisons and forming desires. He has longer time to stay at home, sees other homes better furnished, and consequently wants a better home for himself. He wants books, pictures, friends, entertainment. In short, he becomes a human

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being with intellectual desires and cravings. This change makes him a more valuable worker. Because his standard of living has changed he demands higher wages. Men and women will not continue indefinitely to work for wages that force them to live below their concepts of what constitutes standards of living.

This is why the shorter workday is one of the primary, fundamental demands of organized labor. The labor movement represents organized discontent with poorer conditions and definite purposeful effort to secure better. It represents ambition and ideals.

Before the labor movement of the United States was organized upon a permanent, national basis, the working day was from sun-up to sun-set. During the thirties there were numerous efforts by trades to establish ten hours. By proclamation, in 1840, the ten-hour workday was established in the Navy Yard at Washington, D. C. During the latter sixties came a revival of the trade union movement, and the eight-hour day became the slogan. Eight Hour Leagues were formed. Local labor organizations and economic associations educated public opinion in the philosophy of eight hours and the benefits of the shorter workday. In 1868 a federal eight-hour law was enacted. The National Labor Union, organized in 1869, endorsed the eight-hour day. The Knights of Labor was formed the same year and added impetus to the eight-hour movement. During the seventies there were numerous trade strikes for the eight-hour day. There was conviction and desire, but the movement to obtain the results lacked direction and unity.

Three years after the American Federation of Labor was organized, based upon the principle of trade autonomy, the 1884 annual convention adopted a resolution that the trades should fix May 1, 1886, as a definite day and bend their efforts toward establishing an eight-hour day upon that date. The movement aroused enthusiasm and hope, and was stirring the working people all over the country. As the result of this united effort, trade unions increased greatly their numbers and powers. Lectures and talks were delivered, literature distributed and agitations held for the eight-hour cause. The opposition and the treatment of the leaders were of such a nature as to develop among them devotion and a spirit of consecration to the cause.

Eight hours was forcing its way with irresistible power into workshops and factories. Many trade agreements were signed before May 1, but the dreadful Haymarket disaster in Chicago checked this unprecedented progress. Nevertheless, three national unions established the eight-hour day during that campaign-the cigarmakers, the German typographers, and the stonecutters.

The labor movement and the eight-hour cause were not permanently retarded. The A. F. of L. decided to select some one international each year, and to concentrate all efforts on securing the eight-hour day in that industry. As time went by this policy was no longer advisable, and securing the shorter workday is now the concern of the organizations in each trade.

As the years have gone by, the eight-hour philosophy which originated in the misery and weary toil of workers has become an accepted principle of society and industry. Employers have learned that the short-hour worker is a better, more productive, more valuable worker than the one who drudges

long hours for low wages. The short-hour worker has more vitality, more ability, more resources, to put into his work-he accomplishes more in a shorter period of time. As a natural result, decreasing hours of daily work invariably results in increasing wages.

When employers have to pay higher wages to workers they place a higher estimate upon those services and increase managerial efficiency and secure improved machinery, tools, and methods in order to make labor power more effective. Thus the dignity of Labor, of which vote-seekers love to discourse, assumes reality through the economic collective power of workers who secure for themselves a shorter workday and higher wages.

Many apologists for long hours and low wages claim that the short workday and high wages necessarily result in higher costs of production and high selling prices and hence are contrary to the best interests of society. That theory is contradicted by facts the individual production of the short hours, highly paid workers, is vastly greater than that of the long hours worker who always works under less advantageous conditions. Placing a high estimate upon human labor power stimulates the invention of machinery and the discovery of better methods. The cumulative effect of improvements is cheaper and increased production, hence lower selling prices and the benefit of all society.

For

The shorter workday movement originated in the need of overworked employes, and has been carried on through their unions assisted by other agencies that the workers have been able to convert to their cause. workers under the government it is not possible to use the same methods of determining contractual relations as are used in dealing with private employers. For these workers legislation has been enacted to secure them less burdensome hours of work-but even in this case the initiative and the burden of work in securing the legislation have fallen upon organized labor. Legislation for shorter workdays in government employment is not only secured because of the economic power of the workers but it is enforced by the same power. Merely enacting a law does not guarantee the benefits of its enforcement-that depends upon the vigilance of those to be benefited. This is manifest in the continuous efforts of organized labor to prevail upon government officials to provide for the eight-hour day in government work and contracts. Meanwhile there are all the perils from the courts and AttorneysGeneral that minimize and limit its application.

When an attempt is made to regulate by law relations between employers and employes in private industry, the difficulties are increased. Obviously the primary difficulty with securing results by legislation is its indirectness. Instead of dealing directly with the employer who has power to establish an eight-hour day in his industry, influence must be used with political representatives as well as the employers' lobbyists, and then upon government administrators and upon their deputies who are supposed to enforce the law. Violations of laws must be righted through the slow methods of litigation, which have regard for precedent and red tape rather than for justice and human rights. Consider a few well-known examples of eight-hours by law: Colorado has an eight-hour day for miners, yet the whole country has been stirred by the

courageous fight of the Colorado miners to secure, among other things, an eighthour workday. Never will there be an eight-hour workday in the Colorado mines until there are miners' unions which force mine operators to operate their mines on an eight-hour basis and retain in their own power the enforcement of the regulation.

Consider what has happened in some shipyards which had government contracts requiring the eight-hour day. Workmen were employed upon the federal government work six or eight hours, and for two, three, or four hours more upon other work, not covered by such contracts.

Consider this statement of Secretary Iffland of the Journeymen Bakers' International Union, one who has had experience with the law of New York to establish a ten-hour day in all bakeries:

"The local unions of the state of New York through agitation spent considerable money and time to be successful in passing the law, in which we succeeded in 1896. At that time we were of the opinion that by giving through our efforts the ten-hour day by law to the bakery workers of that state, they would realize what the organization could do to that effect, and by that would become members of our organization, but we had to find out very soon that we had made the mistake of our lives, as from that day on the members dropped from the organization, and the unorganized threw up to those who tried to organize them that they don't need an organization any more as they have the ten-hour workday by law.

"Not alone this, but members who used all their energy to pass the law have been insulted as corrupt politicians, etc., and the radical labor papers of course denounced at that time, such action taken by organized labor as nothing could be expected from the political organizations under the present system of society. We very soon had to find out that we were confronted to regain our strength and make good the loss of membership, as well as prestige in our organization in the state of New York, although the organization was weak, to institute agitation for a nine-hour workday, and it has proved that only through the effort of organized labor were we successful in gaining the shorter workday, and we welcomed the day when that law was declared unconstitutional."

Experience with legislation has taught that statutes are very much akin to repositories for exalted New Year resolutions unless there is some force that can and will give life and influence in the affairs of the people.

Another difficulty with the legislative method is the diffusion of effort. There are comparatively few people interested in the matter, and yet the whole body politic must be interested, educated and roused to action.

Contrast this with the simple, direct methods of economic action. Those workers who want the shorter workday know why they want it, and they want it so intensely that they are ready to fight for it. Forceful independent men and women, they assume the responsibility of their own welfare and make sacrifices to secure their rights. By agreement or by strike, they secure what they need, and because they have won it themselves they value it and maintain it. They are organized in such a way that they can give expression to their will and secure results in the most direct way possible.

Two influences have been operating to develop sentiment in favor of establishing in private industry, legislative regulation of contractual relations; one, an ardent enthusiasm to accomplish big results by one revolutionizing regulation, the other a sort of moral flabbiness that refuses to assume responsibility for its own life but endeavors to cast upon society not only all responsi

bility for the environment in which people live and work, but also responsibility for securing for them conditions that are desirable and helpful.

The latter is a repudiation of the characteristics that enabled Americans to get results. They never feared the hard places but dared to wrestle with a primeval country. They were red-blooded men and women with ruggedness in their wills. They were ready to fight for right and justice and equa'ity, ready to defend what was rightfully theirs. This is the spirit that has made the American labor movement the most aggressive labor organization in the world, and has made its members the most efficient workers to be found anywhere. The American labor movement has done things for the workers despite hostility of employers and indifference of society.

Then as to the other influence the desire to secure the big thing at one "fell swoop." That has appealed to the imagination of dreamers and those who are infected with intellectual phantasmagoria.

They forget that after all permanent changes and progress must come from within man. You can't "save" people they must save themselves. Unless the working people are organized to express their desires and needs, and organized to express their will, any other method tends to weaken initiative.

And this is not a narrow policy, unmindful of the difficulties and hardships that encompass overworked, exploited workers. The organized labor movement has done much for the unorganized; in incalculable ways the unorganized have been the beneficiaries of the fights and struggles of the organized.

Because of public opinion that has been formulated and roused by organized labor, the old workday of fourteen to sixteen hours has practically passed away. The twelve-hour workday obtains in but few industries, whereas ten, nine, and eight hour days have been secured by organizations. Then the benefit is necessarily bestowed upon allied trades, because of association in the same industry. The burden of the eight-hour fight has been borne by organized labor. Now there are few who deny Labor's claims, and there are many sympathetic scientists and publicists ready to substantiate them. This is a heritage the organized bestow upon the workers of today.

Organized labor created the sentiment for an eight-hour day-it has made possible and secured the eight-hour day for many trades. Without organized labor it would be impossible to maintain an eight-hour day in any trade or industry. The labor movement, which is the organized workers directing and controlling their own affairs and destinies, is the only dependable defense and protection of those who work for wages.

If the workers surrender control over working relations to legislative and administrative agents, they put their industrial liberty at the disposal of state agents. They strip themselves bare of means of defense-they can no longer defend themselves by the strike. To insure liberty and personal welfare, personal relations must be controlled only by those concerned.

But after all, even if it is the quicker way, is the quick way always the best way? Suppose you have a boy for whom you are fondly ambitious. You wish him to be a business or a professional success-do you start him in either at the age of ten, or do you wait upon the process of education? When