SHORTER WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 58, 9 March 1936, Page 6

SHORTER WEEK.

After reading and considering the views for and against the introduction of the 40-hour week it seems to me that 110 proper understanding has even yet been readied on this question; that those of either persuasion are merely seeing their own angle of the case and remain, after all discussion, of their own opinion still, uneducated to the fuller realisation which should cover the whole matter and provide a ground whereon both could come to an accordance. On the one hand, the substance of the contention is that shorter hours would increase costs and reduce the wages that may be paid out of industry, which, in fact, is but another way of stating the idea of the "wages fund." 'Conversely, this is denied. Now what is this wages fund? I submit that wages are paid out of production, that the wages fund, indeed, is the whole of production less such as is reserved for capital, and that production is increasingly being multiplied and cheapened by the use of power and machinery.- Thus the wages fund should progressively increase, and if it does not,, then that can only be because of wastage or misdirection of production. And since the control of production is in the hands of the rulers of capital and industry, so these rulers must accept the responsibility for such wastage, which may even be their policy, some will think, as seeming to be to their advantage in conducing to the retention of that control. From this wages fund there may be paid out two kinds of dividend, in goods and leisure, the proportions of which it is for the community to determine. And I believe the majority are now persuaded that out of the present-day increase of actual or potential production and consequent wages of goods and leisure they can well give themselves a little more leisure; and that, even so, they need not thereby reduce tlieir present dividend of goods. This rather than accept the whole increase in goods, for will not most men, having one fishing rod or cricket bat, rather go fishing or play cricket than work merely to make more rods or bats for a comparatively useless and pleasureless possession ? And even of alternative goods, one can come to the point when one has enough and would rather enjoy what one has than labour for more. "The fullness of a man's fife consisteth not in the abundance of the things which, he possessetli." D. M. ROSS.