THE EIGHT HOURS DAY AND PROTECTION. TO THE EDITOR.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 54, 1 September 1894, Page 4

THE EIGHT HOURS DAY AND PROTECTION. TO THE EDITOR.

Sic— l notice a quiet littlo paragraph in last night's Post to the effect that the Wellington Woollen Company is about to place before the factory bands the alternative of submitting to a reduction ia wages or -working nine hours a day. This seems to me an announcement of the gravest importance. The one Labour reform which distinguishes New Zealand from the Old World ia tho voluntary adoption of an eight hours day for constant work, and Labour leaders everywhere aro eagerly watching our methods of establishing it. At a time when even Englishmen, handicapped by power of capital and the weakness of superfluous numbers, are struggling manfully for this, is the leading colony going back ? This will to a triumphant example indeed for the combinations of great capitalists to quote ! W hen in England I bad many arguments on this subject with reformers. Mr. Bernard Shaw, the Fabian Society leader, writer, and now successful dramatist, was novor tired of hearing about New Zealand land and labour reform. " Tho eight hours day," I often argued, " is the bed rock, the only reason for the existence of, the only justification for, our Protective policy. Do you imagine we snbsidise our young woollen manufaotures.for instance, in order to enrich a few manufacturers or shareholders? Certainly not ! We do this to enable New Zealand ers to work eight hours and compete against lower-typed aliens who work nino, 12, or 16." " Wait a little," my Preetrade opponents used to say, " You have much to learn. Wait until your manufacturers have induced nnmbera ot men to leave other employments, and be massed together in town as factory hands skilled in ono part of a trade and in nothing else, the doors of their former occupations closed against them and their places filled. By and by tho manufacturers, watching the opportunity of dull times, will call tho hands together, and be sorry to tell them (what may be true) that the work will not pay at the moment unless tho men work longer hours or at less wages, ' and do not let ignorant men lead you away; think of your wives and children.' Of course tho men yield to 9, 10, or 12 hours, as the case may be, and there you have the English industrial system in a nutshell." If the result b9, whilst forcing every person to pay more for their woollen gcods, to make tubsidised labourers work nine hours, while unsubsidised work eight, if tho Government ia to have no control over tho hours of even the subsidised worker, then the sooner we recant our adhesion to a Protective policy, strike off the duty on imported woollen goods, and shut up the works, tho better. I am, &c, Edward Reeves. Wellington, 29th August.