1 THE LABOUR PROBLEM.

Northern Advocate, 11 August 1888, Page 3

THE LABOUR PROBLEM.

Which is right ? Mr George says * the workingnien. " You should have free land, and then you would be able to work less and get more foi your work." Mr Quinn says to the workingmen, "You should work fewer hours, and suffer fewer persons « to work, and then there would be a greater demand for your labour, and you would get higher wages:" Mr Atkinson says, in his address before workingmen at Boston : " Produce more, and you will have more to divide. If you work fewer hours, and thus produce less of the things requried for the satisfaction of human wants, there will be less to divide, and then, if a few of you should get more than you do now, they could get it only by robbing other workingmen and women who get less than they do now." It seems exceedingly important for the workingmen and workingwomen of this country to settle this matter correctly. Which. of these advisers is right ? Mr George is clearly wrong. Land in this country is free already, to anybody who pleases to occupy it. It does not matter, as yet, that there is a prospect that the land will all become occupied within a certain number of years, more or less ; the fact stands that millions of acres of good soil, open to settlement under exist- • ing laws, are free to anybody who pleases to occupy and cultivate. But the workingmen do not go on the land, first because they prefer other Tocations, and especially because they profer the life of cities and towns. They understand painting, housebuilding trades, and working in factories, milta and mines. They do not understand farming. They do not -Xapt the long hours and the. constant ta^2lb-sf_J;he farms. Free land is to BRnem a gift which they do not want, ™ and it requires all the ingenuity o\ the adroit advocate to make them believe that they would be helped in _ohv way by that gift. If any oi """" them do believe it, they are only misled. The prices of farm products have in recent years been so reduced by the rapid increase in number of farm workers and in acreage devoted to the production of wheat, cotton and other great staples, that the fanner finds scanty return for Mb long labour. Which is right, then, the man who says "Produce more and you will have more to divide," or the man who says " Produce less, and demand a bigger share of the smaller product?" There would seem to be little room for doubt about it. If a few workingmen get higher wages than before, the aggregate product oi all labour remaining the same, the necessary result is that what they gain others must lose. But if, by working fewer hours, or doing less effective work, the workingmen produce less than before, and at the same time demand higher wages, the practical result is that all must suffer. Even the few who get higher wages will find the cost of things they have to buy increase more than their wages increase. But meanwhile they take from the great body of workers a larger share of a diminished product, and so wrong the many in order to help the few. The true way to uplift and permanently "benefit the working people, in this as in every other country, is to secure for all the largest possible return foi their labour, fairly and equitablj divided. That result is to be attained. sot by cutting down as much as possible the hours of work or the quantity of things produced, but on the con trary, by making the hours of labour more productive in the supply of al human wants. — N.Y. Tribune.