South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1889.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 6003, 4 September 1889, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1889.

On the Bth July last, iu an article condemning the Eight Hours Bill, then before the House of Eepresentatives, as wanting in principle, we said that the principle which should underlie any Hours of Labour Bill should be this : “ That every working man has a right to a share of the work to be done; that the standard working .day should be reduced until every candidate for employment is given a chance of getting it. It would not be sufficient however to merely reduce the standard day ; it must also be enacted that no employer shall give, no employee take, any overtime, so long as any candidate for employment remains idle ; and that no man on a regular job shall have two hours overtime until every man engaged upon it has bad one hour; and so on The shortening of the work-

ing day would get rid of the unemployed difficulty and all the misery it entails, and deprive employers of the great advantage they now have through the necessities of the unemployed and the fears of the employed. The standard day cannot under this principle be fixed, it must be variable to suit the varying condition of the labour market.” Having expressed these opinions early in July it is gratifying to find that the selfsame method of remedying the evils from which the wage workers as a body suffer, was enunciated in the Nineteenth Century for that month. In that number Mr Harold Oox discusses, in an article of some length, the problem of poverty. He shows clearly that combination among the working classes cannot possibly solve the problem ; it must be solved by State interference. Under existing arrangements two evils exist side by side—many are overworked, others have no work at all, because so many are overworked. “There is work in England, he says, to keep all of us busy ; if we were to share out the

work equally we could not maintain our present standard of comfort and luxury unless every man and woman worked at least four or five hours a day. At present some of us do no work at all, others too much. This contrast is the real root of the present social unrest and individual misery. It is of course futile to hope that such a deep-seated evil as this can be all at once uprooted, but there is no doubt whatever that it can be very seriously mitigated by a reduction in the length of the working day If the working men are to be protected against overwork—[and long spells of idleness it should be added] —it must be through legislative action. Already the law forbids the adult male to work in an unsanitary factory, already it indirectly limits his labour in numerous industries by limiting the working hours of women. —[The Factory Act of 1878 forbids females and males under 18 to work more than 1-| hours overtime on 48 days a year, 72 hours a year in all] —and there fore to impose a limit on his working time in all wage-earning occupations is simply an extension of a principle already established The first step is the extension of the present Factory Act to all wage-earners of either sex. But this is only a step ; and the Eight Hours Bill is only a step The real point to be insisted on is that we must be prepared to enforce by legislative action a progressive reduction of the hours of labour, in order to keep pace with the progressive development of labour saving machinery and of industrial organisation A man thrown out of work ceases to be a consumer at the same time that he ceases to be a producer. Consequently the market is restricted, and the increased power of production is wasted.

Shoe factories and cotton mills are standing idle, while hungry men are pacing the streets shoeless and shirtless. The only remedy is to bring these men and women back into employment, and that can only be done by a progressive and compulsory limitation of the normal working day In this

way and in this way alone can we kill poverty. ..... There will be

room for all to work and time for all to play, and the progress of machinery, instead of being attended with the curses of a starving proletariat will be welcomed as the great benefactor of the human race, secured by mankind for man, bringing to each one of us the means of enjoyment and the leisure to enjoy.” It is difficult to see where any insuperable objection to the proposal can come from. Politically, socially, and morally, it appears to us, the equable shai'ing of the work to be done among those willing to work is as clearly right as the present arrangement is clearly wrong.