(b) Hours of Labour: Grinding Employers: Distribution of Work.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 43, 31 July 1891, Page 9

(b) Hours of Labour : Grinding Employers : Distribution of Work.

If we turn now to things exterior and corporeal, the first concern of all is to save the poor workers from the cruelty of grasping speculators, who use human beings as mere instruments lor making money. It is neither justice nor humanity so to grind men down with excessive labour as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies. Man's powers, Tike his general nature, are limited, and beyond these limits he cannot go. His strength is developed and increased by use and exercise, but only on condition of due intermission and proper rest. Daily labour, therefore, must be so regulated that it may not be protracted during longer hours than strength admits. How many and how long the intervals of rest should be, will depend on the nature of the work, on circumstances of time and place, and on the health and strength of the workman. Those who labour in mines and quarries, and in work within the bowels of the earth, should have shorter hours in proportion as their labour is more severe and more trying to health. Then, again, the season of the year must be taken into account ; for not unfrequently a kind of labour is easy at one time which at another is intolerable or very difficult. Finally, work which is suitable for a strong man cannot reasonably be required from a woman or a child And, in regard to children, great care should be taken not to place them in workshops and factories until their bodies and minds are sufficiently mature. For just as rough weather destroys the buds of spring, so too early an experience of life's hard work blights the young promise of a child's powers, and makes any real education impossible. Women, again, are not suited to certain trades ; for a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the good brimnn<r up of chi dren and the well-being of the family. As a general principle it may be laid down, that a workman ought to have leisure and rest in proportion to the wear and tear of his strength; for the waste ot strength must be repaired by the cessation of work _ In all agreements between masters and work-people, there is always the condition, expressed or understood, that there be allowed proper rest for soul and body. To agree in any other sense would be against what is right and just ; for it can never be right or just to require on the one side, or to promise on the other, the giving up of those duties which a man owes to his Lrod and to himself.