Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1870-01-13

as they appear at night or quit their bnsi
ness. what mockery the eight-hour re.
form presents! Like the water around
thirsty Tantalus, it is annoyingly in sight
but always receding from the lips.
The most considerable part of manufao.
/ lures is now conducted on the principle
of piece-work; not by the day, but
fixed price for so much work turned out
and the workmen commence when the
machinery starts and cease when that
stops, often urging for their own benefit
an extension of time. Men thus engaged
would find the eight-hour rule constructed
only for a few fayorites, but certainly not
for them.
Professional men all work much more
than eight hours, provided they have any
call or cause. If Choate, or Caleb Cush'
ing, or our distinguished chairman Of
Foreign Affairs had been restrained by an
eight-hour strait-iacket they might have
remained in the great ocean of medioc-
rity, buried and unseen forever. Long
and weary hours is the price OF eminence
as well as the price of subsistence.
To all those engaged on railroads or on
the ocean, lakes, and rivers, moving by
day and night in the transportation Of
passengers and the commerce of the
i world, can a new rule release an hour OF
will it buy of them a single vote, that
crucial test by which SO many measures
are pronounced good or bad !?
1t may be thought by those employed
in the navy-yards and Government Print
| ing Office that it is easy for Senator sit
ting here daily only from IL m. to or
o'clock p. m. to pursue this line OF argu-
ment, but my observation of congressional
service-now not a short one-emboldens
me to say that all members of Congress,
or all at least who deserve to be members,
although the daily session appears to be
brief, work constantly not less than
twelve hours per day, and some members
very much more than that. No class in
the country is more increasingly over
worked than faithful members of Con-
gress.
Even when we come to woman we find
most of them work and must work more
than twelve hours per day. l do not
know but they might be willing to swap
their present chance of voting for chance
in the eight hour law. In the distribu-
ton of favors the fashion seems to be
''cheat the lady" With greatly inferior
strength women must continue to labor
comparatively much the longest stretch
of time, while our pity would appear to
be wholly demanded for men, who work
perhaps not more than two-thirds as long.
The work and Juggling domestic care of a
good housewife, like her love, has no end,
and would not be curtailed in the least by
any jolly reduction of the labor of her
husband.
OF what use will this reform be to fish.
ermen on the Grand Banks or in the Arc.
tic Ocean 1t would be to them like a
gift of bottle of 'tDay and Martins
backing" when they were really in want
of q pair of boots.
|, Ii one class may be controlled by law
when they shall come and when they shall
go so may any other, and if the men in
shops and ship-yards may be controlled,
why not those in the field and in the
counting-room or on the high seas and
railways?
From the general fusion and perpetual
reinforcement of other races, coming from
abroad to find a better opportunity to
labor, and who ought not to be deIuoral-
lied by any visionary idea of living with
out labor, will result the moral and intel
lectual power as well as the ma
terial growth which is forever to give the
American people character among the
great nations of the world. The grand
eur of our future history largely depends
upon the preservation of the republican
idea that voluntary labor discredits no
man; and though that idea may be more
surely undetermined by slow approaches
two hours at a time-than by bold and di-
rect attack, this attempt to sell labor and
keep it too, it is to be feared, is pushed on
| by some with the silent conviction that
after all labor is not honorable, and that
some scheme for its avoidance must be in
| vented.
As l have already observed, much OF
the labor of our country is performed in
connection with labor saving instruments
and machines, moving at fixed rate of
speed, which cannot be increased and con-
tinue to turn out good work. 1t is plain
that when these machines, involving a
large outlay of capital, run only eight
hours instead of ten per day, only four.
ffths of the usual amount of work will
be done. The products of all such estab-
lishments would thus be increased in cost
as we'll as diminished in quantity twenty
per cent. How many could go on under
such a regime? massachusetts, employs
large part of the capital and almost four
| times az many persons Ell ,421) in manu-
features and the mechanic arts as in agri-
culture, (G2,636) The total products of
all her industries, save agriculture, in
1865, including the cost of raw materials,
amounted to about four hundred and
thirty five million dollars, and those of ag-
riculture to ISL ,000,0 900 The relations
of capital and labor there have always
been blended in unbroken harmony. The
products of the State in consequence of
the auxiliary power of machinery may be
estimated TO have been more than doub-
led, and possibly quardrupled. To re-
strict the hours of action of all their tire
less giants of steam and of water would
be to make manufactures and the me.
chanio arts Improbable pursuits Wen
dell Phillips lecture on the lost arts would
find new illustration. Short time, if it
touched the hours of the laborer only,
would be sufficiently pernicious; but it
would include, and therefore paralyze, all
Investments in manufacturing by ma
chinery The wheels of Lowell, revoly-
ing only eight hours per day, would be
eclipsed in all markets by those revolving
| u.
A tariff on tiptoe could not protect them.
Short time would be destructive to the
profits not only of labor, but of capital,
and finally strangle the proprietor of that
hitherto model commonwealth Both
capital and labor would have to emigrate,
for the soil of Massachusetts, il not fertile
enough to offer to its people the alterna-
tive resource of living upon bread alone
Is such result to be courted?
A division of labor is all that sustains
the price of days work here above that
of the lowest European standard Break
down the mechanic arts and manufac.
lures, and return all that are therein EN-.
ployed to agriculture, and Americans
would soon become merely rude competi.
tors of the barbarians on the Danube, OF
of the wild hunters of the forest.
The desire of pleasure more often than
anything else is the origin of such false
theories of human action as shipwreck tht
friends Of progress among mankind The
indulgences sold by the Roman church il