Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-04-30
WORKING HOURS.
LOUIS BLANc's APPEAL FOR REDUCTION
OF WORKING HOURS.
What Was Accomplished in Trancs-The
Hours Of Labor in Paris-In-
GsmnitY Sought
PARIS, April 4, 1881.

ng hours. Some three months ago he
told me such was his intention; but,
although the subject has been agitated, it
could not obtain its place in the debate un-
til now. The same arguments he used IN
lS4S he used on this occasion, which goes
to prove how far ahead of his fellow
creatures he started out, aud how far they
still reman behind him. 1t is impossible
the world to find more grace
ful and polished orator than Louis Blanc
every word is in its right place, there is
not one too many and, combined with the
harmony OF the language, brilliant and
forcible ideas fash throughout like the
bright sunlight. His gestures are ample
and sober, and he has always endeavored
to do Justice to his fellow creatures by ap-
healing to their understanding and sense of
Justice without ever trying to impose on
them his own personality. His speeches
lose nothing in the reading OF them, for
their language is perfect, and the earnest
ness, the sincerity of the orator, pervades
it like a perfume which softeDs your
heart and brings the tears to
your eyes. | sometimes ask myself if
Lolis Blanc should be classed among re-
formers, for although his heart is filled
with sympathy for suffering humanity and
his hand is extended to all in real friend
ship, particularly to the workman whose
struggles and efforts ennoble him in the
eyes of mankind, he cannot be said to re-
semble other reformers who enter their
midst and too often by their heated words
excite them to anger and rebellion. He
seems rather to stand aloft and as though
inspired by the presence of justice demand
in her name Of the strong those rights be-
longing to the weak. His dis,nterested-
ness, his sincerity and earnestness invest
him rather with the character of a prophet.
He takes such broad and extended views
of all subjects he treats, that they III
variably enter the domain of deep philos-
ophy and high morality, and one is sur
prised that the world should hesitate to
decide in favor of the advancement of the
human race. This eminent orator said In
his speech: 4" No one more than myself Is
disposed to recognize that which is elastic
in the individual initiative and creative
power in a large expansion of the human
person have many times envied for my
country the practice OF that
sELF.GovERNMENT'
Which has partly made the grandeur of
the United States and England. | know
that very often the force OF the governing
power is the weakness OF the governed. l
do not wish for the people that sort of
guardianship which in monarchies is almost
always the hypocricy Of despotism, and |
have horror of the system which consists
in killing liberty by teaching it how to
live. What is liberty: Is it not the right
to exercise ones faculties in all their lati-
tude? Very well. l say it is because one
has been pleased to define liberty by the
word right, that one has arrived at calling
men free men who are slaves of ignorance
and misery, What matters to him who
drags heavy billet attached to his feet
the right to run Does it suffice to those
who may have the metaphysical right to
exercise all their faculties, who have
neither instruction, without which the
human mind cannot be largely developed,
nor the instruments of work, without
which human activity cannot be exercised
in all it's latitude or cannot be, except in
conditions of absolute dependence! Is
the workman who has no other means
of existence than his work really free
to obtain the price for it which he judges
equitable when he must work or else
starve? The founder of modern political
economy, Adam Smith, has made decla-
ration which | recommend to those who
imagine in combating our proposition that
they plead the cause of liberty. A manu-
facturer, he says, without occupying a
single workman could live a year or two
on the funds which he has boarded up. a
great many workmen could not subsist
without work one week, very few a month,
and scarcely one whole year. 1t might
be that in the end the master may have as
great need of the workman as this last has
need of him, bnt the need Of the master is
not SO pressing. From which Adam Smith
concludes that this last forcibly imposes all
his conditions on the other. It is true that
the workman has the right to refuse. He
has the right to starve. All, gentlemen,
do not take the abstraction for the reality,
the shadow for the substance. No, no
liberty is not only the right to be free
the power of being free, that is liberty. If
it is true that after certain time the dust,
the action of harmful substances, the noise
of the wheels, the trepidation resulting
from the continual movement OF the ma
chimes by the strongest constitutional it
is true that the workman who passes out of
each day of the year twelve and even to
fourteen hours, including his meals, in
factory, which is often far situated from
his dwelling, needs time not only to
INDULGE IN REST,
Hardly earned, but to cultivate his intelli-
gence, exercise his thought and live a
family life, is not the proposition SUBJ
mitted to you more than justified: Does
not the physical and moral health of the
workmen constitute the most noble part
of the riches OF people? Is there social
interest superior to that which adheres to
reform whose consequence would be to
increase the forces of the workman by
sparing them and adding to his intellectual
power through the culture of his mind ?
All, what There is not machine which
may not need repairing, and it Is not only
with regard to man that the restorer rest
should be unheeded. What one refuses
to understand that in reference even simply
to the industrial aud commercial prosper
ity, society is to the highest extent inter
ested in having the workmen given
time to become instructed, because man is
the generating principle of thatprosperity
because all that which leads to the
amelioration OF man leads to the amelora-
ton of that which man produces because
there is no wealth compared to that of the
wealth which is communi.
Gated without diminishing, and which |
they are right to compare to light which
can serve to illuminate thousands of others
without losing any of its volume, of its
heat, or its brilliancy But you will be
told without doubt, for it has often been
said, that
WORK Is A MERCHANDISE
And the State has no greater reason for in.
between the master and the work
man than it has for interfering between