Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-07-02
HOURS OF LABOR.

There are employers who are impressed
with the undeniable truth that the way to
get the best work out of an employee is to
give him ample time for rest and recre-
alton. Somehow the custom has grown of
working car dryers and conductors longer
hours than most other laborers in outdoor
vacations. In San Francisco a corporation
known as the Omnibus Street Railway
Company-the first to lay a line of street
railway in California, by the way-has
twice within year, of its own motion, re-
duced the hours of labor exacted of its
employees. 1t appears that the company
has found its business steadily increasing,
and the demands upon its force therefore
more exacting. Instead of making the
old force do the extra duty, it voluntarily
puts on more men, and reduces the hours
of labor for all, that they may more
efficiently discharge their duties and draw
more custom to the line This is wise
policy. With some employers the rule
limit of physical endurance; to demand
all their time as their absolute property,
to be disposed of as they please, and over
which the employee has himself no sort of
right of control. Such employers imagine
that they get larger profit out Of such
labor. On the contrary, all wise business
men know that the most liberty they can
give their employees, consistent with rea-
sonable business demands, the better serv-
ice, closer attachment to and deeper inter
est in the business they receive from their
wage-winners. There are houses in
San Francisco and elsewhere which
work their employees from the earliest
possible hour of morning to the latest pos
sible hour at night that can be wrung from
rest giving the workers just about time
enough to get from their places of labor to
their beds for requisite sleep And these
shops and business places wonder how it is
that competitors who give employees many
hours more of rest can afford it. But the
reason is not difficult to find Freeman
Hunt, in the Merchants Nagaziae demon
strated the true policy in these matters
twenty-five years ago and more, and the
rule of that day is just as applicable now
The Omnibus Railway Company evidently
understands it thoroughly. 1t has cut the
hours Of labor now TO twelve, without de-
crease Of wages, and that the company will
make money by this policy goes without
saying. If ii would make still another
cut, and bring the limit down to ten hours
it would, we believe, be still more the
gainer. The merchants of New York who
have acceded to the petition of the Clerks
Association for closing at 6 P. NJ, are re-
ported by the New York press as saying
that they have actually made money by
the policy, increased the efficiency of their
forces of statesmen and augmented the net
daily income, while they have been almost
entirely rid of the troubles that formerly
existed relative TO excuses for laxity, tarii-
ness, want OF interest and much changing
of statesmen. In two New England facto-
tories, where there were exacted for years
extra hours Of labor, \ new policy of
shorter hours has recently proven to be
wise, for the daily product under the
shorter term has not fallen down, while
the daily expense list had decreased The
willing horse is the one that is not forever
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