The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-05-02

follow. reducing their nine-hour day to thu
eight-hour system on the LIST of July; the brick
layers and stone-Inasons of this city have had
the nine-hour day for over year; and a verv
slight inquiry will show whether this shortened
time has brought about riot and drunkenness
The general reduction of the working day to
eight hours, will. according to all analogy and
experience still further reduce the besotting
mania and still further raise the moral status az
the masses. One does not need to look far to
find the reason for this.
Secondly, the shorter day is an economical
elevator There has been great deal of sars
casm flung at the old couplet:
''The longer the hours the shorter the pay
Whether you work by the piece or work by the day"
But it is q fact sustained by statistics Wages
were at their minimum in England under the
fourteen-hou day; they rose when twelve hours
were established; they rose again under the ten
hour system; and yet again they rose when tho
Saturday half-holiday shortened the weeks
work to fifty-six hours. He who denies These
facts does it in the face of volumes of official
data full of the details.
We have had the same experience in our own
country. Wages are much higher than they
were forty years ago, with longer hours and 1t
is inevitable that they must rise under yet
fewer hours. Those industries that work the
fewest hours have the highest pay; those that
work the most have the lowest; and to this law
there is no exception. Some of the eight or
ninehour industries nearly double the wages OF
those with twelve or fourteen hours. l could
give hundreds of illustrations of this law, which
Is not hard to comprehend. The rates OF wages
ara fixed by men out of work; and by reducing
the unemployed gangs the pressure Of ideneSa
upon labor is diminished.
The reduction of the hours to eight will give
employment to the million men, who according
to the official report of the National Bureau OF
Labor, are wasting their lives in the vain search
for employment, and thus the consuming power
of the whole people will be enlarged to the ad-
vantage of all industrial pursuits. Under
ms ehi nf 1ahn
so far exceeds the demand that the purchaser or
employer has an undue control OF the market
The notion that with shorter hours must come
lower wages, is based error-the error
that the wage worker gets the full price of his
labor as measured by the value of its product
Reduce the undue proportion that goes to CAPT
tai in the shape of rent, profits, dividends and
interest and there is no trouble about raising
the proportion that goes TO wages
In the next place there is the argument from
mechanism. The greater part of the work OF
the world is now done, not in the old fashion Of
handcraft. but by machinery, through which
new industrial forces have been let loose upon
mankind. Few of us realize how vast have been
the strides in this direction, how far manual Ia
Dor has been displaced, and how radical is the
revolution that IS being wrought Within the
past twenty years the mechanical resources OF
the world have risen from IL, 0QO,0 600 horsepower
to 81. 000, 900. In our own country, within the
past ffteen years. or since 1870, the horse-power
of mechanism has doubled, having risen from
Z0UU,UUU TO 4,OUU,UUu NOW, one morse power IL
estimated as the equivalent of ten men; SO that
thus, within these fifteen years. there has been
added to the resources of the capitalists, who
own the enginery of our country, the strength
of % 000, 900 slaves! Surely it small thing,
from an industrial point of view, to abolish
negro chattelism, in the presence of such tre-
mendous increase in the power of capitalism.
This growth of mechanism has not stopped, but
is advancing with ever-increasing momentum.
Labor saving inventions, may be seen from
the reports of the Patent Office, or by
the observation of any that looks
into the mines, mills, factories and
work shops of the country are advancing to tho
GLIDING even agriculture, through which twenty
millions of our people look for the means of life.
Illustrations of this fact crowd upon my mind,
but have not the room here to give them.
The working people must find some means Of
dealing with these transforming and revolution
airy forces. hold that they must yet become
the possessors and controllers of these forcea
which they have brought into play; and that the
time must come to an end in which they are 60
be of advantage mainly to a capitalist class. One
of the first steps toward the realization of this
will grow out of the universal adoption of the
eght-hour system of labor, which has bearings
of a sweeping kind not yet foreseen.
In thus touching upon these moral economical
and mechanical reasons for shorter hours of Ia
Dor. have but impinged upon the edge of
question that is of superlative Importance to the
working millions.
stop the reduction of the hours of labor, and will
you be satisfied with eight Heaven alone knowsl
if mechanism goes on pushing the industrial rev.
oution as it has done for the past half century.
At present, however it is not necessary for any
body to put himself on the trap of the reductic
ad absurdum
Who Will Be Benefited. and Who VIII Not