Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1897-06-23
SIX HOURS OF LABOR.

SIX HOURS OF LABOR.
II Machinery wnl Not Tighten the Toll OF
Labor. Machinery Had better BE
Smashed.
In New Zealand an eight-hour day is
already established by law, and the re-
formers there are now demanding a
six-hour day. So if a British COLONY
dares to lead in this matter, surely it
is not visionary to expect our republic
to fall in line.
Already our bank clerks have a six
hour day. Our teachers have a FIVE
and-one-half hour day, or "a hours
week, and 40 weeks in a year. A
teacher works 1850 hours year, while
garment worker, working IL hours a
day, works 3,744 hours year.
Many of our American flags are
stained by the tears of young girls
who work IA hours day for S. week,
of '.sound money"
As Myron Reed has cleverly said.
I'VE have no tears to export;n all our
sympathy is needed for home use.
There are many wealthy citizens
who sympathize with Greece, and Ar
menia, and Cuba, and believe in liberty
in every land except their own. They
would pass around the hat for a lame
duck in Asia, while for the lack of
few dollars their fellow citizens are
being evicted and pauperized.
They send South Sea Islanders bar
rels of woolen clothes made in New
York sgeat-shops, and write gushing
letters of brotherly love on note paper
made by the half-paid drudges of
Holyole; and send money to Greece
that should have been paid to Boston
shop girls.
They are Christians abroad and Turks
at home. Spain and Turkey might say
to America: ''Thou mote hunter, take
the beam out of thine own eye.p
1t would be a good trade to swap
Mark Hanna for Gen. Weyler, and
John Sherman for Edhem Pasha
If capitalists combine to limit pro-
duction and raise prices why should
| not workers combine to limit labor?
1t is the man who works long and
| cheaply who drives all workers into
poverty. 1t is the meek, obedient,
| tireless servant that perpetuates slav-
| cry. 1t is the slaves "Yes massa,
please massa," that turns an employer
| into despot
Men who are building their own
| scaffold should not be in a hurry. If
you work by the day, work slow; if
| by piece-work, don't be particular.
Decrease the quantity in the first
place, and the quality in the second.
Business morality is the morality of a
! battlefield. You can't walk straight
in crooked street.
A shorter day means a better product.
Jaded men cannot do good work You
find this out when you buy an over
coat made by an overworked tailor,
and it rips up the back before you have
had it a month.
If post office clerks, and teachers
and preachers, and doctors, and law
yers must have short days and vaca-
tions, why not mechanics? A me-
chanic's work is brain work. If YOU
don't think so, try it. 1t would re-
| quire brain of ten-preacher power to
even understand the construction OF
some machines, not to mention know
ing how to make them.
The brain work of lawyer consists
in rummaging for some rusty prece-
dent or quibbling technicality The
brain work of a preacher consists in
1 remembering some other mans SER
| mons, or in quoting the book of Job to
some old lady who has dyspepsia and
thinks it is religion; but the mechanic
must depend on the skill of his own
hands and the quickness of his own
brain.
The purpose of machinery is to give
| leisure to laborerS. Unless it does
this, it ought to be smashed. If civil
ization is only an incubator to hatch
millionaires, then we had better be
come Indians again. Before there was
machinery men lived and owned their
own homes.
To-day 1900 shoemakers do a.
much as 2,250, 900 could have done 1Ot
years ago, yet the shoe trade wa.
never more unpromising than it i.
now.
| Machinery has added speed and in
tensity and discomfort to production
factory workers life is equivalent t.
imprisonment at hard labor Broker
Chapman should have been sent t,
work in one of Havemeyers sugar
factories, and he would find one da,
in such an inferno would be create
punishment than a month in a jai
! parlor.
Last week a Boston young lady wa
being taking through some of tn,
sweat-shops of that cultured city, an,
the very sight and atmosphere of on
of them made her sick, so that she ha,
to be taken home.
During the hot summer months tha
are approaching, when wealthy peopl
are struggling for breath at the seasid
and in Europe, they expect their em
ployes to toll ten and twelve hours
day in the dusty furnace of a cit,
street.
In spite of the intense heat, tn,
murkey, impure air, the deafenine
roar of machinery, the CRIME ant
sweat and dust, when every second
seems a minute and every minut.
seems IN hour, our free-born factory
J workers are expected for ten long
weary hours to be as accurate as jew
eler and as energetic as blacksmith.
For midsummer at least let us de
mand a six hour day.-Herbert w. Cas-
son, in Coming Nation.
Republicanism.
In speaking of the increase of none,