The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1900-12-29
Which will give us the key to the myst-

S"N'NA. NJ tu6AS Soop III lIo. lG1Sl dloly oAS,
comes from the awakened volition, or
will power, of the masses. Indiffer-
ence and ignorant submission to an
existing order never broke a shackle
or won a battle.
In order that men shall exert them
selves for an object they must first de-
sire that object. 1t follows that the
measure of activity displayed by the
average man will be in direct propor-
tion to his wants. If he wants only the
kind Of living which is necessary to
support an animal existence, that is the
standard of living he will have, and be
content with. Thus in countries where
long hours of labor prevail the accept
ed standard of living for the masses is
coarse food, the cheapest Of clothing
and little recreation or use Of the arti-
cles which appeal to the higher facul-
ties-such as books, pictures, etc.
of civiliZa ton. Our American capital
lists, who, in their eagerness to make
money, draw upon the reservoirs of
cheap labor in Europe or elsewhere for
workers in the swea tshops, mines, coke
regions or railroads, inject into our
body polite a distinctly lower standard
of civilization, with the lower standard
of living, the standard of wooden shoes,
of polyandry, refuse fare and litter
acy. 1t is not that the labor of these
men is not worth more than they re-
ceive, but that their standard of liv-
ing is such that, until their volition for
better things is aroused "a slow pro-
cess). they will work for the wages
which will procure for them the living
they have been accustomed to receive,
1t thus follows that it is not common
~ the value of what is produced which
chiefly determines the wage rate, but
the nature and degree Of the wants of
the workers, as embodied in their Gus
tomary mode of living
1t is just here that we begin to see
the inside forces which are at work
shaping and moulding the lives of the
Wage-earners, the thousand and one in
fuences which differentiate the fairly
paid and Independent short-hour un-
lonlst and the meagerly- paid servile,
long hour laborer.
1t is cry from the latter to the
former, and many things must be taken
into consideration if we are to find the
real causes of the TRANSFORMED ton.
Every awakened consciousness, every
independent thought, every developed
faculty, has lent it's contributory in
fuence, but it is not too much to claim
that there is one element in the equa-
tjnn nf INN
any other in lifting up the standard of
living, and this is the element of leis-
ure. And by leisure we of course mean
assured" leisure, not enforced :fdleness,
Khiesris n ii not Il mfr
Ing as excessively long hours; but thafs
portion of title which remains for the
Wage-earner to use as he sees tit after
he has expended the customary part of
the day in the pursuit of a livelihood.
And note here that the gain to the
Wage-earner in assured leisure by the
reduction of the length of the working
day from ten to eight hours is far
greater than at first appears. Charles
Lamb once wrote: Il have lived fifty
years. but if take from those years
the time have lived for others but little
remains" Even 80 with the working
man, who must expend all his waking
hours in, as Carlyle put it, "grinding
in the mill industry" His real life,
that which he has full use and control
of, under the ten hour day, is short in
deed. A gain Of two hours of assured
leisure is not alone a reduction of his
working-day by one-tifth; it is the
lengthening of his real life in a far
greater degree, probably the doubling
of the time in which he is free man.
And this is the dynamic force of the
shorter hour movement. 1t brings into
the daily existence of millions an ele-
ment Of freedom which was not before
possessed by them. It has little to do
with the case that many of them may.
not at once employ this freedom to it's
utmost utility. They must need learn
to use time as they must learn to use
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