Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-07-27
LAND FOR FACTORY HANDS
ENGLISH SCHEME TO LET MEN
TILL GARDENS.
Work Half Day for Half Pay in the
Mills and Then Work the
Soil.
From the London Express.

From the London Express
Is 1t necessity we cannot escape that
progress in manufactures shall depopu-
late the country districts. and continue to
divorce the laborer from nature, as its
scarcely unchecked tendency has been to
do for the last hundred years? With
the invention of the steam engine and
the development of the factory system it
was inevitable that the village black
smith. the carpenter, the artisan who
earned his livelihood by making things
i'll the sunshine by his cottage door, with
in sound of children's voices should
gradually give place to the man who lives
by making part of a part of thing amid
the smoke of a city and the cIang of
machinery.
1t is useless to repine. The era of the
individual who creates something in
which he can take a pride. whose work
itself Is pleasure. has gone never to
return. Today the skilled workman
must stand nine or ten hours a day be-
side hands or jaws of steel, feeding them
with the material which they twist or
bite into shape with soul-destroying
monotony. Such work. perhaps. needs
education and skill, sometimes great
muscular strength. and it must be done.
The only question is for how many hours
a day need a man be cooped up in a fac
tory. doing eternally the same thing.
which, be 1t hard or easy. is void of in
terest, destructive of ina gination, injuri-
Gus to health and well-being.
Up to the present reduction to forty
eight hours per week Is more than men
of any trade in England have obtained,
and as much as any but revolutionaries
dare Immediately to hope for. The aver
age hours worked are tifty-three per
Week-Within a fraction of nine hours for
SIX days OF the seven, or if Saturday be
free except for a tritle of five hours la
Dor, the workman must spend nine hours
and thirty-SiX minutes in the factory on
all other days Of the week.
No Time for Home Life.
What chance do such hours give man
for home life and recreation for educat-
ing himself and seeing anything of his
wife and family? He lives, we will say,
within half an hours journey Of the fac
tory Then he must be absent from his
dwelling at the very least for something
more than eleven hours each day. and
throughout the winter can never hope to
see his home in daylight. Only in the
longest days of summer can he find an
hour to touch his garden plot.
Under these conditions the workingman
cannot be what he ought to be in rich
country such as England, and even
substantial increase in wages would not
entirely cure the evil. For two great
portion of his day and of his life the fac
tory hand would remain a mere machine.
At Port Sunlight, Rournville, York and
similar places something has been done
to give the factory worker decent hous-
ing and pleasant home life. Cannot
move be made by some large-minded
employer to give him time to enjoy them?
1t is not the hours man spends In labor,
but the kind of labor and its surround
ings that decide whether his work shall
crush his individuality and stunt his de-
velopment or whether 1t shall be whole
some and even enjoyable.
As a means. then. of making a sane
healthy life possible under the limitations
imposed by the factory system, we would
venture to ask attention to the following
suggestion Let the experiment be tried
of putting men for half time at factory
work at half wages, giving them the rest
of the day to work for themselves, the
land on which to work profitably being
provided for them at falr rent. 1t is
more and more the tendency to transplant
factories from crowded centers to the
country but without getting away from
the city conditions.
Ideal Site for Factory Farm.
employing on full time, say. $50 men
would stand in the center of a block
slightly exceeding 1000 acres in area.
Immediately surrounding the factory
buildings would be a little town contain
ing the shops. Offices and dwellings of
those who supply the peoples needs.
Radiating out from the center would be
800 plots of two acres each occupied and
worked by the factory hands
Two hundred and fifty men going to