The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1916-12-13
An Eight Hour Day Possible


the entire class of employers They
know that this would swiftly speed
the time when an eight-hour day
would rule throughout industry.
There is no other movement that
means so much to labor and is so eff
fective in reducing the robbery of
these who work as shortening the
working day.
Whether you work by the piece or
work by the day
Shortening the hours increases
the pay" Esd
So runs an old jingle that has been
the rallying motto Of unionists for
many years, and its economics are
correct whatever may be said of it's
rhythm,
The employers press realizes this
fact The editorials attacking the
proposed settlement proceed at once
TO denounce the principle and the
possibility OF an eight-hour day. Says
The New York Times ut is ex-
ceedingly doubtful whether with pre-
sent standards of efficiency the work
of the world can be accomplished
with nobody working more than
eight hours day"
Lets see about this exceeding
doubt Nearly 500 years ago we are
informed by Thorold Rogers that the
working class of England had an
eight-hour day. He also tells us that
wages, measured in purchasing pow
err, were higher then than they have
ever been. since. Some have disputed
this latter statement, but even his op
ponents admit that the difference is
small and questionable.
Five hundred years later, the first
American scientist and political
economist. Benjamin Franklin. ex-
pressed the opinion that six hours
labor daily would supply all the needs
OF the people if everybody worked
Franklin probably wrote this by the
light of talow candle. 1t was put
in type by hand. printed on a hand
press and distributed by stage
coaches. The food Of that time was
raised by farmers who dug up the
ground with wooden plows, cut their
wheat with sickles, threshed it with
fails and ground it between mill
stones.
An investigation by the federal bur
eau of labor has shown that nearly
every laborer that works today with
modern machinery does from 20 to
1000 times as much in an hour as
the worker did when Franklin wrote.
During all this time the industry Of
the world has been managed by the
owing class OF whom The Times
speaks Ii it is true that this class
has so mismanaged affairs that
present standards of efficiency re-
quire more than eight hours labor for
every worker then it is time that
class OF managers was fired and
someone given a change to manage
that can manage.
The same issue OF The Times that
contained this editorial also con-
tanned an interview with Prof. Irving
Fisher of Yale. Prof. Fisher knows
more about the waste of life through
unnecessary disease than any Other
man in this country
In this interview he says:
There are each year in this country
at least 100000 unnecessary deaths,
and, all the time there are 100000
persons unnecessarily i'll. Now this
means that there is annually lost &c
this country Including capitalized
earning power cut Off over $780,
0DC.
He goes on to explain that most OF
this disease and death is due to pow
erty bad conditions in the shops.
overwork and lack of proper health
legislation. Abolishing this waste
would GO far toward making an eight
hour day possible without changing
our present system of industry.
But 1t viii be noticed that Franklin
qualified his statement by saying, If
everybody worked 1t is easy to
show that nearly one-half Of our
population either do net work or are
employed in caring for those. who do
not work or in doing work that
might well be left undone.
Those who do not work, but live by
owning. get Il little more than one
half our annual social income of SS0,-
OVV,VVVfuVV. IL lutSt luiSiS were SET
to work producing something useful
and were given only what their labor
produced there would be plenty for
all. with a day much shorter than
eight hours
1t would be easy to prove this from
dozen other points of view. The
war, where women and children and
old men produce almost as much as
the whole population under ordinary
conditions. proves 1t up to the hilt
1t is not present standards of eff
cheney" poor as these may be with
our present industrial managers, that
limit the productive power OF the ma
ton. 1t is the greed of idlers for UNI
earned income that fights every effort
to shorten the hours of labor The
II. L.