The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-04-16
Statistical information concern


 hours of work. This is Table V. Six weks preceding Xmas the aver age hours of work per week was c. 5 and the hourly output of this group was 100. Exeprimentally reducing the hours of labor after Christmas, when it became 562 per week, the average hourly output became 124.
 The reports on this head are now beyond question. The fact has been demonstrated that the longer work day induces fatigue and affects the total result.
 mental attitude, the economic atti- tude mentally. of the officials, that the very first thing they should think of is that the working day should be heightened!
 1t is thousands of years ago since the great Saxon King Alfred ill Eng long uttered the dictum that the day should be divided into three equal parts, eight for sleep, eight for rest and recreation and eight for work. American employers have not felt the need of any such regulation as forced itself upon the rulers. they obtained through immigration from Europe, or migration from the farms, a constant supply of muscu- lar, active, youthful and vigorous labor. That they subjected to an in tensive productive motion which ended the laborer in an astonishingly short space of time. Gray hairs came sooner. and the result of this exploitation has been that the un- employable according to the stand ards of American industry now num- Der millions as public charges, all wonderfully young.
 But obviously the United States government can draw upon no such material The United States gov ernment right now is facing a con dition similar in all respects to Aus tralia, to Great Britain, to France, and the conservation of labor is the very first thing should be Council of National Defense men very ignorant of modern industrial investigations, and who believe as the Steel trust and kindred organi- cations believe that you can exploit labor as intensively today as they could when they worked men to death or the> workhouse or the hos pital in two years.
 The obvious thing is to insist upon every labor protecting law to be rigidly enforced. The reason why labor should be the fall guy in all these preparations is not ap- parent Ten per cent was showed on to the price for the contractors on small naval craft; money is spent lavishly. and unrestrictedly to the great enrichment of those who have millions. But for labor the old prehistoric antiquated workday that was abolished in England quar- ter century ago, in Australia fifty years ago and in both because it's waste of human vitality was freely recognized.
 The one thing that the papers have been insisting upon has been the means whereby labor in the in iustries is the real factor in the war: so what they meant was that labor was to be subjected to an in- tensified toll which was to waste it utterly and beyond recall.
 After few months when fatigue begins to tell upon the workers, when strikes interrupt the prodUc- ton, and when men will not aban- lon themselves to the galley slave existence is prescribed for them, these wiseacres of the government who failed to read their own pub ished reports and to digest their facts, will wonder how foolish they have been.