The Coconino sun., 1919-12-12
A FALLACY FATAL
 TO ALL MANKIND


 ands of workingmen, which Is prov ing large factor among the causes of the present industrial unrest, is the fallacious and ruinous belief that "the less work you do, the more you will leave for others"
 This is a conviction held by large bodies of workingmen throughout the United States and England quite aside from any taint of Bolshevism, l. w. W.ism, or the intentionally destruct- i've and anti-American doctrine of any such radical clements. It is convic- tion bred of the honest but mistaken desire of many workingmen to fur nish work to their fellows while short ening their own hours of labor.
 Around this fallacious belief have centered many strikes, increasing de- mands for shorter and ever shorter hours, and for continual lessening of the amount of work expected in return for a certain amount of remuneration, or to be performed in a certain num- Der of working hours.
 One of the most apparent evils of the tenacious clinging to such a con viction by laboring men, is that no limit may be set to the lengths to which it might go. With the convic- tion firmly held by labor that the less work each man does the more he will leave for others, attempts by labor to carry that conviction out to it's log ical, ultimate conclusion, would event ually lead to state of affairs in which each man would be doing not enough work daily to muss his hair, while still seeking to do even less work were it thinkable that such state of affairs could be attained before the achievement of an industrial chaos ending in the suicide of all productive labor.
 But this is not the only evil of such a conviction. Its most ruinous result is the immediate curtailment of pro duction not only in the industry to which the fallacious doctrine is direct ly applied, but to a number of other associated industries; for so complex is our modern industrial fabric that all industries are more or less inter-re- lated, and it is impossible to curtail production in one without indirectly forcing curtailment in number of others. And curtailment of produc- tion necessarily means the throwing of men out of work.
 Thus the doctrine that "the less work 1 do, the more work there will be for others" acts as 100 per cent efficient boomerang, reacting on its source with crushing effect.
 The fallacies of this doctrine are mo- where better or more simply and lu- cidly set forth than in a recent speech in the British House of Commons by David Lloyd George, that keen and sympathetic observer of the laboring mans problems, who has pulled Great Britain through so many an acute la bor crisis. Said the British premier
 1.-The world is suffering from she'll shock on a great scale. The habitude of industry has not been altogether recovered. We don't make quite enough allowance for that. Men have been living a different kind of life during the past two, three and four years. and it is not easy to get them into a frame of mind to stand by machine for eight or nine hours per day. But I wish that that was all.
 "It is true that hours of labor have also been reduced. One of the argu- ments in favor of the reduction of the hours of labor have heard in this house for the last twenty or thirty years was that you would not reduce production and that, on the contrary you might increase production. have heard it many time when used to vote for the eight-hour bill for miners I heard it on the seven-hour bill, and I have heard it whenever there wal any discussion on hours, but, unfor- tunately, the fact is that although there has been a substantial reduction in the hours of labor, you have had a reduction in output which is almost in mathematical proportion to the dimin- ution in hours. Effort has got to be quickened, frightened.
 Employers, managers, foremen anc workmen, must put their backs into 1t One reason why labor is being induced to lend countenance to that policy k one which is creditable to it's inten' tions and it's desires. It is. due to the fallacy that the less you work ths more work there will be for others There never was more fatal fallacy You have only to look at the cos trade. The reduction in the output o1 coal is depriving people of employ ment. If it goes on it will throw hun dreds of thousands out of employment in this country. Deliberately to re duce the output means in the end all around unemployment on a gigantic scale. The price of food will go up The cost of material will go up. Yot will not get raw material for thu country. There will be no work fol those who manipulate it, transform it and transfgure it into the beautiful things into which British hands car transfigure any material. There vii be no work. It is disastrous polio! for all classes. That is why l appea to employers and to workmen to ge rid of this ruinous fallacy that seem to sway the minds of hundreds O thousands at the present moment"
 The converse of the proposition a thus stated by Lloyd George is als' true. For while restrictions of pro duction of raw materials causes un employment in the industries usini such raw materials, the reduction O .,,xr,,% <xf fho iudI ctriaS uSinO raw ma