The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1919-06-28
Labor's Verdict Against Labor.
New York Sun0


In the closing hours of its conven-.
ton the American Federation of Labor
adopted a report which was a contra
dictlon IN logic, defiance of the laws
OF economies and verdict against
The prosperity of wage earners Pur-
sued to the extreme, indeed it would
De sentence of death by labor upon
labor.
This report, in brief, urged shorter
period of work than the eight hour
day-forty-four hours week. 1t even
suggested, to take care of, the unem-
ployed, six hour day. At the same
time it demanded readjustment of
wages SO that earnings of labor will
buy the same amount of the necessaries
of life that could be purchased by the
earnings previous to the war .
Now, let it be set down in the first
place that intelligent employers long
have realized that in the ordinary tasks
of close application the average CON
scientious worker will produce more in
eight hours of unwearied effort than
IN fourteen or twelve or even ten hours
of exhausted energy and vitality.
Let 1t be set down in the second place
that intelligent employers agree that,
whatever the wage. labor which does a
square day S work, ounce for ounce and
hour for hour, should exchange into an
equivalent of food, clothes, shelter and
comforts today, tomorrow and all time
Let 1t be set down in the third place
that not merely the sympathetic en-
ployer wishes this to be so but mex
orable Nature DEGREES it shall be so.
But let it also be set down that in the
aggregate labor earns and pays its own
wage. Nobody else pays it; nobody
else can. Out of what labor in the ag-
gregate produces, labor takes its own
return. The more that labor produces
the more it can take. The less that la
Dor produces the less there is for it to
take.
Labor, then, must impoverish itself
| if it so delimits its hours of work or
so slackens its speed or otherwise so
| falls short of achieving adequate results
| that there is not enough production by
| labor to support labor as labor needs
to be supported.
4 Reduce the ten million workers of the
| country TO terms of ten workers and
1t must be as clear as sunshine that if
those ten, working by themselves, say
4 on a lone island in the sea, each work
ing his best for eight hours day, can
produce altogether enough, and not
much more than enough, to support the
whole ten, then only five of them work
ing eight hours, or the full ten working
only four hours cannot thus produce
enough to support the whole ten as they
formerly were supported.
1t must be as simple as a that
whether the ten men express then
wages in pennies, in dollars or il
golden eagles, but at the same time cut
in half their roduction-which is then
true wages-their earnings will moi
provide them 1.-the same amount of thu
necessaries of life that could be pur
chased by the previous earnings =
There is only one way-and it is
sure way-to reduce the cost of living
an expression which means to get NOR
of the necessaries of life by work.
is to produce more, not less.
There is a dead line of work and pro
duction below which mankind com
PEELED by the laws of Nature to carr
its living, cannot go without commit
] ting economic suicide
l