The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1921-09-02
THE FORTY-FOUR
HOUR WEEK

In the painfully remembered days
of long ago when workers labored at
the tasks 72, &c, 60 and 81 hours per
week and were insisting that they
could create more wealth in &C hours
than they could in 72, more in 60 than
they could in sc, and more in 50 than
they could in go, the employers said
it was impossible, and when the work
ers proposed and secured a 48-hour
week, employers declared they were
to be entirely ruined. They were mis-
taken.
Under the 48-hour week the workers
produce more wealth than they did
under the 72-hour week. The work.
ers are more vigorous, more efficient,
more capable More than that: reliev-
ed of the monotony and grind OF the
long work day they take higher
degree of interest and pleasure in
their labor. To produce the highest
degree of efficiency and productive
power the workers, especially the
skilled worker, never should become
| stirred" The moment that unusual
| WEAKNESS overtakes him he loses
certain per cent of his productive
| power which increases with multiply
| ing ratio the longer he works.
The nerve-destroying, muscle
straining, thought-muddling grind OF
the long work day did much more
than deprive the employer of the larg-
est sum in production, it destroyed
the workers health and shortened his
life. More than that, while he lived,
he was largely untitled for father
hood. His overtaxed body sought re-
lief in alcoholic drink and in the ex-
cessive use of nicotine and narcotic
poisons. He could not be the good
husband or the good father or the
good citizen that he might have been
with less work and more leisure. The
greatest civilizing, enervating and
elevating circumstances in the history
of the working class has been the
shortened work day.
The increased productive power OF
the worker under the benefcient in
fluence of the short workday would
have been fact for the above reasons
only; but the perfection, or at least
the vast improvement in wealthcreat-
ing machinery has given him pre-
eminent place as a producer; and
surely the worker, who has been the
inventor and demonstration of the ma
chimes, is entitled to credit for that
far more, at least, than the owner
who has profted by its operation.
An eminent American economist in
recent statement declared that the
American worker was CONAN power
producer What he meant was that
the productive power of the American
workingman had increased sixty times
since the day when he worked with
out machinery, and since the employer
insists that labor is commodity and
should be paid for upon the same ba-
sis as that of other commodities
upon the profit to be derived there
from-then labor would be entitled
to wage sixty times higher than that
received before productive power was
multiplied sixty times by the utiliza-
| ton of machines. Labor does not get
what it should have on this hypoth-
esis.
But aside from insisting that the
| 44-hour week will increase the pro-
ductive power of the worker and alb
sorb but fair proportion of the pro-
fits the employer receives and to
which the worker is fairly entitled,
there is yet another good reason why
it should be universally conceded.
That reason is largely humanitarian,
it being intended by the workers en-
ployed that the volume of productive
labor shall be more aquitably divided
among the big body of workers, mil
| lions of whom are now unemployed,
and who, because of that unemploy-
ment, are deprived Of the common op-
portunities of decent existence.-Okla-