Economic essays

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: The holding movement in agriculture / Jesse E. Pope

Collection:: Economics Books

EIGHT-HOUR THEORY IN THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 237 with the weapons which shall secure for him industrial emancipa- tion.” > When men were working from ten to fourteen hours a day, the shorter workday was clearly enough the first con- dition of freedom, but what possibility of freedom would there have been for a fourteen-hour worker bound in the shackles of productivity theory at a time when the relation of shorter hours to higher output was little understood? If fourteen hours would produce only a bare living, manifestly eight would scarcely buy flowers for the funeral. But if wages depended on the standard of living, and not on product, then hours could be shortened without cutting wages, provided only the workers stood sturdily together in defense of the standard. Hours shortened, wants are bound to grow with leisure, and as the standard of living rises, so must wages; and the worker has lifted himself by his boot- straps, with the union as an indispensable agency in the process. Small wonder that Mr. Gompers referred to the matter in 1888 as “the question that strikes deeper into the evils of society than all others combined, that question which raises man out of the sloughs of poverty and despair, that question which reaches the furthest ramifications of society, that question which creates the greatest revolution in the conditions of the people with the slightest friction upon any, that question of all questions, the reduction in the hours of labor.” * The Federation wanted eight hours, however, not only to raise wages, but also to lessen unemployment. Here also the unionists were fortunate in being ignorant of productivity theory. In his report as president in 1887, Mr. Gompers said: “The answer to all opponents to the reduction of the hours of labor could well be given in these words: ‘That so long as there is one man who seeks employment and cannot obtain it, the hours of labor are too long.” ” * The simple idea of employing more men by spread- ing the existing work among a larger number through the device of shorter hours played a direct and important part in Federa- tion thinking during the early period, down to 1892. Any cub productivity theorist can upset the idea by a mere reference to long-time effects on wages; but the unionists were blissfully ignorant of such theories, and confident of the union’s power to ' Proceedings, 1891, p. 46. ' Procceedings, 1888, p. 9. ' Ibid., 1889, p. 9.

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