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.