EIGHT-HOUR THEORY IN THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 239 
The next stage in the growth of eight-hour theory marks a 
further step in the direction of reconciliation with the economists. 
McNeill and others in the early days touched on high wages as 
a stimulus to the invention of machinery, but the emphasis dur- 
ing the years down to 1892 was rather on the effect of shorter 
hours on employment, consumption, extension of the market, 
and wages. During the nineties, after the movement had lost its 
early fervor, we find the machinery argument increasingly empha- 
sized. The productivity camel has got his nose well inside the 
labor tent. Testifying before the House Committee on Labor in 
1900, for example, Mr. Gompers declared: “There has never been 
a reduction in the hours of labor of the working people but it has 
been followed by the introduction of a new machine, a new tool 
and the appliance of a new and swifter propelling force.” * After 
developing this idea at length and justifying the shorter workday 
on the ground of increased production, the Federation leader 
does indeed add an argument on consumption, but manifestly con- 
sumption has lost the well-nigh exclusive importance of the 
earlier years of the eight-hour gospel. “It is the co-relation 
between the producer and the consumer, the producing power and 
the consuming power of the wageworker,” we read; “and in the 
same measure that you give the larger opportunities for the con- 
sumption of goods, in the same measure do you give that greater 
impetus to industry.” * 
An admirable article by George A. Schilling on “Less Hours, 
Increased Production—Greater Progress,” published in the 
American Federationist for October, 1900, completely sums up 
this newer eight-hour philosophy. Says Mr. Schilling: 
An increased production always follows shorter hours. This result, 
of course, does not follow at once; but as soon as the shorter work 
day is established two forces are immediately set in motion, each of 
which tends toward an increased production and the cheapening of 
the commodity. 
First, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and the great pressure 
felt in the industrial world by the sudden arrest of the volume of 
production and its increased cost as a consequence of the reduction of 
time stimulates a thousand minds to overcome the difficulty by 
labor-saving inventions and devices. 
Associated with this activity in the inventive world, greater man- 
" American Federationist, June, 1900, p. 166. 
Ibid.