Economic essays

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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

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Title:: Eight-hour theory in the american federation of labor / Henry Raymond Mussey

Collection:: Economics Books

EIGHT-HOUR THEORY IN THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 233 My theory is, first, that more leisure will creative motives and temptations for the common people to ask for more Wages. Second, that where all ask for more Wages, there will be no motive for refusing, since Employers will all fare alike. Third, that where all demand more Wages, the demand cannot be resisted. Fourth, that resistance would amount to the folly of a “strike” by Employers themselves against the strongest power in the world, viz., the habits, customs, and opinions of the masses. Fifth, that the change in the habits and opinions of the people through more leisure will be too gradual to disturb or jar the com- merce and enterprise of capital. Sixth, that the increase of Wages will fall upon the wastes of society, in its Crimes, Idleness, Fashions, and Monopolies, as well as the more legitimate and honorable profits of Capital, in the production and distribution of Wealth, and Seventh, in the mechanical fact, that the cost of making an article depends almost entirely upon the number manufactured, is a practical increase of wages, by tempting the workers through their new leisure to unite in buying luxuries now confined to the Wealthy, and which are costly because bought only by the wealthy.? The thinking of sixty years has developed, indeed, but has added little to these ideas of Steward’s, so far as the basic short-hour philosophy is concerned, and persons who imagine that Henry Ford has invented something new in that line will do well to re-read some of the old eight-hour literature. In two other passages of the same pamphlet Steward states picturesquely the underlying idea of the standard-of-living theory of wages on which the American Federation builded its house: The charm of the Eight Hour system is that it gives time and opportunity for the ragged, the unwashed, the ignorant and ill-man- nered to become ashamed of themselves and their standing in Society.® Imagine Operatives or Laborers of average capacity leaving work at half-past four; they are liable to meet those whose good opinion is worth everything to them, and they think that a neat personal appearance is positively necessary; and it must be confessed that, while fine clothes do not make a man, we all look at them as a certain sort of index to his character. The reflective reader in the year 1927, as he recalls the conditions of 1865 and then watches the carpenter doffing his overalls at ' Ibid. pp. 9, 10. Italics are Steward’s throughout. * Ibid., p. 11. Ibid. p. 13.

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