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

Collection:: Economics Books

236 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK Social progress, in its last analysis, comes from the awakened voli- tion, or WILL POWER, of the masses. . . . In order that men shall exert themselves for an object they must first desire that object. . . . The standard of living is the measure of civilization [referring to cheap European labor]. It is not that the labor of these men is not worth more than they receive, but that their standard of living is such that, until the volition for better things is aroused (a slow process), they will work for the wages which will procure for them the living they have been accustomed to receive. It thus follows that it is not commonly the value of what is pro- duced which chiefly determines the wage rate, but the nature and degree of the wants of the workers, as embodied in their customary mode of living. It is just here that we begin to see the inside forces which are at work shaping and molding the lives of the wage-earners, the thousand and one influences which differentiate the fairly-paid independent short-hour unionist and the meagrely-paid, servile, long-hour laborer. And this is the dynamic force of the shorter-hour movement. It brings into the daily existence of millions an element of freedom which was not before possessed by them. And with this development comes the increase in the demand for the amenities of civilization, . . . the general reaching out for those things which make life better worth living, but all of which need time for their use and enjoyment. By this increase in the wants and desires on the part of the wage- earner there ensues a gigantic commercial stimulus, a market is cre- ated for products of many kinds which under a system of long hours there is no demand for. This is the vital economic side of the shorter- hour movement, for great numbers of men and women are put to work by each addition to the customary standard of living among the masses. The essential ideas of these passages were repeated over and over in the writings and speeches of the Federation leaders in the eighties and nineties. The worker is poor and exploited because he is ignorant and helpless, and so will put up with it. Shorten his hours, his wants will grow, and he will not put up with it. The Eight-Hour Committee of the Federation in 1891 put it thus: “The taste for freedom grows from that upon which it feeds, and would-be oppressors of labor well know that if the wage-earner is once given the time and opportunity to learn his own strength, to husband his own resources, to organize his own faculties, and to widen his own horizons, he is thereby furnished

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