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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 86

Will Shorter Hours Ruin our Commerce?

Will Shorter Hours Ruin our Commerce?

The capitalists and their newspapers say so; but they ignore, as they have always ignored, the industrial advantages of the improved health and increased intelligence which follow upon the enjoyment of adequate daily leisure. Seventy-five years ago our cotton mills commonly worked ninety and one hundred hours per week. By successive stages these hours have been brought down to fifty-six and a half. At every stage it has been conclusively "proved" by the manufacturers that the proposed new restriction of hours would deprive them of all margin of profit, would raise the price of the commodity, lower the wages of the workers, and destroy the export trade. Yet the result has over and over again shown that manufacturers and theorists alike were wrong; the hours of work have been successively reduced, without diminution of production, fall of wages, rise of prices, or slackening of trade.