lith June, Ir is at least five-and-twenty years since the British artisan summed up his ambition in the verses—
Eight hours work, Eight hours play, Eight hours deep, and Hight shillings a day.
Things move slowly in a conservative country like England, and the British working man has not yet got this moderate ambition satisfied. 'There are people who hold that eight hours play is an immoderate ambition, but this is because they take the word " play" in the sense of amusement or sport. The working ian in the north of England, however, uses ' play' merely for absence from work from whatever cause. When the Durham miners said that they were going to play' the other day, meaning that they were going on strike, journalistic moralists in the south of England were very angry with them for recklessly damaging and stopping a vast number of industries in order that they might amuse themselves: but it was pointed out that when a Darham miner has to knock off work from sickness, he is said to be at pay. But when he is in normal work the British working man has not yet got any part of his ambition but the' eight hours sleep; he is now trying very hard, however, for the eight hours work. This he wishes to be compulsory: no one is to be allowed to work more than eight hours. There are a great many people who think that a man should be allowed to work as long as he -likes or can get the world to pay him for working. This is not the view taken by the London Trades Council, a deputation from which lately bad an interview with Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour, after having been courteously snubbed by Mr. Gladstone. Lord Salisbury tried to impress on their spokesman, Mr. Shipton, that there were certain serious objections to the compulsory legislation asked for, to which Mr, Shipton replied that "they had considered the economic question and fought out all the arguments." On this the Zconomist remarks: "With such self-satisfied persons it is obviously a waste of time to enter into discussion, and it may he questioned therefore whether Ministers acted as wisely in consenting to receive the deputation as did Mr. Gladstone in refusing to do so." After all Mr. Shipton and his deputation only represented a fraction of a fraction of the working classes, and "it would be much better if in dealing with them there' was general shown a little more of that stiff back which, to their credit, Mr, Gladstone, Mr. Morley, and labour leaders of the stamp of Mr. Burt and Mr. Broadhurst have displayed."
Mr. Shipton and his friends support
ground that it will give employment to the compulsory sight hours' day on the many men who are thrown out of work by the introduction of machinery. and the modern rapid rate of production. On the other hand they assert that the employer will not lose by it, even if he pays the same wages as before, because—and this is the experience of Mr. Beaufoy, a large employer of labowr—a man who has to work only eight hours will produce as much in the time as a man who has to work nine or ten hours. But these arguments are mutually destructive. If the men reduce as much in eight hours as they lid before in nine or teu hours, there will be no need for the employment of more hands. If, however, it will be necessary to employ more men to produce the same amount of work, the wages of each may must be lowered, as a certain product can only afford to pay altogether a certain sum in wages, and it is a condition thoroughly decided on by Mr. Shipton and his friends that the working man is to have the same pay for his eight hours that he now gets for nine or ten hours. The British working man will probably get his eight hours work, his eight hours play, and his eight hours sleep, if he. wants it; but he will not get his eight
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.