THE EIGHT HOURS BILL.

Feilding Star, Volume XIX, Issue 102, 27 October 1897, Page 2

THE EIGHT HOURS BILL.

We have already written strongly on the subject of the Eight Hours Bill &c an unnecessary interference with the law of supply and demand in the laboi market in tbis colony where the eight hours daj 7 is already a recognised institution in principal as well as in fact. Hut the rule does not apply in all caset, and these exceptions are thoroughly well understood by both masters and men, although our legislators are either lamentably ignorant on that aspect oi the subject or, tor their owh aims and objects, are desirous of still further widening the breach which unhappily exists between the employer and the employed. On this subject the Christchurch Press says: — The fundamental fallacy which underlies this legislation is the idea, that the working man is likely to he benefited by restricting production. The very opposite is the case. It is when production is most active that a country is most prosperous, and under modern conditions the working classes are sure of getting their full share of such prosperity. Let us take a concrete example. Supposing the engineering trade is very brisk, so that overtime is necessary to cope with the rush of orders, is it not evident that the men will have more money to spend in food and clothing and luxuries, so that other trades will derive a corresponding benefit from their increased spending power ? If toe overtime were stopped it would, in nine cases out of ten, be simply impossible to do the extra work. The result would be that the employer would be punished, the thrifty, industrious workman would be punished, and the workers in other trades and callings would suffer loss, while nobody would derive any corresponding benefit. As to the hardship that would b« inflicted on special classes of workmen by the Eight Hours Bill, the employees in freezing factories furnish a case in point which has been forcibly brought umier tbo notico of tile

Premier. The work comes into the factories in a ru»h soon after shearing, and the men rely on the payment they receive then for overtime, to tide them over the slackness of the winter when there is little doing. In the interests even of the very men whom the new legislation is supposed to benefit, we believe it is a mistake. It is inspired by a spirit of selfishness wholly at variance with the boasted altruistic and democratic feeling of the age, and .it *■ based on a conception of the working of economic laws which is fundamentally nnßound.