THE FORTY-HOUR WEEK.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 136, 9 May 1940, Page 8

THE FORTY-HOUR WEEK.

Tiie Chamber of Commerce’s suggestion for a 44-hour week in view of the war emergency has a great deal to commend it. With imports controlled retailers are finding it most difficult to secure goods for which there is a steady demand, and in this country a number of secondary industries are engaged in the production of war material, adding further to their difficulties. With the introduction of the 44-hour week, it was stated, output would increase by ten per cent. A good deal has been said on the same subject’in recent months and the position in other countries quoted. Prosperity can only come to this Dominion through the best use of its resources and the energy and labour expended in their development. The Empire is to-day engaged in a life and death struggle for its very existence. At the head of the German nation is a megalomaniac who seeks nothing else than our downfall, and for that he and his people are striving to their very utmost. We cannot take this matter complacently. The Government and its spokesmen have called for increased production, but it cannot come from shorter hours and more leisure. The London Daily Mail has put the position clearly in sajung this is not a one-shift or a two-sliift war; it is a threeshift war demanding every ounce of our 'energy and every minute of our time. Yet in the face of this, it points out, armament factories and aircraft works, including the Woolwich Arsenal, will close next Monday for Whitsun holiday. “Britain is taking a day off from the job of fighting for her life,” adds this trenchant criticism. “Well may her friends despair and her enemies rejoice.” That is not the spirit in which this war will be won. Wliat is wanted throughout the Empire is that production will be raised to its greatest extent for the people’s welfare; that the troops will have all the munitions they require; the necessary clothes to keep them warm in winter or cool in summer; foodstuffs in ample quantities, and all the other requirements of modern warfare. An addition of four hours to the weekly total in this country would prove most invaluable and be scarcely noticed in the aggregate. ________