A FOUR-HOUR DAY.

Putaruru Press, Volume II, Issue 29, 1 May 1924, Page 2

A FOUR-HOUR DAY.

IN the course of a recent interview a famous scientist predicted that the development of electrical power would ultimately lead to a four-hour work day. He did not seem to feel, however, that this era of leisure ahead of the human race would be an umuiiicd blessing. Too much leisure, he intimated, would perhaps have a bad effect, particularly on the young. He has presented the adverse side much too mildly. If the time ever comes when a four-hour day is the common lot, living conditions will be little short of deplorable. In the first place, the human mind and body need the stimulus of labour and it is impossible to keep the one keen and the other fit on a daily shift of four hours. It is not so much that four hours devoted to work would in themselves fail to keep the mind sharp and the muscles properly exercised. The difficulty would consist in the inability of the average person to make proper use of the twelve hours of leisure thus provided. Twelve hours of loafing or misdirected energy would steal from mind and body any benefits that might accrue from shortening the hours of work to four Man has never been a good loafer. With nothing to do he either lets his powers atrophy or turns to pernicious activities. The society waster, the bored dilettante, the tramp, the beggar and the loafer are common types created by idleness. Even the hardworking and successful man who finds it possible to retire soon shows the effects of an unwonted inactivity. He becomes heavy and lethargic in body and thoroughly miserable in mind and spirit; often, too., he fails to live out his allotted span and succumbs to some disease which might never have laid its grip upon him had he stayed in the harness. Any man worth his salt comes back from a vacation completely sated with idleness and with renewed zest for his work. Work is the salvation of the human race. It was a blessing, not a curse, that was laid on Adam and Eve when they

were ejected from the Garden of Eden.

All work and no play may make Jack a dull boy, but all play and no work makes him the worst possible kind of citizen. The four-hour day would make man a twelve-hour loafer, and it would not be long before we should need twenty-four-hour theatres, traffic constables and jails. Places of amusement would be continuously jammed, and all forms of vice would flourish.

An equally unsatisfactory feature would be the impossibility of making the short day general in any sense. Electrical power may some day partly replace brawn and give such aid to mechanical skill that a shorter day will become possible for the man who works with his hands. Electricity, however, will never take the place of thought. If civilisation is to keep on functioning and advancing the brain worker 'will never have it any easier than he does to-day. Responsibility can never be put on a four-hour basis. Leadership and supervision have always been twenty-four-hour propositions, and always will be, no matter how advanced our mechanical devices may become. We do not dare clip any shorter the hours of education unless illiteracy is to accompany leisure. Nor will it ever be possible for the housewife and mother to condense her labour and responsibilities into such a short daily schedule. What will the twelve-hour wife do with a four-hour husband hanging around the house ?

The man who is most to be pitied is the one who is misplaced and cannot take pride and pleasure in his vocation. Scientists and inventors will do more for the race if, instead of bending their efforts to the shortening of hours of toil, they will discover for us means of reducing discomfort and monotony in many trades and tasks and thus make it possible for men in all occupations to approach their work with zest.