The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGOMNT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1913 THE WEEK’S WORK.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 37, 12 February 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGOMNT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1913 THE WEEK’S WORK.

In discussing the fact that the Brit-] ish Minors’ Federation has decided by a large majority to support a proposal I for a live days’ week and that simultaneously with this the Australian Labour Conference had unanimously decided to add a six-hour day to its lighting platform, the Auckland “Star” says that if we are to take these awo facts together as indicating the general tendencies of the Labour movement on the English speaking world to-day, it is to he feared j that Labour is distinctly on the wrong j track. For unless the productivity I of the world is to bo very materially reduced, a working week of five days 1 ought to mean the abrogation of the eight-hour limit. But while many of the Australian Labour leaders agree with the English miners that five days ’ work is enough for the week, they also demand that the worldng day shall not bo lengthened but curtailed. “It seems to us,” the “Star” goes on to remark, “that such demands as these are based upon a fundamental and dangerous misconception of the real function of Labour in the work of producing wealth. If we go far enough hack wo always find beneath and behind such views, the absurd notion that there is only a fixed quantity of work to be done in the world, and that it must ho spread out and divided up to enable it ‘to go round.’ This, as wo have frequently pointed out before, is diametrically opposed to the truth. Work creates wealth, and therefore creates fresh openings for the employment and remuneration of Labour ; and to cut down hours of work per day, or days of work per week beyond a. certain reasonable limit is, from Labour’s standpoint, really suicidal. Of course, we need hardly say that wo sympathise strongly with the desire of all workers for industrial conditions that will secure for them health and strength and leisure cither for amusement or self-im-provement. But we have not the least sympathy for the idea common in certain circles nowadays that work is a degrading hardship which no decent man ought to he called upon to endure long and which ho is fully justilled in evading when he can. In so far as the demand for a five-day week or a six-hour day is due to laziness and lack of self respect it is worthy of the most vehement condemnation. But even if we take higher

ground, this new theory cf industrialism is assuredly based upon an entire misconception cf sound economic principles, and if it were carried into effect it would in all probability not only result in the limitation of the amount of wealth produced and the consequent improverishment of the workers who are paid from theiivown, output, but it would tend everywhere to demoralise and to degrade the workers themselves.