A SIX HOURS DAY.

Waipukurau Press, Issue 3, 2 January 1906, Page 3

A SIX HOURS DAY.

—o — The talk about a six hours day does not mean very much as yet, but it has only to be kept going long enough to become a party cry. It is a very tempting prospect, this six hours a day, with a probable reduction to four if not to less. At a general election it might, if judiciously worked, keep the Government in or turn it out according to the side the Government look on the question. For who among us that have to toil for our daily bread would not rally to a man no the side that promised to shorten our hours of labour? Personally I should welcome it for a different reason—as a return to the simple life, which in ages long before the curse of civilisation came to man our race lived in the noble freedom of the primeval forest or the untilled plains. Those were the days when we had not yet created wants which which doomed us to incessant toil to satisfy. We lay in the shadow of our own palm trees, and knew as little of carking care as we did of evening dress. The world went very well then, for shops and factories, and commerce and shipping, and banks and railways, and tailoring and shoemaking, and Ihe much-making of things, and newspapers and bule-books, and Parliaments and schools, and broadcloth and chimneypots, were undreamt of. Our wants were few and every want was satisfied, which is the foundation of all real happiness. There were no butchers’ bills to pay, no demands for rates, no gas accounts to worry about, no total isators to tempt us, no "fourth of the month to dread. Anu if we only resolve not to work at all those blessed days may return. Let all industry perish, let trape wither and die, let the great cities crumble into dust, let civilisation come to an end, and we may, such of us as survive the change, one more taste the sweets of the primitive life.— Mercutio in Weekly News.