AN EIGHT HOURS BILL.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3043, 16 January 1892, Page 2

AN EIGHT HOURS BILL.

Upon tho question of bringing legislation to boar uijoii tho much vexed question of the hours of labour a writer in a Sydney paper makes the following comments :— "An effort will be made to p:>s« an Eight Hours Bill. "If eight hours is not a short enough day to provide work for everybody ' says one of its most ardent paitisans " We will have a six hours day or a four hours day." Why not save all the intermediate steps and make it penal to work at all? The pronvtfi'-i of this kind of legislation moan well, no doubt but they don't knoWj and they wm'c learn. Tint is to my they won't take c nuisance of the most simple and obvious faet >r< of the problem They look upon the amount of work iu a community as a fixed quantity and argue. "If so many people find employment at, t-m hours per day, twenty-live percent, more would find employment at eight hours a day, and this would absorb all the unemployed." But the quantity of work is nut" lixed in this way. The more work that is done the more openings there are for fresh work, and (lie less the work that is done, the fewer tho openings for fresh wrk. The more coal that is raised the nioio furnaces can bo hghf'd and the more ships mean mire iMiipioyiiietit and better remunerated employment by reason of the compelit : on t > obtain operatives and sailors. In fact all wealth—mi/innal wealth above all, depends ioli,n„tely and absolutely upon the quantity of work done. The more that is d-me the 'inoia th-re is to do, and the hi eater is the demand for people to do it. No practical statesman wi-rlh (he name would ever propose to penalise work, lie would be more in favour of 1 egi.-l ation to penalise idleness, Inst'id of saying: "If you work mora than eight bonis a day you shall be punished," he would rather protect tho wi rk.r from interference and reserve his puoi-hments for those who deserve them. M. .reov. r, even if it were as true as it is false that curtailing the hours of work would increase the number of op.mmgs f,,r obtaining employment, no conceivable incr-'-nse of those opet.ings wmiM ev-r ab-otb all the unemployed. It may be roughly stated that there are three classes of these unfortunates : First, those who could and would do an honest day's work if they had tho opportunity ; secondly, those who t l .rough bodily or mental deficiency could not do a day's work if they wou'd ; and thirdly, those who would not if they could. Every praetic d philanthropist who has really grappled with the problem of alleviating poverty is, I believe, sooner or later, foreed to admit that the last class is the most numerous. They have ma-ter, d the secret of living by loating, and loaf they will to the end of the chapter ; some on their relatives and friends and some on the general public. No increase of prosperity turns those into workers. The better off thsir industrious fellows are the more liberal and easy they are with their superfluity, and the more readily, therefore, they can be preyed upon. Under favourable circumstances these may develop into polished swindlers, hut never, except by a total cbaoge of character (which legislation cannot effect), into honest workers The second class, so far as their incapacity is really the result of misfortune, are the proper subjects of chatity from their more fortunate fellows. Tfie first class, as soon as they have recognised and remedied tho mistakes which havo temporarily divorced them from the industrial ranks, will inevitably, sooner or later, find their way back again. But curtailing the hours of labour, and all other legislation which vexatiously hampers and restricts industry and enterprise, so far from facilitating their return will render it more diflicult.

If the able and I believe well-meaning men who are battling with tongue and pen for this gigantic and destructive falsity were to look it squarely in the face and nee it iu all its hideous deformity they would scout it as the offsring of idiocy. In New Zealand where plausible theories of this kind have reached a higher pitch than elsewhere iu Australasia it is every year becoming harder to live. The young men emigrate and the colony will not maintain its natural increase of population. The samo fate is in store for New South AY ales if she allows these crude and shallow theories to override plain common sense. Our would-be reconstruclor-i of society think they seo their way pretty clearly. But they have not yet mastered the elementary truth contained in old .loop's story of "Tlio Belly and the Members."

In Melbourne .1 man who keeps his shop open after a certain hour is summoned and fined, but the habitual loafer Roes "scot free " and, helps to swell the outcry for further restrictions to industry. I hope we shall be spared in this colony from any such stupid step towards national suicide. It will be much more conducive to the spiritual, moral, and physical health of the community to "swear off"' against idleness, licentiousness, fraud and drunkenness, than against work.