out the stain of anarchy with the blood of men hastily condemned. The organized labor movement of the age looks to no red-handed or bloody reprisals of its wrongs. To-day, the disciplined ranks of all divisions of the Grand Army of Labor march to the music of liberty and law. The flag they carry is the white flag of pure, enduring peace; and as long as they can freely gather in their union-halls and assemblychambers to discuss with freedom the questions of the day, so long as the press is free and speech remains untrammeled, organization unforbidden, and our moral, social and political influence remains intact, he is an enemy to the labor movement who seeks to hasten the liberation of the poor by the force of dynamite or of arms. The danger comes, not from labor associations, from their methods or their measures, from strikes or boycotts, but from the concentrated power of those who, holding the supplies of life, the opportunities of labor, command such conditions as the price of employment as shall turn the manly effort of the present into the cowardly method of other climes. When men cannot speak, they will think; when they cannot act publicly, they will act secretly. The hope of the peaceful solution of the problem of to-day rests in the Christianizing influence of our free institutions. The Pilgrim leaven still works, true to the fundamental principles of the great Leader of men, who walked the earth "with not where to lay His head," despised by the wealthy, hated by the powerful, and beloved by the poor. The influence of the teachings of the carpenter's Son still tends to counteract the bad influences of Mammon. In this movement of the laborers toward equity, we will find a new revelation of the old Gospel. When the Golden Rule of Christ shall measure the relations of men in all their duties towards their fellows, in factory and workshop, in the mine, in the field, in commerce, everywhere the challenge will go forth as never before, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve,-God, or Mammon." Though the Mammon-worshippers may cry, Crucify! Crucify !" the promise of the prophet and the poet shall be fulfilled, and the glad evangel of the Christmas. morn shall sound again in the glad ears of all; and peace on

THE NEW PENTECOST.

469

earth shall prevail, not by the subjugation of man to man, or intellect to superstition, but by the free acceptance of the Gospel that all men are of one blood. Then the new Pentecost will come, when every man shall have according to his needs.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE HOURS OF LABOR.

LESS HOURS OF LABOR FOR THE EMPLOYED MEANS MORE HOURS OF Work FOR THE UNEMPLOYED THE LABORER'S RIGHT TO SELL HIS TIME AT THE HIGHEST PRICES - RAPID PRODUCTION - EVILS OF MONOTONOUS LABOR OBJECTIONS TO THE EIGHT-HOUR SYSTEM ANSWERED THE MARKET FOR THE PRODUCTS OF LABOR DEPENDENT UPON THE CONDITION OF THE MASSES-THE EARNINGS OF LABOR DEPENDENT UPON THE HABITS AND CUSTOMS OF THE PEOPLE-THE BEST MARKET WHERE THE SHORTEST WORK-DAY PREVAILS STRIKES LEGISLA TION FREEDOM OF CONTRACT DEMAND AND SUPPLY PROFITS AND WAGES AFFECTED BY LESS HOURS OF LABOR - THE UPLIFTING INFLUENCE of Leisure.

MEN

EN who are compelled to sell their labor, very naturally desire to sell the smallest portion of their time for the largest possible price. They are merchants of their time. It is their only available capital. They feel that, if they flood the market, — that is, sell more hours of labor than the market requires, — stagnation will follow.

The growth of population, greatly enhanced by artificially stimulated emigration from the long-hour and cheap-labor countries of Europe, tends to crowd the streets with unemployed men. Men out of work will underbid the men at work, and so wages are affected and sometimes governed, not by the value of the service rendered in time or skill, but by the number of the unemployed.

The instincts of the wage-workers are wiser than the phi-losophy of the schools. The demand for less hours of labor for the employed means more hours of work for the now unemployed. It is the demand for a better distribution of work, as well as a demand for an increase of value on each hour's service. The rapidity of production consequent upon the introduction of labor-saving machinery has made an hour of time more valuable to the world than ten hours were twenty

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.

47I

five years ago. The intelligent wage-worker recognizes this fact; and, feeling that as the demand for hand-skill is being diminished, and opportunity of advancement continually lessened, he turns to his only remedy,—a refusal to oversell the market. The fact that men who ask for less hours often ask for increased wages at the same time, is because they have prized the value of their time at a higher rate than formerly.

The objections to the reductions of the hours of labor now made are of the same character as the objections that were raised to the shortening of the day's work to ten hours of labor. Among these objections may be named the objection that a reduction of hours would necessarily reduce the wages of the employees, and thus tend to injure the very persons who are making the demand; second, that the reduction of the hours of labor would tend to an increase of intemperance, vice and crime; that it would tend to discourage enterprise and increase the cost of production; that it would lessen the profit upon capital invested; that capital would seek investment in those localities where the longer work-day existed; that it would encourage foreign competition.

On an examination of these objections, it will be found that some of them are self-contradictory. If wages are reduced, as a consequence of a reduction of the length of the work-day, then certainly the cost of the product could not be enhanced, because the price per hour would remain the same, and certainly the product of one hour in eight would not be less, but in some cases would be greater than the product of one hour in ten. It will be still further agreed, that to produce the same amount of product as is now demanded, one-fifth more employees would be required, thus creating or awakening a new market of consumers.

This statement of the inevitable consequences of the reduction of hours, without an increase of wages, shows conclusively that the wages would be increased; for the employment of more men to produce the same amount of product would necessarily quicken the demand in the labor-market. Lessening the number of unemployed would give the employed the opportunity to demand more wages.

To the claim that less hours of labor means less wages to the employee, we point to all past experience as the answer. The history of the labor movement shows that, from 1832 to 1853, a reduction of three hours per day had been made in many of the employments, and that this considerable reduction of one hour every six and a half years was followed by an increased purchasing power of the day's labor. The experience in this country is the same as that in England. For, while the workingmen were commencing the agitation in the council chamber of Boston, Mass., in 1832, the same agitation had reached the Parliament of Great Britain; for it was in that year that Michael T. Sadler introduced the tenhour bill, and by his enthusiasm and energy calling into the advocacy of this measure the Earl of Shaftsbury, John Fielding, and William Cobbett, who were supported by Lord Macaulay, the Bishops of Manchester and Oxford, and Earls of Ellsmere and Fersham.

Experience has not only proved in England that wages were not reduced, but were advanced, so that more than twice as much flour could be purchased by a day's work in 1850 than could be purchased in 1804.

The oft-repeated statement, that less hours of labor means less wages, is historically untrue and theoretically unsound, and is based upon a false theory of the law governing wages. If wages were regulated by the number of hours of work, then among those classes or communities where the day's work was longest, wages would be highest, and where a day's work was shortest wages would be lowest. The reverse is true. Civilization follows the line of less hours of daily work; and civilization simply means, materially, the highest purchasing power of a day's labor.

The great governing law of wages rests upon the habits of thought and feeling, customs and manners of the masses. Where the level of thought is purely physical or animal, groveling with the swine it feeds, occupied in discussing the fighting merits of game-cocks or men, and where the custom exists of working at all hours possible, occupying the hours of holidays and other periods of rest in filth and drunkenness,