OCR Text |
Show THE EIGHT-HOUR DAY. M Professor Frank S. McVey, in a late magazine H article, writing on the eight-hour day, says: "Tho H eight-hour day will promote contentment and H cheerfulness among the working people of the H world." H We approve of the eight-hour day, but do not H for a moment believe the above statement If ev- H ery laboring man was educated, if his greatest de- H sire was to acquire, through his labor, a home, a H little land that he might cultivate, and if he was H careful of his expenditures, that he might the H sooner acquire his independence, the above might H be true But it is not For instance take 100 men H just arrived from Europe where all their lives H they have worked fourteen hours a day for say H $1.00 and lived on poor food, give them the same H kind of employment in this country with gener- H ous food and pay them $2.00 per day each for ten H hours' work, and in three months eighty out of the H hundred will be ready to strike for an increase H in wages and shorter hours. They were quiet un- H der the everlasting grind of the Old World; they H are restless here. Why? There are many rea- H sons. First, Beyond the sea when their day's H work was finished, they were so weary they were H glad to fall on their rough couches and sleep. jH Here when their day's work is finished they have H eight hours before them before bed time. They H mix with their fellows, they read the speeches of H demagogues who tell them how they are grouud H down by capital; they never had so much money H before and so buy a little beer with the surplus; H the men who call themselves "fellow working- H men," but whose chief labor is to avoid work, H whisper in their ears that their employer reaps H in actual profits every year more money than he H pays the entire one thousand employees; he tells HI them this is a free country and they must assert flfl themselves, and in a little while they who were " H logs in Europe become Are brands in the United H States. H It all comes around naturally, too, it is but one H stage in the transition of their natures. Often it H is more pronounced in the second generation than H fn the new comers, for it often requires two gen- jH erations to complete the evolution. It is alike in H "both sexes. We suBpect that quite 25 per cent of H all the women in all the large towns of the Unit- H ed States, who try to keep house, pray daily, when H not too mad to pray, for the coming of a new race H that for fair compensation will agree to do house H work,. Tionestly; to give a fair quid pro quo for H the money paid them. H Still these are not entirely bad signs. The H very freedom of our institutions electrifies men H and women and creates longings for a higher H state and this surely is good. That many are dis- H honest and ungrateful does not alter the fact. Mrs. H Browning tells about walking in a city's slums H and" when insulted by tho rabble, the only re- H sponse was, "How you must have suffered to be so H wicked." The Old World has nursed wrongs H through centuries, what wonder that heredity has H left the traces of those wrongs upon millions of H hearts, and that often unconscious revenge is H sought in liquidation for forgotten cruelties. Still H the tide is setting strongly this way from the old H world, though the doors to many opportunities are H closing eveiy year, and every year the final clash H between labor and capital seems nearer and near. H U er. Higher and more general and more practical H education will help some; there should be a more Hp severe and at the same time a more reasonable Rt anu generous discipline in the homes, in the H schools and among apprentices; the press and Hf schools should help more frequently and more Hf ably pointing out the need and the honor of hon- H est toll. Then the friction of man against man is doing much in working clear that only the fit- Hr test can survive. And still a general eight- Hf hour day will not in America "promote con- E tentment and cheerfulness among the working K people." |