part of the loss will certainly fall on employers and capitalists whose Personal and Material capital is sunk in building or shoemaking, and part on the well-to-do users or consumers of houses or shoes. But a part of the loss will fall on the working classes as users or consumers of houses or shoes; and part of the loss resulting from the plasterers' gain will fall on bricklayers, carpenters, &c., and a little of it on brickmakers, seamen employed in importing wood for building, and others.

If then all workers reduce their output there will be a great loss of National Dividend; capitalists and employers may indeed bear a large share of the burden; but they are sure not to bear all. For-to say nothing of the chance that they may emigrate and take or send their free capital for investment abroad—a great and general diminution of Earnings of Management and of interest on capital, would lead on the one hand to some substitution of the higher grades of labour for the lower throughout the whole continuous descending scale of employment', and perhaps to some general output falling-off in the energy and assiduity of the lowers wages leading minds of industry; while, on the other hand, it would check the saving of capital". And in so far as it had this last result it would diminish that abundance of capital relatively to labour which alone would enable labour to throw on capital a part of its share of the loss of the National Dividend3.

Lessening of

generally.

1 See Book VI. Ch. VII. §§ 2-4.

2 See Book IV. Ch. vII § 6, and Book VI. Ch. VI. § 1.

3 To take an illustration, let us suppose that shoemakers and hatters are in the same grade, working equal hours, and receiving equal wages, before and after a general reduction in the hours of labour. Then both before and after the change, the hatter could buy, with a month's wages, as many shoes as were the Net product of the shoemaker's work for a month (see Book vi. Ch. 11. § 3). If the shoemaker worked less hours than before, and in consequence did less work, the Net product of his labour for a month would have diminished, unless either by a system of working double shifts the employer and his capital had earned profits on two sets of workers, or his profits could be cut down by the full amount of the diminution in output. The last supposition is inconsistent with what we know of the causes which govern the

from facts: the

hoc ergo prop

But we must be careful not to confuse the two questions whether a cause tends to produce a certain effect Caution and whether that cause is sure to be followed by against crude that effect. Opening the sluice of a reservoir arguments tends to lower the level of the water in it; but fallacy post if meanwhile larger supplies of water are flowing ter hoc. in at the other end, the opening of the sluice may be followed by a rising of the level of the water in the cistern. And so although a shortening of the hours of labour would tend to diminish output in those trades which are not already overworked, and in which there is no room for double shifts; yet it might very likely be accompanied by an increase of production arising from the general progress of wealth and knowledge'.

supply of capital and business power. And therefore the hatter's wages would go less far than before in buying shoes; and so all round for other trades.

A small part of the loss might be thrown on rent: but it is not necessary to allow for much under this head. Also our argument assumed, what would be sure to be approximately true, that, taken one with another, the values relatively to shoes of the things that the employer had to buy remain unchanged.

1 We must distrust all attempts to solve the question, whether a reduction of the hours of labour reduces production and wages, by a simple appeal to facts. For whether we watch the statistics of wages and production immediately after the change or for a long period following it, the facts which we observe are likely to be due chiefly to causes other than that which we are wishing to study. Firstly, the effects which immediately follow are likely to be misleading for many reasons. If the reduction was made as a result of a successful strike, the chances are that the occasion chosen for the strike was one when the strategical position of the workmen was good, and when the general conditions of trade would have enabled them to obtain a rise of wages if there had been no change in the hours of labour: and therefore the immediate effects of the change on wages are likely to appear more favourable than they really were. And again many employers, having entered into contracts which they are bound to fulfil, may for the time offer higher wages for a short day than before for a long day: but this is a result of the suddenness of the change, and is a mere flash in the pan. On the other hand, if men have been overworked, the shortening of the hours of labour will not at once make them strong: the physical and moral improvement of the condition of the workers, with its consequent increase of efficiency and therefore of wages, cannot show itself at once.

And secondly, the statistics of production and wages several years after the

General conclusion as

§ 16. All this tends to show that a general reduction of the hours of labour is likely to cause a little net material loss and much moral good: that it is of not adapted for treatment by a rigid cast-iron system, and that the conditions of each class of

the hours labour.

to

trades must be studied separately.

Leisure is a

spent.

Perhaps £100,000,000 annually are spent even by the working classes, and £400,000,000 by the rest of good, but only the population of England in ways that do little if it is well- or nothing towards making life nobler or truly happier. And it would certainly be well that all should work less, if we could secure that the new leisure be spent well, and the consequent loss of material income be met exclusively by the abandonment by all classes of the least worthy methods of consumption. But this result is not easy to be attained: for human nature changes slowly, and in nothing more slowly than in the hard task of learning to use leisure well. In every age, in every nation, and in every rank of society, those who have known how to work well have been far more numerous than those who have known how to use leisure well; but on the other hand it is only through freedom to use leisure as they will that people can learn to use leisure well: and it is true that no class of workers who are devoid of leisure can have much self-respect and become full citizens: some time free from fatigue and free from work are necessary conditions of a high Standard of Life.

A person can seldom exert himself to the utmost for more

reduction of hours are likely to reflect changes in the prosperity of the country, or of the trade in question, or of the methods of production, or lastly of the purchasing power of money: and it may be as difficult to isolate the effects of reduction of the hours of labour as it is to isolate the effects on the waves of a noisy sea caused by throwing a stone among them.

It must be remembered that a reduction of the hours of labour has often been a form and a good form, in which the workers have chosen to take out a part of that rise in real wages which the economic changes of the time put at their command.

ed.

than eight hours a day with advantage to any one; but he may do light work for longer, and he may be Those who are "on duty," ready to act when called on, for not over-workmuch longer. And since adults, whose habits are already formed, are not likely to adapt themselves quickly to long hours of leisure, it would seem more conducive to the well-being of the nation as a whole, to take measures for increasing the material means of a noble and refined life for all classes, and especially the poorest, than to secure a sudden and very great diminution in the hours of labour of those who are not now weighed down by their work.

In this, as in all similar cases, it is the young whose faculties and activities are of the highest im- Leisure for the portance both to the moralist and the economist. young. The most imperative duty of this generation is to provide for the young the best education for the work they have to do as producers and as men or women, together with long-continued freedom from mechanical toil, and abundant leisure for school and for such kinds of play as strengthen and develop the character.

The interest of

the rising generation in

the hours of la

bour of their

parents.

And, even if we took account only of the injury done to the rising generation by living in homes in which the father and the mother lead joyless lives, it would be in the interest of society to afford them some relief. Able workers and good citizens are not likely to come from homes from which the mother is absent during the great part of the day, nor from homes to which the father seldom returns till his children are asleep. And therefore not only the individuals immediately concerned, but society as a whole, has a direct interest in the curtailment of extravagantly long hours of duty away from home even for mineral-train-guards and others, whose work is not in itself very hard.

CHAPTER XIII.

Trade Unions

progress.

TRADE UNIONS.

§ 1. IN considering the recent progress of the working classes, but little has yet been said of the growth in relation to of Trade-unions; but the two movements have certainly kept pace with one another; and there is a prima facie probability that they are connected, each being at once partly a cause and partly a consequence of the We may now proceed to inquire into the matter more

But

other. closely. We have already noticed1 how the first endeavours of the new workmen's associations or Unions at the Early action of Unions. beginning of this century were directed to securing the enforcement of medieval labour laws. these, no less than the ordinances of the old gilds, were unsuited to the modern age of mechanical invention, and of production on a large scale for markets beyond the seas; and early in this century the Unions set themselves to win the right of managing their own affairs, free from the tyranny of the Combination Laws.

Combination

These laws had made a crime of what was no crime, the Repeal of the agreement to refuse to work in order to obtain higher wages; and "men who know that they are criminals by the mere object which they have in view, care little for the additional criminality involved in the means they adopt." They knew that the law was full

Laws.

1 Book I. Ch. III. § 5.