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 LIBRARY 
 
THE 
 
 HOURS OF LABOUR. 
 
 A PAPER READ AT THE CENTURY CLUB, UNDER 
 THE AUSPICES OF THE LABOUR 
 REPRESENTATION LEAGUE 
 
 BY 
 
 J. GEORGE ECCARIUS. 
 
 THOMAS BRASSEY, Esq., M.P., in the Chair. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE LABOUR REPRESENTATION 
 LEAGUE, 21, COCKSPUR STREET, CHARING CROSS, BY 
 THE SECRETARY, THOMAS MOTTERSHEAD, 
 
 AND SOLD ALSO BY 
 
 HENRY VICKERS, 319, STRAND, 
 
 AND ALL BOOKSELLERS . AND NEWSAGENTS. 
 
 Price Sixpence. 
 
THE HOURS OF LABOUR, 
 
 Legislation on the Hours of Labour. 
 
 At the dawn of modern civilization, when the rising sun of 
 freedom was struggling to overcome and dispel the gloom of the 
 dark ages, bursting the chains and fetters of feudal servitude in all 
 directions, and promising a happier future to the toiling multitude, 
 a complaint arose that labourers and artificers were shirking their 
 duties. Jack Cade and liis followers had been put down by brute 
 force, but this did not avail against the labourers and artificers, 
 who had already escaped the bonds of serfdom, and manifested their 
 spirit of disobedience by coming to work late in the morning and 
 leaving off early at night. Parliament took up the question, and 
 passed an act in the reign of Henry YI. to compel labourers and 
 artificers to come to their work before five o’clock in the morning, 
 and not to leave off till between seven and eight o’clock in the 
 evening, from the middle of March to the middle of September. 
 During the rest of the year they wore to work from sunrise to 
 sunset, and anyone asking or taking more pay for working on 
 holidays than the wages of ordinary working days should be liable 
 to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour. 
 
 During the subsequent contentions between the houses of York 
 and Lancaster, Parliament had more important matters to settle 
 than the hours of labour, but when at last the old pugnacious 
 feudal aristocracy had been exhausted, defeated, and superseded by 
 the first generation of purse-proud aristocrats of the modern type, 
 
 a 2 
 
4 
 
 and peace and order had been finally restored by the accession of 
 Henry VII., Parliament recurred to the subject; the law was 
 re-enacted, and the intervals for meals and rest were defined. By 
 the 11th of Henry VII., chap. 22, it was provided that there should 
 be half an hour for breakfast, half an hour in the afternoon, and 
 an hour and a half for dinner, during such time as sleep was 
 allowed, which was from the middle of Hay to tho middle of 
 August, and during the rest of the year there was to be but an 
 hour for dinner. Nineteen years later, in 1515, by the 6th 
 Henry VIII., chap. 3, the law was revised and fines were imposed 
 for skulking, but the mines were exempt from the operation 
 of the act,—not that the miners were permitted to skulk, but, 
 working always in the dark, sunrise and sunset could not concern 
 them. 
 
 During the subsequent period Parliament had plenty of work 
 with the Reformation, and the vagabonds and sturdy beggars, who 
 were, to a great extent, the offspring of that Reformation. The 
 work-people, however, took to skulking in the middle of the day. 
 This was to be put a stop to by the 5th of Elizabeth, cap. 4, com¬ 
 monly called the “ Statute of Apprentices.” There was to be half 
 an hour for every drink, an hour for dinner, and half an hour 
 for sleep in summer, but on no account were the intervals to 
 amount to more than two hours and a half a day. The fines for 
 skulking were fixed at one penny for every hour’s neglect, and the 
 masters were empowered to deduct the fines from the wages, which 
 did not exceed sixpence a day. 
 
 Striking the average between the long days of summer and the 
 short days of winter gives an average working day of about ten 
 hours all the year round. During the fifteenth and sixteenth cen¬ 
 turies industry was yet in so crude a state that the division of 
 labour had not gone far enough to separate the various handicrafts 
 so as to make them distinct branches of trade. In Henry VI.’s 
 reign the cordwainers were forbidden to tan their own leather, 
 
5 
 
 and in Henry YIII.’s reign the butchers were forbidden to tan 
 their own hides; they were to sell them to the tanners. The laws 
 against cutting up and selling leather not fit for use, on account of 
 bad workmanship, form a large chapter of the legislation of that 
 time. In the reign of Elizabeth men were forbidden to carry on 
 more than one trade at a time, and they were to keep to the one to 
 which they had served their time. The plea for this legislation 
 was that the public were defrauded by bad workmanship. Not¬ 
 withstanding the deficiency of skill, combined, as a matter of 
 courso, with indifferent tools, the average working day of ten 
 hours produced enough for people to get rich. Harrison, in his 
 description of England, tells us that graziers rode about with velvet 
 coats and chains of gold about them, and merchants and traders 
 considered butchers’ meat too coarse for their food. They had four 
 or six dishes at dinner, with all sorts of finery, and ransacked the 
 world for luxuries; but artificers had principally butchers’ meat, 
 except on feast days. 
 
 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the 
 skill of the workmen greatly improved, and the productiveness of 
 labour increased, the working time became still more valuable to 
 the employers, and various means were resorted to for the pro¬ 
 longation of the working day. The natural limit of the working 
 day—the rising and setting of the sun—was overcome by improved 
 artificial light, the noonday’s nap was dispensed with, and the 
 intervals of rest otherwise curtailed. In 1767 the master tailors of 
 London and Westminster petitioned Parliament to amend the Act 
 of 1721 for the regulation of their journeymen. The journeymen 
 sent a counter petition, in which they dwelt with much emphasis 
 on the fact that the old difference in the length of the working day 
 between summer and winter was done away with, but that the 
 masters continued to pay less wages in winter than*in summer as 
 of yore; that fourteen hours of labour a day was excessive and 
 injurious to health; that since it had become a custom to com- 
 
6 
 
 menoe work before daybreak and continue after nightfall in winter 
 the eyes of tailors were so much injured that many after the age 
 of forty became incapacitated to follow their employment. Par¬ 
 liament took a favourable view, and fixed tho hours of labour from 
 six o’clock a.m. to seven o’clock p.m., with an interval of one hour 
 for dinner, all the year round, and raised the wages from Is. 6d. 
 in winter and Is. 9d. in summer to 2s. 7£d, a day all tho year 
 round. 
 
 The enlightened nineteenth century opened with new cries. 
 Tho forced labour of feudal tyranny had been superseded by the 
 complete freedom of labour, and the cry of skulking had vanished 
 and had been replaced by the cry of overwork, by the cry that 
 littlo children were being crippled and killed in the service of the 
 grinding despotism of capital. It is an incontrovertible fact that 
 the introduction of labour-saving machinery on a large scale has 
 everywhere been the signal for the introduction of female and 
 infant labour in the factory and the prolongation of the working 
 day. In the darkest days of feudal tyranny the little children of 
 the serfs were exempt from the forced labour which their parents 
 and their working cattle had to perform, but when the sun of 
 freedom shed his brilliant rays upon the land, tho offspring of the 
 free was at a tender age imprisoned in the mills to be maimed and 
 mutilated, and killed by overwork, and clever men declared that 
 tho world could not go on without it; it was their interpretation of 
 freedom of labour. 
 
 The struggle for the reduction of the hours of labour which then 
 ensued has continued to the present day, and found its first legis¬ 
 lative expression in an Act passed in 1801 for the protection of the 
 young. That Act provided that apprentices under the age of 
 sixteen years of age should not be permitted to be'kept at work 
 more than twelve hours a day, between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., and 
 that they should receive instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, 
 and religion. It further provided that every mill should be white- 
 
7 
 
 washed with quicklime at least once a year, and that doors and 
 windows should be made to admit fresh air. That Act was fol¬ 
 lowed by a series of commissions and committees of inquiry and 
 seven times amended. The medical testimony was unanimous that 
 the children were physically ruined by overwork. Those who 
 escaped with their lives were so crippled and maimed in their 
 limbs that they could not maintain themselves in after life. It 
 was proved by medical testimony that out of 4,000 persons who 
 had entered the factory before the age of thirty only 600 could be 
 found at work in the mills after that age. Out of thirty-four boys 
 and twenty-eight girls, examined by two credible surgeons of Man¬ 
 chester in 1817, only five boys and five girls looked healthy;- one 
 of the boys had only been in the mill three weeks, another was 
 employed in the packing room. Faint voices, bad coughs, wheezing 
 and shortness of breathing, and a general tendency to consumption 
 was the normal state of the little factory workers, By Sir llobert 
 Peel’s Bill in 1819 it was proposed that no child under the age of 
 sixteen years of age should work longer than eleven hours a day, 
 with one hour and a half for meal times. The objections of the 
 millowners were : that it would exclude them from foreign mar¬ 
 kets ; that it would interfere with the freedom of labour ; that the 
 Bill could not be passed without extending its provisions to other 
 trades ; that the spare time would be spent in riot and debauchery; 
 and that the necessity for the Bill had not been made out. The 
 result was that the labour of children was limited to seventy-two 
 hours a week, and the Justices of the Peace, that is to say the 
 millowners, were entrusted with enforcing the law. 
 
 Six 3 r ears later, in 1825, most of the mills in Manchester allowed 
 half an hour for breakfast, but only fifty minutes for -dinner. At 
 Stockport only three mills granted the indulgence of breakfast time 
 and all only forty-five minutes for dinner, but everywhere the 
 children were driven to the necessity of snatching their food by 
 mouthfuls while cleaning the machines during meal hours. A new 
 
8 
 
 law was passed specifying that the half hour for breakfast must he 
 taken between 8 and 9 a.m. and one full hour for dinner between 
 12 and 2 oclock p.m. The traditional term of apprentices was 
 dropped and the modern classification of children and young per¬ 
 sons substituted, and children were once more not to work more 
 than twelve hours a day. How this renewed attempt at protecting 
 the weak by the strong arm of the law succeeded is best gathered 
 from the tone of the preamble to the Bill of 1833, which runs :— 
 “ Whereas it has become a practice to employ a great number of 
 children and young persons of both sexes an unreasonable length of 
 time, and late at night, and in many instances all night,” &c. 
 The session of 1833 was rather a hot one for the advocates of the 
 freedom of labour. Miles of petitions poured into the House, at 
 fortnightly intervals, which afforded ample opportunities for angry 
 discussions. On the 8th of February, 1833, Lord Ashley, the 
 present Earl of Shaftesbury, declared in the House of Commons 
 that little children ought not to work more than ten hours a day in 
 factories. One of the standard demands of Sir Robert Peel had 
 been to exclude children under nine years of age from factories; 
 Lord Ashley embodied that in his Bill, and proposed that no person 
 under the age of twenty-one should be employed between 7 o’clock 
 p.m. and 6 o’clock a.m., and that no person under the age of 
 eighteen should work more than ten hours a day, with proper 
 intervals for meals. On the 5th of July, when Lord Ashley’s Bill 
 came on, Lord Althorp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated 
 that the change proposed was a serious matter, and that the 
 Government was willing to agree to a reduction of the hours of 
 labour of children under fourteen to eight a day ; to make educa¬ 
 tion a condition of employment in factories, and to have regular 
 inspection to enforce these provisions. Lord Ashley was thankful 
 for these concessions, but held out for more. On the 18th of July, 
 when the Bill came on for the second reading, Lord Althorp moved 
 as an amendment, that protection should only be given to those 
 
9 
 
 who cotild not protect themselves, and that adults should he left to 
 their own discretion. The matter was to he handed over to a 
 select committee to make the alterations to which the Government 
 had resolved to agree. Upon the division the amendment was 
 carried by 238 against 93. The great point gained was the regular 
 inspection of factories, by inspectors appointed by the Government, 
 without which all legislation would have been in vain. If ever 
 functionaries of the State performed their duties faithfully and 
 unflinchingly the factory inspectors have done so. The upshot of 
 the legislation of 1833 was that children should only work forty- 
 eight hours a week, that they should be employed only on the con¬ 
 dition of having a certain amount of schooling, and that inspectors 
 were appointed to enforce the law. But the millowners had ample 
 time given them to prepare for the change ; the Act was not to 
 come into operation until the 1st of March, 1836. Before the Act 
 came into operation it had to be explained in one session, amended 
 in another, and made binding in a third. 
 
 There is no creature on the face of the earth so perverse as the 
 human being, and none more obstinate than the philosophers who 
 defend an established state of things. With the same pertinacity 
 with which Aristotle defended the institutions of antique slavery, 
 Dr. Ure defended the liberty of crippling tender children in 
 factories. His 11 Philosophy of Manufactures,” London, 1835, 
 is an interesting book to read in the light of the present day. He 
 makes light of the deities of antiquity, and after showing that 
 the art of spinning is claimed as an honorable discovery by many 
 nations, who ascribe it to their goddesses, but consider the occupa¬ 
 tion as unworthy of men, goes on to state, “ It was under the 
 infatuation of love that Hercules degraded himself by spinning at 
 the feet of Amphale. Hercules, the Grecian demi-god, with all 
 his talent, spun but a single thread, while a Manchester operative 
 spins nearly 2,000.” According to his calculculation, a Hindoo 
 woman would require two years to convert a pound of cotton into 
 
10 
 
 250 hanks of yam ; a Manchester spinner, with the assistance of 
 tw r o children, could turn sixteen pounds of cotton into yarn, of 
 200 hanks to the pound, in a week. Self-acting machinery was 
 the thing that would repeal the primeval curse on mankind. “ In 
 the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” His interpretation, 
 however, notwithstanding the patent fact that the temperature of 
 the mills was constantly at summer heat, combined with stagnant 
 air, was that the factory workers never worked themselves in a 
 sweat; factory work was but amusement, and so easy that children 
 and cripples, who were unfit for any other kind of work, could do 
 it ; but he carefully concealed that the factories created, above all, 
 their own supply of cripples. He considered it surprising that 
 ninety-three members of the British House of Commons had been 
 found capable of voting for Lord Ashley’s Bill. “ It was worthy 
 of the darkest ages.” The limitation of the hours of labour would 
 bring certain ruin, and he stoutly denied that twelve hours con¬ 
 tinuous labour was in any respect hurtful to children, because a 
 surgeon of Leeds had told him that the tenderers, who worked in a 
 temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit, were admitted into sick 
 societies. This, then, was the contrast between the enlightened 
 nineteenth century and the dark ages, that tender children could 
 work twelve hours and more a day in a tropical heat all the year 
 round without hurt, while in the dark ages robust men were 
 thought to require sleep in the middle of the day in hot weather. 
 
 However, the modern direction of legislation, though greatly 
 hampered and impeded, could not be diverted by such sophistry_ 
 The Act of 1833 was sevon times subjected to the process of being 
 amended, till at last it culminated in limiting the working hours of 
 children to six a day, and the hours of labour of adults to sixty 
 hours a week. After more Royal Commissions, this law was ex¬ 
 tended to all trades in which women and children are employed, by 
 the Workshops’ Act, 1867, which is now in a fair way of being 
 carried out. 
 
11 
 
 Thus, after three-quarters of a ceutuiy of angry controversies 
 and successive fruitless attempts at legislation, the legal limitation 
 of the hours of labour has at last been established, and the average 
 length of the working day of the dark ages, when demi-gods spun 
 but one thread, has been restored for the common benefit of all 
 concerned. 
 
 Agitation fob the Reduction of the Houas of Laboub. 
 
 In the New England States the same difficulties are encountered 
 by the advocates of factory legislation as in old England. What 
 practical legislation has taken place in the United States is con¬ 
 fined to the works of the United States Government. In July, 
 1869, the State Legislature of Massachusetts resolved to establish 
 a Bureau of Statistics of Labour, whose duty it shall be to issue 
 annually a report on the condition of the labouring classes. From 
 the first report of the Bureau it appears that a ten hours’ movement 
 among the building trades was on foot as early as 1825. At a 
 Labour Convention, held in the State House of Boston, in Sep¬ 
 tember, 1832, the ten hours’ question formed one of the points of 
 the programme. The agitation was so far successful that on the 
 10th of April, 1840, a General Order was issued from the Navy 
 Yard, Washington, D.C., that ten hours should constitute a legal 
 day’s labour in all Government workshops. This order had the 
 effect of private yards and workshops adopting the same time, but 
 the factory owners resisted. 
 
 In 1845 the factory operatives of the State of Massachusetts 
 made a determined effort to reduce the hours of labour, which at 
 that time were thirteen a day. Among their advocates were 
 William Claflin, the recent Governor of the State, Henry Wilson, 
 Benjamin F. Butler, N. P. Banks, and others. When in 1852 
 public opinion seemed to incline to a compulsory ten hour’s law, 
 a compromise was made to limit the hours of factory work to 
 
12 
 
 sixty-six a week. This agreement is binding on all who wish to 
 observe it. 
 
 During the civil war the eight hours’ agitation commenced. In 
 all the large towns tbe building and other trades organized for the 
 struggle, and in 1865 an eight hours’ convention of trades’ union 
 delegates was held at Baltimore, which resulted in the establish¬ 
 ment of a distinct political labour party. The eight hours’ question 
 was to be the touchstone by which candidates for Congress were to 
 be tested. The great point was to make eight hours a legal day’s 
 work in the Government workshops; the rest would follow. The 
 eight hour law was carried in June, 1868, but the Goverment 
 officials conspired to thwart it by reducing the wages accordingly. 
 The organized unions set to work to counteract their schemes, and 
 the matter was finally set at rest by tho proclamation of President 
 Grant, of May 21, 1869, “ That no reduction of wages should be 
 made on account of the reduction of the hours of labour to eight 
 a day.” 
 
 The extension of the eight hours’ system to private establish¬ 
 ments the employers have resisted with more or less success. 
 Some of the great strikes undertaken to enforce tho adoption of the 
 eight hour’s system have failed, and whereat has been adopted by 
 State Legislatures, as at Kew York, it has remained a dead letter. 
 
 "While the eight hours agitation for the Government works was 
 going on throughout the union, the factory operatives of Massa¬ 
 chusetts revived the ten hours’ agitation. Several commissions 
 wero appointed to investigate the matter, and all reported in favour 
 of a reduction and a legal limitation of tho hours of factory labour. 
 In May, 1867, a law was passed, according to which no child under 
 the age of ten years shall be employed in any factory; none 
 between the ages of ten and fifteen without having three months’ 
 schooling during the year next preceding such employment; and 
 none shall work more than sixty hours in any one week. This 
 law is a dead letter. One man is appointed to see the Act enforced, 
 
13 
 
 without any authority to inspect the mills, and without power to 
 prosecute offenders. The establishments to which the Act applies 
 are scattered over a surface of 8,000 square miles, and distributed 
 in thirty-five towns. 
 
 The Bureau established in 1869 labours under kindred difficulties. 
 It has no power to summon witnesses and no power to compel 
 anyone to give information. Employers, as a rule, are reluctant 
 to answer questions, and the workpeople are in danger of being 
 discharged, and persecuted by a black list if they are found out at 
 giving information. The Bureau set out with preparing blanks 
 with a series of questions to be answered in writing by employers 
 and employed; very few of the former gave replies at all, and fewer 
 still complete replies. The latter made it a condition that their 
 names must not be divulged. A little oral evidence was also taken. 
 On the question of overwork it was elicited that while Butler and 
 Banks were fighting the slave-holders of the South, little children 
 were whipped in the North to prevent them falling asleep. A 
 witness described an instrument to the Bureau consisting of a 
 leather strap eighteen inches long, with tacks driven through the 
 striking end. That was used at a factory in Rhode Island. An 
 English overlooker stated: “ Six years ago I run night-work from 
 6.45 p.m. to 6 a.m., with 45 minutes for meals, eating in the room. 
 Have known the children to fall asleep standing up at their work. 
 I have had to sprinkle water in their faces to arouse them. Some 
 of them are working in the mill now and appear under fifteen 
 years of age; they look about eleven years old, poor, emaciated, 
 and sickly.” "When that evidence was taken three years ago, 
 children worked in the Pacific Mills from 6 in the morning till 
 midnight. 
 
 About the effects of a diminution of the hours of labour, there 
 are two diametrically opposed opinions. The employers are all 
 against it; one, a bleacher, has invaribly noticed that men are in 
 better health when they work till 10 at night, as they keep indoors 
 
14 
 
 instead of sitting round the doors,smoking ; another pronounces it 
 detrimental to the working classes ; a third says, “ it would increase 
 crime and wickedness ; ” and a fourth is sure that recreation breaks 
 down ten persons where overwork breaks down one. The woi-k- 
 men are all on the other side. A machinist gives his reasons thus :— 
 “My first reason is, that with all the labour-saving machinery, 
 eight hours will produce all the necessaries and comforts of life, 
 and leave a surplus to lay by; my second reason is, the working- 
 classes will get only the necessaries of life let them work ever so 
 many hours, as it is not the number of hours that a man works 
 that fixes the pay for a day’s labour, neither is it the value he pro¬ 
 duces, but the great regulation for the pxice of a day’s labour is 
 just what the labourer is willing to live on, no more, but some¬ 
 times less. It seems to be a fixed fact the world over that the 
 labourer shall only have a bare living.” 
 
 An attempt to pass a ten hours’ factory law for Massachusetts in 
 1870 was defeated by a combination of mill-owning capitalists, 
 who declared they would import Chinese if the measure should be 
 passed. 
 
 Since the Negro Question has been settled, Wendell Phillips 
 and other anti-slavery advocates have taken up the eight hours’ 
 question, and they mean to establish the’eight hours’ working day 
 by law for all trades. The means to be employed is the ballot-box, 
 but unfortunately the bulk of the-factory workers are immigrants 
 without political power. Wendell Phillips insists that the welfare 
 of the States docs not consist in having a few Stewai'ts and 
 Vanderbilts, but in healthy, well-fed, and well-educated working 
 men and women. 
 
 At the first International Working Men’s Congress, held at 
 Geneva, in September, 1866, the representatives of the European 
 Proletariat passed a resolution to agitate for eight hours being 
 made the legal limit of the working day. That resolution was 
 accompanied by the following modification:—“ A pi-eliminary 
 
15 
 
 condition, without which all further attcraps at improvement and 
 emancipation of the working-class must prove abortive, is the legal 
 limitation of the working day. It is needed to restore the health 
 and the physical energies of the working class—that is the great 
 body of every nation—as well as to secure them the possibility of 
 intellectual development, social intercourse, and social and political 
 action.” 
 
 Since then an active agitation for the reduction of the hours of 
 labour and the abolition of Sunday work has arisen all over the 
 Continent. The ten hours’ agitation there is, at tho present 
 moment, in a similar position as the nine hours’ agitation here, j 
 The change of the last two years has been remarkable. Two years j 
 ago M. Schneider, the then President of the Corps Legislatif, 1 
 requisitioned imperial soldiers who went to the Creuzot to refute 1 
 the arguments of M. Schneider’s miners and ironworkers for 1 
 shorter hours with Chassepots; last spring the same M. Schneider 1 
 conceded the ten hours’ working day almost unsolicited ; similar 1 
 concessions were made in Belgium and Germany, but they are 
 mostly confined to the metal trade. 
 
 The master builders and the mill owners are everywhere the 
 stoutest champions for long hours. London, Berlin, and New York 
 are alike the battlefields of the building trades in 1872, and the 
 mill owners everywhere, in the Old World and the New, harp on 
 the old string that a reduction of one hour’s labour a day would 
 ruin them. In New England ten hours’ weaving and spinning a 
 day, they say, would only just cover expense, and leave no profit 
 whatever. In Russia they work eighteen hours a day as a rule. 
 
 The cotton workers of Lancashire have, within the last few 
 years, seriously considered the question of starting an eight hours’ 
 agitation. At the Annual Trades’ Union Congress, held at 
 Birmingham, in 1869, Mr. Swain, from Manchester, read a paper in 
 favour of a further reduction of the hours of labour, urging the 
 claims of health, mental cultivation, and physical recreation, and 
 
16 
 
 showing that production had increased at an accelerated rate, 
 subsequent to former reduction. A resolution was unanimously 
 passed recommending that eight hours a day should bo fixed as the 
 working time throughout the United Kingdom. At the London 
 Trades’ Congress, Mr. Bailey, from Preston, read a paper on the 
 same subject, urging the same claims, and showing that since the 
 passing of the ten hours’ law, factory work had so increased in 
 intensity that the hours of labour had again become excessive and 
 dangerous to health and life. The following resolution was 
 unanimously carried:—“That the productive powers and the skill 
 of the operatives of this country have arrived at a state of perfection 
 which guarantees that eight hours’ labour a day will answer all the 
 commercial, national, and domestic requirements of the population, 
 and that, moreover, such a reduction is necessary on sanitary and 
 moral grounds.” The eight hours’ working day then is a kind of 
 international article of faith with the working classes throughout 
 the civilised world. 
 
 The Social and Economical Aspect. 
 
 When the Birmingham resolution was reported in London, 
 several daily papers asserted that, if carried out, it would make the 
 nation 20 per cent, poorer. The bulk of a nation’s wealth is no 
 indication to the well-being of the bulk of the population. That 
 wealth may be the private property of a few individuals, and the 
 working population, like our agricultural labourers, may be in a 
 wretched state. 
 
 The taxable property of Boston, as stated by the Assessors in 
 1868, was about 500,000,000 dollars, nearly double what it was 
 in 1856, and 75 per cent, more than in 1862. The increase was 
 therefore much faster during the latter six years than during the 
 former, and yet the condition of the working classes has materially 
 deteriorated during the latter six years; it has been proved by 
 official documents that they were better off when the taxable 
 
17 
 
 property was but 260,000,000 dollars than they are now. Tho 
 assertions of the London papers were based on tho assumption that 
 every man and woman willing and able to work does, on an average, 
 work ten hours a day. This is by no means the case; let us look 
 at a few trade secretaries’ reports just to hand. The Glass Bottle 
 Makers of Yorkshire have during tho last four years paid 
 £2,545 19s. 8 %d. to members out of employment, out of a total 
 income of £6,057 12s. Id. Tho Amalgamated Engineers paid to 
 members out of work:—1867, £58,242; 1868, £64,979 ; 1869, 
 £59,980; 1870, £32,707. The Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners: 
 1867, £5,271; 1868, £5,871; 1869, £8,904; 1870, £10,052 These 
 figures relate only to members completely out of work, they furnish 
 no index to tho number who were only partially employed. "Wo 
 have here only a peep at the 4Ute, wo know nothing of those who 
 belong to societies that are exposed to tho possibility of having 
 ordinarily so many members out of work that no provision can be 
 made for their relief, nor of those who do not belong to any society. 
 But what we do know of these matters is sufficient to demonstrate 
 that there is nothing like approximate regular employment at ten 
 hours a day for all who are willing and ablo to work, and whoso 
 very existence depends on working. A reduction of the hours of 
 labour would not diminish the amount of the national wealth, but 
 it would spread the employment for its creation over a larger area, 
 and slightly alter its distribution in favour of the poor. 
 
 If ten hours labour a day sufficed in the dark ages to make some 
 people rich, and feed, clothe, and shelter the poor, one should think 
 that a little less would suffice for the same purposes now. It is 
 estimated that the productive power of the machinery of the 
 United States is more than equal to the labour of 500,000,000 
 human beings. The productive power of the machinery of this 
 country is variously estimated to be equal to from 300,000,000 to 
 500,000,000 pair8 of hands. There was lately an agitation going 
 on in the factory districts to close the mills at 12 o’clock instead of 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 2 o’clock on Saturday; and, with very few honourable exceptions, 
 the mill-owners opposed it on the same grounds that they have op¬ 
 posed all reductions of tho hours of labour. One opponent, calling 
 himself “ Common Sense,” raised his voice, in January, 1871, in 
 the Manchester papers. He opened grandiloquently about the 
 drudgery of little children, and, taking the lowest estimate of our 
 productive machinery, went on to say “ The result is as if each 
 labourer had within the last hundred years been gifted with ten 
 sets of limbs and senses, and yet had only one body to clothe and 
 one stomach to feedand he asked, “ Why is not the labourer ten 
 times better off than he was a hundred years ago ?” Taxation and 
 drink are, in his Common Sense opinion, the reasons why the 
 labourer is not better off than he is, and why he must work as 
 many hours as he does. Ho reckons up to a nicety how many 
 minutes every man, woman, and child has to work every day to 
 pay for taxes and for drink, and comes to the conclusion that twenty 
 minutes a day, or two hours a week might be saved out of the 
 military expenditure, and fifty minutes a day out of drink, which 
 would in all amount to seven hours a week. This is the only 
 chance he can see for a reduction of the hours of labour. 
 
 With greater precision, Professor Nassau, sen., showed, nearly 
 forty years ago, that every one of the first eleven working hours of 
 the day was necessary to compensate for something that was indis¬ 
 pensable, and that it was only tho twelfth, the last hour, which 
 was grist to the mill-owner. If that hour was abolished, the 
 mill-owner must vanish. Parliament took 410 heed, and not only 
 abolished the last hour, but the penultimate half-hour, and the 
 mill-owners have flourished more than ever since. They have 
 increased faster in numbers and substance than they did before the 
 reduction. They and their property have increased faster than tho 
 workpeople employed; the old Malthusian hypothesis has been 
 reversed, production has increased faster than population. In 
 1838, the average number of power-looms to a mill in the United 
 
19 
 
 Kingdom was 25 ; in 1850 it was 65 ;* in 1867, 85. The average 
 horse-power to a mill was 21 in 1838, 29 in 1850, and 56 in 1867. 
 The average number of spindles to a mill was 5,573 in 1850, and 6,872 
 in 1867. The following table exhibits the relative changes that have 
 taken place within the space of thirty years, and the proportional in¬ 
 crease under the twelve hours’ and the ten hours’ working day. 
 
 Number of Mills, Persons Employed, &c., in the United 
 Kingdom at Different Periods. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Number 
 
 of 
 
 Mills. 
 
 Number of 
 Persons 
 Employed. 
 
 Number of 
 Spindles. 
 
 Number of 
 Power- 
 Looms. 
 
 Horse- 
 
 Power. 
 
 1838 
 
 4,217 
 
 423,400 
 
 No Return 
 
 115,803 
 
 102,069 
 
 1850 
 
 4,600 
 
 696,982 
 
 25,638,716 
 
 301,445 
 
 134,217 
 
 1867 
 
 6,416 
 
 845,066 
 
 44,093,301 
 
 549,365 
 
 363,095 
 
 Increase 
 per cent., 
 1850. 
 
 ! • 
 
 40-9 
 
 
 160-3 
 
 31*5 
 
 Increase 
 per cent., 
 1867. 
 
 | 39 
 
 41-5 
 
 Co 
 
 71-9 
 
 TTON ONLY. 
 
 82-2 
 
 1705 
 
 1838 
 
 1,819 
 
 259,104 
 
 
 108,751 
 
 59,803 
 
 1850 
 
 1,933 
 
 330,924 
 
 20,977,017 
 
 249,627 
 
 82,555 
 
 1867 
 
 2,549 
 
 401,064 
 
 34,125,246 
 
 379,329 
 
 201,062 
 
 Increase 
 per cent., 
 1850. 
 
 | 6-2 
 
 27-2 
 
 
 1295 
 
 38 
 
 Increase 
 per cent., 
 1867. 
 
 J 30-3 
 
 21-1 
 
 62-7 
 
 51.5 
 
 143-6 
 
 The secret revealed by these figures is that everything, without 
 exception, has increased faster than the number of workpeople 
 employed which demonstrates that the labour of the individual has 
 progressively increased in productivenes. The following table 
 shows the evolutions of the cotton trade. 
 
 * During that period hand-loom weaving became extinct. 
 
20 
 
 Average Amount of Raw Cotton Consumed in, and Cotton Goods 
 Exported from the United Kingdom per Head of Persons 
 Emploted in the Manufacturing Process. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Raw Cotton 
 Consumed. 
 
 Cloth 
 
 Exported. 
 
 Yam 
 
 Exported. 
 
 
 lbs. 
 
 yards. 
 
 lbs. 
 
 1835 
 
 1,500 
 
 2,532 
 
 378 
 
 1850 
 
 1,014 
 
 4,104 
 
 397 
 
 1867 
 
 2,690 
 
 7,061 
 
 421 
 
 During fifteen years of long hours the productiveness of 
 labour increased 27-6 per cent; during seventeen years of short 
 hours, including the cotton famine/ it increased 35-3 per cent. 
 Five persons produced as much in 1867 as 7 person in 1850, and 
 8-9 persons in 1835. Had the productiveness of labour continued 
 the same as in 1850, it would have required 569,900 persons in 
 1867 to manufacture the cotton that was manufactured. Instead of 
 that only 401,064 persons were employed, 
 
 Between the years 1861 and 1867, the number of persons 
 employed in the cotton trade diminished by 50’505, but tho powers 
 of production increased as tho subjoined table shows. 
 
 Changes in the Cotton Trade. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Number of 
 Persons 
 Employed. 
 
 Number of 
 Power- 
 Looms. 
 
 Number of 
 Spindles. 
 
 Raw Cotton 
 Consumed. 
 
 1861 
 
 451,569 
 
 399,992 
 
 30,387,467 
 
 lbs. 
 
 1,033,571,000 
 
 1867 
 
 401,084 
 
 379,329 
 
 32,000,014 
 
 1,098,000,000 
 
 What the power looms lost in number was mado up in increased 
 speed. 
 
21 
 
 The factory inspector, Eobert Baker, Esq., in his report for the 
 half-year ending April 30, 1868, gives the following particulars of 
 a mill fairly representing the trade:— 
 
 Dato. 
 
 Number of 
 Work¬ 
 people. 
 
 Number 
 
 of 
 
 Spindles. 
 
 Number of 
 Power- 
 Looms. 
 
 Pounds 
 of Yarn. 
 
 Pieces of 
 25 yards, 
 each. 
 
 March, 1861.. 
 
 2,100 
 
 95,560 
 
 2,133 
 
 81,308 , 
 
 16,194 
 
 April, 1867 .. 
 
 1,893 
 
 103,778 
 
 2,111 
 
 99,372 
 
 18,203 
 
 Increase .... 
 
 
 22 per cent. 
 
 
 22 per cent. 
 
 12 percent. 
 
 Decrease .... 
 
 1‘9 p. cent. 
 
 
 
 
 
 While the total number of persons employed in the cotton trade 
 diminished 50,505, the number of children increased nearly 2,000. 
 By the Act of 1833, the number of children employed in the 
 cotton trade were reduced from 28,673 in 1835, to 12,317 in 1838. 
 During the subsequent twelve years they increased but slowly; 
 Inspector Horner reported in 1850:—“The improvement in 
 machinery has greatly tended to diminish manual labour, parti¬ 
 cularly that of children. In a mill where 233 children were em¬ 
 ployed in October, 1846, there were only 89 in October, 1850. 
 By a simple contrivance, their work is done by machinery.” But 
 by more simple contrivances, children ore now enabled to do the 
 work of adults. The relative numbers of persons of different 
 ages employed in the cotton trade at different periods were :— 
 
 
 1838. 
 
 1850. 
 
 1861. 
 
 1867. 
 
 Children . 
 
 12,327 
 
 14,993 
 
 39,788 
 
 41,674 
 
 Youths .. 
 
 41,046 
 
 33,059 
 
 41,207 
 
 34,324 
 
 Men . 
 
 64,547 
 
 94,960 
 
 119,268 
 
 104,461 
 
 Females above 13 
 years. 
 
 141,184 
 
 183,912 
 
 251,306 
 
 220,605 
 
22 
 
 Had the relative proportions of 1850 continued, there would 
 have been in 1867—children, 18,168; youths, 44,885; men, 
 114,173; females above 13 years of age, 222,864. Thus we have, 
 with increased production, a total diminution of adult persons 
 employed amounting to 74,071, of whom 23,566 have been super¬ 
 seded by children under 13 years of ago. 
 
 In the silk trade, where the scarcity of the raw material has 
 likewise prevented a large increase of business, the productiveness 
 of labour has similarly increased, as in the cotton trade, and the 
 number of persons employed has greatly diminished. The greatest 
 number of persons ever employed was in 1856. The relative 
 changes were— 
 
 Decekase of Pebsoxs Employed, axd Incbease of Productive 
 Powee rx the Silk Tkade. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Number of 
 Persons 
 Employed. 
 
 Number of 
 Power- 
 Looms. 
 
 Number of 
 Spindles. 
 
 1856 
 
 56,137 
 
 9,260 
 
 1,093,799 
 
 1867 
 
 41,017 
 
 14,625 
 
 1,159,706 
 
 Increase .. 
 
 
 79o p. cent. 
 
 6*8 per cent. 
 
 Decrease .. 
 
 26-7 p. cent. 
 
 
 
 Detween 1856 and 1862 the total number of persons employed 
 in the worsted trade diminished 1,731, and tho number of children 
 increased 1,950, superseding an equal number of adults. During 
 the same time, the speed of the spindles was in some instances 
 doubled, and the number of power-looms increased from 38,956 to 
 43,048. Since then the number of persons has again increased; but, 
 as in the cotton trade, the children have progressively increased. 
 The centisemal proportions of persons employed show the changes 
 that have taken place. 
 
23 
 
 Centisemal Proportions of Persons of Different Ages Employed 
 in Factories. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Children 
 under 13. 
 
 Youths 
 
 13 to 18. 
 
 Males 
 above 18. 
 
 Females 
 above 13. 
 
 Total 
 
 Number of 
 Children 
 Employed. 
 
 Cotton. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1856 
 
 6-4 
 
 10'3 
 
 27-4 
 
 65-9 
 
 24,648 
 
 1867 
 
 10.4 
 
 8-6 
 
 26-0 
 
 55-0 
 
 41,674 
 
 "Worsted. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1856 
 
 12-7 
 
 81 
 
 20-6 
 
 58-6 
 
 11,288 
 
 1867 
 
 19-3 
 
 7*2 
 
 18-8 
 
 54 6 
 
 26-069 
 
 All Factories. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1856 
 
 6-6 
 
 106 
 
 25-8 
 
 570 
 
 46-071 
 
 1867 
 
 9-5 
 
 8-8 
 
 25-3 
 
 66-4 
 
 81-464 
 
 These changes imply an amount of suffering only known to those 
 who have to endure it. The adults who are turned out of the 
 mill to-day, to send their little ones instead, are not likely to bo 
 taken on in another occupation to-morrow. The least able gene¬ 
 rally go first. There may be a new mine opened in the neighbour¬ 
 hood to furnish coals and metal for the increasing machinery which 
 displaces the man and the youth, but neither will be employed 
 there; they will have to subsist upon what the little girl and boy 
 bring home, whose wages perhaps have been increased sixpence a 
 week, to make up for the loss of the father’s, the mother’s, or the 
 elder sister’s or brother’s wages, and we may hear that wages have 
 increased. 
 
 The increase in the productiveness of labour, however, is not 
 confined to the textile manufactures. In 1851 the average amount 
 of coal raised per head of the miners was 273 tons; in 1861, 295 
 tons; in 1866, 322 tons. The average amount of pig iron to each 
 
24 
 
 iron miner was 180 tons in 1851, and 232 tons in 1861. Another 
 proof is furnished by the exports. The value of the exports of 
 British and Irish produce and manufactures in 1851 amounted to 
 £2 13s. 8d. per head of the population of the United Kingdom, and 
 to £6 in 1867. The total value was £74,448,722 in 1851, and 
 £180,961,923 in 1867—an increase of 143 per cent. The former 
 year was one of unparalleled prosperity, the latter one of com¬ 
 mercial panic and stagnation. In 1851 people had to be hired in 
 many places to do the household work of workhouses ; in 1867 the 
 workhouses, the stone-yards, the casual wards—aye, tho highroads 
 wero over-crowded with unemployed, and yet the population had 
 increased slower daring that period than during any previous period 
 of the present century. The productiveness of labour had over¬ 
 taken the demand for goods. 
 
 The carpenters and joiners have had a good tim8 of it, but their 
 turn has come. With other handicraft trades they have shared the 
 over-crowding resulting from the displacement of manual labour 
 in other branches of trade. In England and Wales they numbered 
 120,000 in 1841, 133,600 in 1851, and 140,700 in 1861. The 
 proportions of apprentices to men were 1 to 8 in 1841, 1 to 6 in 
 1851, and 1 to 5*5 in 1861—a progressive increase. The houses 
 building on tho day of the census wero 27,561 in 1841, and 
 27,305 in 1861. The larger number of men had a smaller number 
 of jobs. Since then the general joiner has been introduced. This 
 machine is handled by common labourers and boys, and has become 
 a great favourite with the master builders. A general joiner set 
 up on tho Radcliff Estate, Fulham, cost £1,700, and saved £3,000 
 in wages during the first year. This is equal to thirty-one society 
 mens’ wages at constant work all the year round. But the wages 
 paid for attendance to this machine does not go to tho trained car¬ 
 penter; it is earned by common labourers and by boys, whoso 
 occupation will be gone when they become men. Is there any 
 connection between the general joiner and the £10,000 paid by 
 
25 
 
 the Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners in 1870 to members out 
 of work ? 
 
 The other day a Committee of the Royal Agricultural Society 
 visited 140 farms worked by steam tillage, and they reported that 
 each occupier could do with from ten to twenty horses less than 
 before, and that the yield of bushels per acre had increased. As a 
 twenty-horse-power steam engine does not require so many men in 
 attendance as twenty horses, the men aro superseded with the 
 horses. The farmers get more wheat at less cost, the landlord will 
 put in a claim for more rent, and the labourers aro rendered less 
 able to buy wheat; many of them are driven into the slums of the 
 towns, to become objects of anxiety to the Society for the Suppres¬ 
 sion of Mendicity. During the ten years, 1851-1861, the number 
 of agricultural labourers employed in England and 'Wales, males 
 and females, diminished more than 80,000, or at the rate of 8,000 
 a year. The men above twenty years of age engaged as indoor 
 farm servants diminished from 87,608 to 63,342 ; the female farm 
 servants above twenty years, from 47,450 to 35,843 ; and under 
 twenty years thero was a decrease of 7,000 males and 81,000 
 females. 
 
 As the latest census returns aro not yet available, and the pre¬ 
 sent stage of industrial prosperity has not yet reached its climax, 
 I prefer to postpone the consideration of the most recent changes 
 to a future day. 
 
 As long as these improvements in the powers of production con¬ 
 tinue—and I hope they will continue in some form or other, for 
 they furnish the only real basis for the ultimate emancipation of 
 the labouring millions—so long the agitation for a reduction of the 
 hours of labour will continue, and must, at certain periods, become 
 irresistible. It is generally understood that the success of the 
 nine hours’ movement will be but the prelude to an eight hours’ 
 movement, which may be accelerated by another stagnation like 
 the one from which we have hardly emerged. A general re- 
 
26 
 
 duction of the hours of labour would, by furnishing employment 
 to a larger number for the time being, diminish pauperism, 
 vagrancy, and crime, in a corresponding ratio, and would be infi¬ 
 nitely more beneficial to the community at large than having one 
 set of people overworked and another eating up the funds of the 
 unions in idleness; another still degenerating in the poorhouse 
 and the stone-yard; and yet another becoming demoralised and 
 brutalised on the high-road, in the casual ward, and furnishing 
 recruits for the jail. But, independent of all other considerations, 
 the working men and women claim a share in the growing wealth 
 themselves produce, and they claim, above all, a relaxation from 
 monotonous toil, leisure for healthy recreation and humanising 
 mental improvement—’the attainments of a higher life. The exist¬ 
 ing powers of production, combined with the skill of the existing 
 generation to manipulate them, arc the inheritance ot the present 
 generation. They are the unavoidable result of the continuous 
 development of the science and industry of previous generations 
 transmitted to us, and without which our present powers of pro¬ 
 duction could not have come into existence—they are the product 
 of a long progressing social state our common inheritance. 
 
 The Sanitaey Aspect. 
 
 If five persons now, with an increased percentage of children, 
 produce as much in a cotton mill as seven persons did in 1850, it 
 follows that in a certain direction the individual has to condense as 
 much exertion into fifty hours as used to be spread over seventy. 
 The spindle, the power-loom, the steam-engine itself, move faster, 
 and each individual has to watch a larger number. Thero were 
 four persons for every horse-power steam in 1850; there were but 
 two in 1867. In whatever direction the necessity for physical 
 exertion may have been diminished, the strain upon the eyes, 
 the brain, and the nervous system has been more than corre¬ 
 spondingly enhanced. General Oliver, of Boston, U.S., asks those 
 
27 
 
 who make light of tho effects of the monotony of factory work, and 
 call it easy, to try the effect of sitting down for ten hours at a 
 stretch to make short parallel strokes with a pen on a sheet of 
 white paper. Twelve hours fatiguing bodily labour may be borne 
 in one occupation without physical deterioration while ten hours 
 may be killing in another. Compare the exertions of the domestic 
 servant with the worker of the sewing-machine. The one is 
 constantly on the move, and the same set of nerves arc seldom 
 subjected to any particular strain for any length of time, while the 
 other, like the machine she attends to, must ever remain in the 
 same position. She must watch every one the hundred and twenty 
 or more stitches that are put in per minute ; her eyes are intensely 
 and constantly fixed upon a line, her hands and feet must move 
 with the regularity of any piece of mechanism; a turning of the 
 eye, a slip of the hand or foot spoils the work. The same set of 
 nerves are constantly strained, and overstrained, while the rest of 
 the body is enfeebled, perhaps paralysed by inaction. What 
 ravages the sewing-machine causes among those who have to ply 
 it constantly for a living is not yet ascertained. The surest proof 
 would be a correct account of the number and ages of the living, 
 and a register of death. . But for this there has hardly been time. 
 The machine workers are included in the various branches of trade 
 as tailors, shoemakers, &c., without any specification, and many 
 only use the machine occasionally, hence the testimony is con¬ 
 flicting. 
 
 The death-rate settles all disputes as to the effect of over-work 
 on health and life. On two recent occasions the death-rate has 
 proved that constant work, which is generally synonymous with 
 over work, is more dangerous to life than a certain amount of 
 privation. During the cotton famine the death-rate of Manchester 
 fell, and when all work stopped in the East of London, and the 
 distress of the poor was at its height, the death-rate of St. George’s 
 in the East sunk to the level of the most favoured districts. Ac- 
 
28 
 
 oording to a return of the rate of the mortality of male persons in 
 the various occupations in 1860—1861, tailoring, mining, and 
 factory work is most destructive to life. The innocent cotton and 
 woollen fibre is more pernicious and destructive to mankind than 
 the poisonous fumes and dusts of copper and lead. The metal 
 workers, including those employed on lead and copper, stand next 
 to the agricultural labourer for longevity, and the tailors aro at 
 the bottom of the scale. 
 
 The following table exhibits the varying rate of mortality, at an 
 early period of life, in various occupations. 
 
 Average Ntmbeb of Male Person's Living to One Death 
 1860—1861 in England and Wales. 
 
 Occupations. 
 
 Number of Living 
 to one Death 
 from 15 to 25 
 years of age. 
 
 Number of Living 
 to one Death 
 from 25 to 35 
 years of age. 
 
 Farm Labourers . 
 
 105 
 
 63 
 
 Metal Workers. 
 
 92 
 
 67 
 
 Grocers and Shopmen .. 
 
 03 
 
 67 
 
 Carpenters and Joiners.. 
 
 89 
 
 64 
 
 Factory Workers. 
 
 66 
 
 64 
 
 Miners . 
 
 60 
 
 60 
 
 Tailors . 
 
 65 
 
 43 
 
 The high rate of mortality among the tailors is not confined to 
 the large towns; it is the rate of the whole country, and differs 
 very littlo in the rural districts, the county of Essex forms the only 
 exception; there the tailors live as long as other people. The 
 difference between the factory workers and the tailors is attri¬ 
 butable to the fact that the tailors work longer hours, and, as a 
 rule, irregular hours. Those who work at home sometimes work 
 
29 
 
 day and night one part of the week and the other they arc idle. 
 In the best-regulated 'West End shops they work twelve, thirteen, 
 and fourteen hours a day, when thoro is work, and everywhere 
 they havo to do an amount of work which the employer considers 
 equal to seventy-two hours, to make a full week’s wages. 
 
 A general reduction of the hours of labour is necessary on social, 
 economical, sanitary, and moral grounds, and is demanded by the 
 working classes all over tho world. 
 
 London . H. W. Foster, Printer, Bear Alley, Farringdon Street, E.C.