The Theory and Policy of Labour Protection

by A. Schäffle; etc. statutes Germany. Laws

CHAPTER IV. MAXIMUM WORKING-DAY.

In considering the question of protection of employment, we must first touch upon the restrictions of employment. These restrictions are directed to granting short periods of intermission of work, i.e. to the regulation of hours of rest, of holidays, night-rest and meal-times; also to the regulation of the maximum duration of the daily working-time, inclusive of intervals of rest, i.e. to protection of hours of labour.

Protection of times of rest, and protection of working-time, are both based on the same grounds. It is to the interest of the employer to make uninterrupted use of his business establishment and capital, and therefore to force the wage-worker to work for as long a time and with as little intermission as possible. The excessive hours of labour first became an industrial evil through the increasing use of fixed capital, especially with the immense growth of machinery; partly this took the form of all-day and all-night labour, even in cases where this was not technically necessary, and partly of shortening the holiday rest and limiting the daily intervals of rest; but more than all it came through the undue extension of the day’s work by the curtailment of leisure hours. Moral influence and custom no longer sufficed to check the treatment of the labourer as a mere part of the machinery, or to prevent the destruction of his family life. A special measure of State protection for the regulation of hours of labour was therefore indispensable.

Protection of the hours of labour is enforced indirectly by regulating the periods of intermission of labour: meal-times, night work, and holidays. But it may be also completed and enforced directly by fixing the limits of the maximum legal duration of working-hours within the astronomical day. This is what we mean by the maximum working-day.

The maximum working-day is computed sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Directly, when the same maximum total number of hours is fixed for each day (with the exception it may be of Saturday); indirectly, when the maximum total of working-hours is determined, i.e. when a weekly average working-day is appointed.

The latter regulation is in force in England, where 56½ hours are fixed for textile factories (less half an hour for cleaning purposes), and sixty hours (or in some cases fifty-nine hours) for other factories. In Germany and elsewhere the direct appointment of the maximum working-day is more usual: except in the von Berlepsch Bill (§ 139a, 3) where provision is made for the indirect regulation of the maximum working-day, by the following clause: “exceptions to the maximum working-day for children and young persons may be permitted in spinning houses and factories in which fires must be kept up without intermission, or in which for other reasons connected with the nature of the business day and night work is necessary, and in those factories and workshops the business of which does not admit of the regular division of labour into stated periods, or in which, from the nature of the employment, business is confined to a certain season of the year; but in such cases the work-time shall not exceed 36 hours in the week for children, and 60 hours for young persons (in spinning houses 64, in brick-kilns 69 hours).”

1. Meaning of maximum working-day in the customary use of the term.

In the existing labour protective legislation, and in the impending demands for Labour Protection, the maximum working-day is variously enforced, regulated and applied. In order to arrive at a clear understanding of the matter it will be necessary to examine the various meanings attached by common use to the term working-day.

Let us take first the different methods of enforcement.

It is enforced either by contract and custom, or by enactment and regulation. Hence a distinction must be drawn between the maximum working-day of contract and the legal (regulated) working-day. Now-a-days when we speak of the maximum working-day we practically have in mind the legal working-day. But it must not be forgotten that the maximum duration of labour has long been regulated by custom and contract in whole branches of industry, and that the maximum working-day of contract has paved the way for the progressive shortening of the legal maximum working-day.

Even the party who are now demanding a general eight hours maximum working-day desire to preserve the right of a still further shortening of hours by contract, generally, or with regard to certain specified branches of industry; the Auer Motion (§ 106) runs thus: “The possibility of fixing a still shorter labour-day shall be left to the voluntary agreement of the contracting parties.”

Certainly no objection can be raised to making provision for the maintenance of freedom of contract with regard to shortening the duration of daily labour. The right to demand such freedom in contracting, is, in my opinion, incontrovertible.

Next we come to the various modes of regulating the maximum working-day.

It may either be fixed uniformly for all nations as the regular working-day for all protected labour, or it may be specially regulated for each industry in which wage-labour is protected; or else a regular maximum working-day may be appointed for general application, with special arrangements for certain industries or kinds of occupation. This would give us either a regular national working-day, or a system of special maximum working-days, or a regular general working-day with exceptions for special working days.

The system of special working-days has long since come into operation, although to a more or less limited degree, by the action of custom and contract. The penultimate paragraph of § 120 of the von Berlepsch Bill, admits the same system—of course only for hygienic purposes—in the following provision: “The duration of daily work permissible, and the intervals to be granted, shall be prescribed by order of the Bundesrath (Federal Council) in those industries in which the health of the worker would be endangered by a prolonged working-day.”

The mixed system would no doubt still obtain even were the regular working-day more generally applied, since there will always be certain industries in which a specially short working-day will be necessary (in smelting houses and the like).

The labour parties of the present day demand the regular legal working-day together with the working-day of voluntary contract.

By maximum working-day we must, as a rule, understand the national and international, uniform, legal, maximum working-day.

Thirdly, we come to the various aspects which the maximum working-day assumes according to whether it is given a general or only a limited sphere of application. In considering its application we have to decide whether or not its protection shall be extended to all branches and all kinds of business, and degrees of danger in protected industry, and further, whether, however widely extended, it shall apply within each industrial division so protected to the whole body of labourers, or only to the women and juvenile workers.

The maximum working-day is thus the “general working-day” when applied to all industries without exception. When this is not the case, it is the restricted working-day, which may also be called the factory maximum working-day, as it really obtains only in factory and quasi-factory labour. The term factory working-day is further limited in its application in cases where its protection extends, not to all the labourers in the factory, but to the women and juvenile workers only, or to only one of these classes. Hence a distinction must be drawn between the factory working-day for women and children, and the maximum factory working-day extended also to men. We shall therefore not be wrong in speaking of this as the working-day of women and juvenile workers, nor shall we be putting any force on the customary usage, if by factory working-day we understand the working day prescribed to all labourers in a factory.

We shall find a further limitation of the meaning in considering the aim of the protection afforded, for in certain cases the maximum working-day, even when extended to all labourers employed in a factory, is restricted to such occupations in the factory as are dangerous to health. In such cases, it might be designated perhaps the hygienic working-day.

The maximum working-day, in the sense of the furthest reaching and therefore most hotly contested demands for regulation of time, means the uniform maximum working-day, fixed by legislation nationally, or even internationally, and not the maximum working-day of factory labour merely, or of female and child-labour in factories, nor the hygienic working day. This working-day is authoritatively fixed—provisionally at 10 hours, then at 9 hours, and finally at 8 hours—as the daily maximum duration of working-time, in the Auer Motion (§ 106 and 106a, cf. § 130). Section 106 (paragraphs 1 to 3) runs thus: “In all business enterprises which come within this Act (Imperial Industrial Code), the working-time of all wage-labourers above the age of 16 years shall be fixed at 10 hours at the most on working-days, at 8 hours at the most on Saturday, and on the eve of great festivals, exclusive of intervals of rest. From January 1st, 1894, the highest permissible limit of working time shall be fixed at 9 hours daily, and from January 1st, 1898, at 8 hours daily.” According to the same section, the 8 hours day shall be at once enforced for labourers underground, and the time of going in to work and coming out from work shall be included in the working-day. “Daily work shall begin in summer not earlier than 6 o’clock, in winter not earlier than 7 o’clock, and at the latest shall end at 7 o’clock in the evening.”

We have still two important points to consider before we arrive at the exact meaning of the general maximum working-day. The first point touches the difference between those employments in which severe and continuous labour for the whole working-time is required, and those in which a greater or less proportion of the time is spent by the workman in waiting for the moment to come when his intervention is required. The second point touches the inclusion or non-inclusion, in the working day, of other outside occupation, of home-work, or of non-industrial work of any kind, besides work undertaken in some one particular industrial establishment. With regard to the first point, the question may fairly be raised whether in industries in which a large proportion of time is spent in waiting unoccupied, the maximum working-day is to be fixed as low as in those industries in which the work proceeds without intermission. And it is a question of material importance in the practical application of the maximum working day whether or not work at home, or in another business, or in sales-rooms, or employment in non-industrial occupations, should or should not be allowed in the normal working-day.

The labour-protective legislation hitherto in force has been able to disregard both these points, for with the exception of the English Shop Regulations Act (1886) it hardly affected other occupations than those in which work is carried on without intermission. But there are points that cannot be neglected when the question arises of a general maximum working-day for all industrial labour, or all industrial wage-service alike—as in the Labour agitation now rife in the country.

The Auer Motion, for instance, ought to have dealt with both these questions in a definite manner; but it did not do this. With regard to those occupations in which a large proportion of the time is spent in merely waiting, e.g. in small shops, public-houses, and in carrying industries, there is no proposal to fix a special maximum working-day, except perhaps in the English Shop Regulations Act (12 instead of 10 hours for young persons). With regard to outside work, the Auer Motion does not determine what may be strictly included within the eight hours day. The question is this: is the maximum working-day to be imposed on the employer alone, to prevent him from exacting more than eight or ten hours work, or on the employed also, to prevent him from carrying on any outside work, even if it is his own wish to work longer; the more we cut down the general working-day, the more important it will become to have a limit of time which will affect not only the employer but also the employed, as otherwise the latter might, by his outside work, be only intensifying the evils of competition for his fellow-workers. The Auer Motion (§ 106) only demands the eight hours day for separate business enterprises; therefore, according to the strict wording, there is nothing to hinder the workman from working unrestrainedly beyond the eight hours in a second business enterprise of the same kind, or in any industry of another kind, in which he is skilled, or in non-industrial labour, and thus being able to compete with other workmen. Does this agree in principle with the maximum working-day of Social Democracy? Is this an oversight, or a practically very important “departure from principle”? We are not in a position to fully clear up or further elucidate these two points. For the present we may assume that the action of the Labour parties was well calculated in both these respects, viz. in neglecting to draw a distinction between continuous and intermittent labour, and in excluding outside labour from the operation of the eight hours working-day.

Lastly, in accurately defining the meaning of the term we must not overlook the fact that neither in respect to aim nor to operation the maximum working-day is confined to the question of mere Labour Protection. It has no exclusively protective significance.

It is true that the hygienic factory day, the factory day for women and juvenile workers, and the factory day for men, are wholly or mainly maximum working-days appointed for purposes of State protection, but the maximum working-day may also serve to other ends apart from or in addition to this. In the general eight hours day, for instance, the economic aspect is of equal importance with the protective aspect of the question. Under the socialistic system of national industry, where there would no longer be any question of protection in service-relations, the maximum working-day, together with the possibly more important minimum working-day, directed against the idle, would serve to other important ends; it would, for instance, give more leisure for the so-called general mental cultivation of the people and would prevent new inequalities.

We will consider in the first place the purely protective aspect of the maximum working-day of the present, then the mixed protective and economic aspect of the general maximum working-day.

2. The maximum working-days of protective legislation: the hygienic working-day, the working-day of women and children, the extended factory working-day.

And first the hygienic working-day.

This is imposed on certain occupations and businesses on account of the dangers to health arising out of the work, and on account of the strength required in the work.

It is no longer opposed by any party. It is fully dealt with in the von Berlepsch Bill in the above-mentioned provision of the penultimate paragraph of § 120a.

By the insertion of this provision in Section I. of Chapter VII. of the Imperial Industrial Code, the hygienic maximum working-day may be extended by order of the Bundesrath (Federal Council) over the whole sphere of industrial labour, not merely of factory and quasi-factory labour. The Berlin Conference (resolutions 1, 2) demands the hygienic maximum working-day for mining industries.

It is hardly necessary to prove that the hygienic maximum working-day cannot be obtained merely by the efforts of the workers in self-protection or by the general good-will of the united employers, without general enforcement by enactment or regulation. Some employers are unwilling even to maintain the shortening of the normal working-day necessary to health, others who would be willing are prevented by competition so long as the hygienic working-day is not enforced generally and uniformly by enactment or regulation throughout that particular branch of industry. The extension of the hygienic maximum working-day to all occupations dangerous to health throughout the whole sphere of industrial labour, is justified as a necessary measure of Labour Protection.

No nation will suffer in the long run from the full extension of the hygienic working-day. It is probable that the governments will advance side by side in this direction.

The factory working-day for women and juvenile workers.

This has long been enforced. The distress which brought it under the notice of the English legislature has justified it for all time. It is now scarcely contested.

Without special intervention of the State, the considerate employer is not able to grant the ten hours limit, even to women and juvenile workers, on account of his unscrupulous competitors.

Its enforcement with the help of a factory list offers no difficulties.

The grounds for demanding a maximum working-day for juvenile workers are so evident that they need not here be indicated. We may, however, remark in passing that this working-day is economically of no great importance in view of the small number of juvenile workers. In the year 1888, Germany employed in factory and quasi-factory labour 22,913 children (14,730 boys, 8,175 girls) 169,252 young persons (109,788 males, 59,464 females); children and young persons together making a total of 192,165 (124,526 males, 67,639 females). The textile industries alone engaged 17.8 per cent. of the male, and 47 per cent. of the female child-labour, that being the industry which also employs the largest number of female workers.

The maximum working-day for female labour is necessary for all women workers and not merely for married women, and in England it has long been enforced. In the case of girls, work for eleven or twelve hours is highly undesirable from the point of view of family life. “Experience proves,” says a Prussian inspector, “that girls so employed never become good housewives, and that women so employed can never fulfil their maternal duties, and on this account many well-meaning employers will not employ married women after the birth of the first child. The evil result of this appears more plainly the greater the number of women workers; and its bad influence on married life and on the education of children in workmen’s families is very evident and makes itself felt in other spheres of life. Isolated schools of housewifery and working-women’s homes are insufficient to meet the evil, especially as the extension of textile industries and therewith the increase in the number of women employed has by no means reached its highest point.” The more impossible it is to dispense entirely with female labour, the more imperative does it appear to secure to all women workers, at least, the maximum working-day, at best the 10 hours working-day (with 6 hours on Saturday) long enforced in England.

The factory day of 6 hours for children and 10 hours for young persons has already been enforced by the Industrial Regulations in Germany. Its extension to all female workers is one of the most important steps proposed by the von Berlepsch Bill. At present the proposal is for an 11 hours day, but the Reichstag Commission ought to succeed in placing the limit at 10 hours.[8]

The Resolutions of the Berlin Conference fix the time at 6 to 10 hours for juvenile workers, and 11 hours for all female workers (III. 6, IV. 2, and V. 2). They further demand that the “protection of a maximum working-day shall be granted to all young men between the ages of 16 and 18.”

The working-day for women and juvenile workers has hitherto been essentially a factory and quasi-factory maximum working day (cf. Bill, § 154). England has, however, in the Shop Hours Regulation Act of June 25, 1886, extended protection to sale-rooms, of course only in favour of juvenile workers, but with strict directions as to outside work. This working-day in commercial business, amounts on an average to 12 hours in the day (74 in the week, inclusive of meal-times). If the protected person has already in the same day performed 10 hours of factory or workshop labour, only 12 hours less 10 of shopwork are permitted; when the time occupied in outside work amounts to the full workshop and factory maximum working-day, additional occupation in the shop is prohibited. The Act does not apply to those shops in which the only persons employed are members of the family dwelling in the house or are family connexions of the employer. Such intervention in respect of household industry has already been begun but has not yet gone very far.

The general extension of the maximum working-day for women and juvenile workers to all industries, including family industries, has been demanded,[9] but is as yet nowhere enforced.

The specially short working-day for children necessitates alternating shifts, as child labour, as a rule, is inseparably connected with other work. English protective legislation directs in this case that children (from 10 to 14 years) may be employed in one and the same place only for half a day, either for the morning or the afternoon, or else on every alternate day, for the full day; and the order of working-days must be changed every week; in daily (half-day) employment, the actual working time (without intervals of rest) amounts to 6 hours daily, and 30 to 36 hours weekly, in other cases 10 hours daily and 30 hours weekly.

The factory working-day (in the strict sense): factory working-day for adult males.

The extension of protection of hours of labour to adults in factory and quasi-factory labour, by the so-called factory working-day (in the strict sense) has already begun to make way in some countries.

In France it was enforced as long ago as by the Act of Sept. 9, 1848 (Art. I.), in which the limit was still fixed at 12 hours; in Switzerland the limit was fixed at 11 hours by Art. II. of the Confederate Factory Act of 1877; and in Austria by the Act of Mar. 8, 1885. Other countries have not hitherto adopted it. Great Britain and other countries still hesitate to interfere in this way with the freedom of contract for adults. Switzerland, on the other hand, is ready to reduce the hours from 11 to 10, but whether Austria is prepared to do so much is doubtful.

Germany also in the von Berlepsch Bill has entered a protest against the extreme length of the factory working-day. Here the course has been strongly urged, sometimes of adopting an 11 hours, sometimes a 10 hours day, meaning always the time of actual work, without reckoning intervals of rest. In the discussion on the Imperial Industrial Regulations of 1869, Brauchitsch demanded a 12 hours factory day from the Conservative benches, and Schweitzer for all large industries a 10 hours day (i.e. a 12 hours day, with intervals of rest amounting to not less than 2 hours).

The necessity for the limitation of the working-day of male adult labourers to 11 or 10 hours, rests partly upon the same grounds as that of the working-day for women and young persons. Hours of leisure, besides the hours of night rest, are a necessity for men also, in order that they may be able to live really human lives. Above all they ought to be able to devote a few hours every day to their family, to social intercourse, self-culture, and their duties as citizens. The economic expediency of the restriction of working hours has been proved by experience. The amount of work executed in the factories has been in no way lessened by the adoption of the 10 hours day for women and children, and moreover in England, wherever the 10 and 11 hours day for men has been adopted without legal enactment, it has proved to be a beneficial measure; this has also been the case in the Alsatian cotton factories.[10] The factory inspectors in Switzerland unanimously report the favourable effect of the 11 hours day on the amount of work executed; and the same thing on the whole may be asserted of Austria.

In Switzerland the proposal that permission for overtime work should be obtainable from the magistrates was several times rejected, “because the employers soon perceived that the increased production scarcely covered the increased expense of light and heating, and that the work was carried on with less energy on the days following overtime work than when the 11 hours day was adhered to.” It is evident that there the 11 hours day is not considered too short. In general the employers in Switzerland very soon declared themselves satisfied with the 11 hours day; the workmen consider it a great benefit, and it has not led to the greater frequenting of public-houses. The adoption of a maximum working-day in Switzerland has put a stop to the practice on the part of manufacturers of taking away their competitor’s orders and executing them by means of overtime work, so that amongst industrial managers also, the tide is beginning to turn against too frequent indulgence in overtime work.

In Saxony even, an examination into the advantages of the maximum working-day shows “that the manufacturers themselves” (see General Report for 1888 of the district inspector at Zwickau), “are opposed to the long protraction of hours of labour; but every employer hesitates to be the first to shorten the hours, fearing lest he should find too few imitators, and be thereby thrown out of competition.” The legal factory working-day removes this fear.

Of course we have no experience to show that the further shortening of the day to less than 10 hours would allow of the execution of as much or more work than has hitherto been executed in more than 10 or 11 hours. There is a limit to the possible increase of efficiency in machines and in hand-labour, and in the two together. Labour Protection has neither the intention nor the right to prohibit any labour that is not too long to be physically and morally permissible.

At present there seems no necessity from the protective point of view for more than an 11 or 12 hours day as a rule, with special hygienic working-days of less than 10 hours, together with unrestricted freedom of contract in regulating the hours of work below this limit.

Above the limit of 10 or 11 hours the lengthening of labour time seems to diminish rather than to increase its aggregate productivity, and this explains why the 11 and 10 hours day, without any intervention from the State, has been so generally and successfully adopted by custom and contract. It is the general experience, as the Düsseldorf inspector notes in his report, that “those works in which the smallest amount of labour is performed, have as a rule the longest hours of labour; all attempts to increase the amount of labour at favourable periods of the market, by offering higher wages, whilst at the same time maintaining the long hours, have only attained a short-lived success, or have altogether failed; the same result is produced when in certain occupations the usually short hours of labour are prolonged in order to profit by the opportunity of a good market; it is only for the first few days that the increase in the amount of work executed corresponds to the increase in the hours of work, and the old level is quickly resumed; on the other hand, it is frequently affirmed by the managers that the capacity for work of our labourers is in no wise inferior to that of the English.”[11]

The legal 11 or 10 hours day would not be justified if custom and freedom of contract were sufficient to adjust the true proportions of working time. This however is not the case, and the legal working-day is therefore necessary in order to supplement the work of free self-protection.

With regard to the voluntary adjustment of the duration of the working-day, we find that the 10 and 11 hours day already prevails in a large proportion of the German industries: as in Bremen, whence according to the factory report, only 33.8 per cent. of the adult labourers work beyond 10 hours, and only 3.8 per cent. beyond 11 hours, and in Berlin, where in 3,070 firms, 71,465 male labourers work for 10 hours and less; and the same is reported by other district inspectors. But side by side with this we find a longer and frequently a decidedly too long working-day, and nowhere does every firm adhere to the 10 or 11 hours day. Even in the Lower Rhine Provinces the 12 hours working-day is in force in the smelting houses (Hitze). In Saxony the same number of hours obtains, as a rule, in textile industries, although many manufacturers would prefer the 10 hours day, if all competitors would adopt it. In Bavaria and Baden the 11 to 12 hours working-day prevails widely. In certain separate kinds of work, as in mills and brick kilns, the working hours are even longer.

The advisability of fixing the legal factory day at 10 or 11 hours is not to be disputed. It is just where the 10 or 11 hours day has not been secured by custom that, as a rule, the workmen and such managers as are willing are least in a position to extort it by way of self-help from other competing employers. And where custom has already led to the general adoption of the 10 to 11 hours working-day, it seems quite permissible to enforce it on such firms as have not adopted it.

It is no sufficient argument against the introduction of the extended compulsory factory working-day, to say that the adoption of the working-day for women and young persons would necessarily entail the adoption of the working-day for men without recourse to legal enforcement, since men could not be employed beyond the specified number of hours, while this was forbidden in the case of women and young persons employed in the same business. As a matter of fact, the larger proportion of trades are carried on entirely, or mainly, by male workers, though there may be a certain amount of purely accessory work performed by women and young persons. Hence the adoption of the limited factory working-day (i.e. for women and children) by no means necessarily or uniformly entails its general adoption. Even in England this has not been the case generally, and although we find that the maximum working-day for men very largely obtains without legal enactment, this has not been the result of the adoption of the legal working-day for women and juvenile workers, but has been won by the healthy struggle of the trades’ unions for the maximum working-day fixed by contract.

Now the question arises whether the 11 or the 12 hours day is to be chosen, and whether the adoption of the factory working-day should be proceeded with in Germany without its being adopted at the same time by England and Belgium.

Several of the German States have recently introduced the 10 hours working-day in their government works. This would point to a preference for the 10 hours day. The proposal made by Switzerland at the Conference for the adoption of this lower limit rests partly on the ground of its agreement with the duration of the 10 hours day for women and juvenile workers.

But here some caution is necessary. Private enterprise is not so free from the dangers of competition as government enterprise; whilst Germany might very well do with the 11 hours day since Switzerland and Austria have been able to introduce it without harmful results.

The adoption of the compulsory 10 hours day might be ventured on without hesitation, if once we had accurate international statistics as to whether the different countries have already adopted the 10 hours day; and, if so, for which branches of industry. We should then be able to see the extent of the risk as a whole and in detail. Was not this very matter, the ascertainment of the customary maximum duration of working hours in separate branches of industry, pointed to as of immediate importance in the resolutions agreed to at the Berlin Conference on the drawing up of international statistics on Labour Protection? The general adoption of the 10 hours day would certainly be hastened by these means. Each country would then be sure of its ground in taking separate proceedings.

German labour protective policy cannot be reproached with want of caution, seeing that it has made no demand in the von Berlepsch Bill for the extended factory day, but only for an 11 hours working-day for women.

Lastly, the question arises whether the maximum working-day under consideration can, or shall, be extended beyond factory and quasi-factory labour. Such extension has not as yet taken place.

Should such extension ensue, the limits of duration could hardly be fixed so low for intermittent work, and for less laborious work (both are found in trading industry and in traffic and transport business), as for factory labour and the business of workshops where power machinery is used. England, which is apparently the only country which regulates the hours of young persons even in trade, has adopted for them a 12 hours working-day.

Further examination plainly shows that a simple uniform regulation would be impossible in view of the extraordinary variety of non-continuous and non-industrial occupations and handicrafts.

But in general it cannot be disputed that the need for regulation may also exist in trading and in handicrafts, e.g. in bakeries (not machine-worked) no less than in household industry. Here we often find that the working hours are of longer duration than in factories and workshops. In Berlin, figures have been obtained showing the percentage of firms in which the working-day is more than 11 hours; and the percentage of female and of male workers employed for more than 11 hours.

	Number of Firms.	Of Male Workers.	Of Female Workers.
In wholesale business	4.31	3.51	4.46
In handicraft	18.85	15.52	6.09
In trade	64.77	54.94	—

The necessity for extending protection beyond the factories cannot be lightly set aside; in trade, excessive hours of labour are exacted from workers not belonging to the family, and in continuous and intermittent employments, and in household industry they are probably exacted from the relatives. The same thing occurs in handicrafts. It is not impossible for the matter to be taken in hand; but at present it meets with many difficulties and much opposition. Only the factory and quasi-factory maximum working-day for adults belong to the immediate present.

3. The maximum working-day of protective policy and of wage policy; general maximum working-day; eight hours movement.

The general maximum working-day of 8 hours, as demanded since May 1st, 1890, rests admittedly on grounds, not merely of protective policy, but also of wage-policy.

In so far as it is demanded on grounds of protective policy, it would call for little remark. The only question would be, whether on grounds of protective policy the maximum working-day is an equal necessity for all industrial work, and whether this necessity must really be met by fixing 8 hours, and not 11 or 10 hours, as the limits of daily work, a question which, in my opinion, can only be answered in the negative.

The new and special feature which comes to the fore in the demand for the general eight hours day, is the impress which (its advocates claim) will be made by it on the wages question, and this in the interests of the wage-labourer. The universality and the shortness of the maximum working-day would lead, they say, to an artificial diminution of the product of labour.

This second side of the question of the eight hours day, which touches on wages, does not properly speaking come within the scope of a treatise on the Theory and Policy of Labour Protection. We must not, however, omit it here, for the demand for such a working-day is very seriously confused in the public mind with the purely protective maximum working-day, whereas the two must be clearly distinguished from each other. By discussing and examining the general eight hours day, it must be shown how important an advance it is upon the factory 10 hours day; and it must be shown that the favour with which the factory 10 hours day is to be regarded on grounds of protective policy, need not extend necessarily to the general eight hours day; the one may be supported, the other rejected; protective policy is pledged to the one, but not to the other. From this standpoint we enter upon a consideration of the eight hours day.

The demand is formulated in the most comprehensive manner in the Auer Motion. What is it, according to this demand, that strictly speaking constitutes the general eight hours day, implying two other “eights,” eight hours sleep and eight hours recreation? If we are not mistaken in the interpretation of the wording of the demand already given, the “general working-day” means eight hours work for the whole body of industrial wage-labour, admitting of specially regulated extension to agricultural industry and forestry.

The Motion demands the eight hours time uniformly for all civilised nations; without regard to the degrees of severity of different occupations, and the degrees of working energy shown by different nationalities; and without permission of overtime in the case of extraordinary—either regular (seasonal) or irregular—pressure of work.

The Motion demands the eight hours maximum duration without regard to the question whether the performance of labour is continuous or not, hence without exclusion of the intermittent employments which are specially difficult of control.

Moreover, in all probability, the mere preparatory work, which plays so important a part in industrial service, in trade, and in the business of traffic and transport, will be dealt with in the same manner as continuous effective labour. At least we find no indication of the manner in which preparatory work is to be dealt with as distinguished from effective labour.

It does not appear in the text, but it is probably the intention of the Auer Motion to apply the limitation of eight hours not only to work in the same business, but to industrial work in different coordinated businesses, to the principal industry and to the subsidiary industries.

Yet, as we have already noticed, we find no definite information on this point, nor on the manner of enforcing the eight hours day; nor as to whether it is to be an international measure enforced by international enactment; nor yet as to whether it is to be adopted only by the countries of old civilization, or also by the young nations of the new world, and the countries of cheap labour in the South, and in Eastern Asia.

On the other hand, the object of the general working-day is fully and clearly explained. It aims not only at fixing the time of rest for at least eight hours daily, nor merely fixing the time of recreation (pleasure, social intercourse, instruction, culture) for other eight hours; but it also aims at an increase of wage per hour, or at any rate at providing a larger number of workmen with full daily work by diminishing the product of labour.

In judging of the merits of the eight hours day, one must lay aside all prejudices and misconceptions. Hence we repeat that the hygienic working-day may be admissible, even though fixed below eight hours. We repeat, moreover, that the maximum working-day fixed by contract is not to be opposed, even though it fall to eight hours, or below eight hours, at first in isolated cases, but by degrees generally. We also say that it is not impossible that certain nationalities, or all nationalities, should some day attain to such a degree of energy and zeal for work, as would justify the eight hours limit almost universally, and render it economically admissible, as is already the case in certain kinds of work. We are only concerned here with the general legal eight hours day (not with the merely hygienic working-day of eight hours) to be legally enforced on January 1st, 1898, or within some reasonable limit of time.

A few objections are advanced against the eight hours day, the importance of which cannot be overlooked.

The maximum working-day applied only to industrial labour lacks completeness, it is said; all work, even in agriculture and in public business, should be limited to eight hours, if the general maximum working-day is to become a reality. The Social Democrats would, perhaps, meet this objection by further motions.

The general eight hours day is not quashed by the assertion that the united nationalities, or the bodies of labourers of different nationalities would never agree upon the matter. This is, indeed, possible, even very probable; but it remains to be proved what may be effected by international labour-agitation in an age of universal suffrages and of world congresses, and especially in England, which has already become so really democratic; an advance made by this country towards a reasonable experiment would be decisive. The possibility of attaining a sufficiently uniform, shortened, international working-day will always be conceivable. Moreover, the imposition of protective duties on the nations that hold back is held in reserve as a means towards the equalisation of social policy.

More important are those objections which are raised on grounds of protective policy against the eight hours day, not on account of its shortness, but of its universality. It is affirmed that it is unnecessary and could not be carried out without intolerable chicanery.

I am also inclined to think that the necessity for a maximum working-day, on grounds of protective policy, does not extend much beyond factory and quasi-factory labour (cf. Chaps. V. to VIII.), many wage-workers finding sufficient protection in the force of public opinion, in moral influence and custom.

The universalisation of the measure, it must be admitted, greatly increases the difficulties of carrying it out successfully, especially in non-continuous employments, in subsidiary and combined industries. It would be difficult to carry it out without an amount of espionage and control, intolerable, perhaps, to the sense of individual liberty in the most diligent workers. The supporters of the eight hours day cannot meet this objection by replying that under a real “government by the people,” the whole measure would be practicable, and the demand for it intelligible; for this is an attempt to thrust forward a proof having no application to the policy of the present, which has to deal with existing conditions of society; and it unwarrantably assumes that the practicability of a “government by the people” has already been proved.

The supporter of the general legal eight hours day will be more successful in meeting the above objection if he maintains that the importance of so complete a universalization and so great a shortening of the maximum working-day, from the point of view of the wages question, more than outweighs any doubt as to the necessity of the measure on grounds of protective policy, or as to the practicability of carrying it out.

The decision for or against the general legal eight hours day lies therefore in the answer to these two questions: whether the cherished hope as to its effect on wages rests on a sure foundation, and whether the State is justified in so wide an exercise of power in the interests of one class in the present generation.

With regard to the first question, no very strong probability of success has been shown, to say nothing of certainty.

We need only look at the practical aspect of the matter. By the legal enforcement of a sudden and general shortening of the industrial national working-time, by 20 to 30 per cent. of the working-time of hitherto, higher wages are to be obtained for less work, or at least room is to be given for the actual employment of the whole working force at the present rate of wage!

How would an increase of wage, or even the maintenance (and that a continuous one) of the present rate be conceivable in view of a sudden general reduction of working-time by 20 to 30 per cent.? Only, indeed, either by reduction of profits and interest on the part of the capitalists, corresponding to the increase of wage, or by an increase in the productivity of national industry, resulting from an improvement in technique, and progress in skill and assiduity, or from both together.

Now no one can say exactly what proportion the profits and interest of industrial capitalists bear to the wages of the workmen; if one were to deduct what the mass of small and middle-class employers derive from the work of their assistants (as distinct from what they draw from their capital) the industrial rent—in spite of numbers of enormous incomes—would probably not represent the large sum it is supposed to be. Hence it is very doubtful whether it would be possible to obtain the necessary sum out of profits.

Even if this were possible, it is by no means certain that the wage war between Labour and Capital would succeed in obtaining so great a reduction of industrial profits and interest, still less within any short or even definitely calculated limit of time. Some amount of capital might lie idle, or might pass out of Europe; or again, Capital might conquer to a great extent by means of combination; or it might turn away from its breast the pistol of the maximum working-day by limiting production, i.e. by employing fewer labourers than before. It might induce a rise in the price of commodities, which would diminish “real” wages instead of raising them or of leaving them undiminished.

But even if Capital found it necessary in consequence of the legal enforcement of the eight hours day to employ a larger number of workers, it might draw supplies to meet this expense partly out of the countries which had not adopted the eight hours day, partly out of agricultural industry and forestry, and after half a generation, out of the increase in the working population. Capital would also make every effort to accomplish in a shorter time more than hitherto by exacting closer work and stricter control, and by introducing more and more perfect machinery.

With all these possibilities the eight hours day will not necessarily, suddenly, and in the long run, increase the demand for labour to such a degree that the employer will need to draw upon his interest, profits, and ground rents for a large and general rise of wages, or for the maintenance of the former rate of wage. At least, the contrary is equally possible, and perhaps even highly probable.

Such an increased demand for labour would indeed ensue if the growth of population were to be permanently retarded. But that it should be so retarded is the very last thing to be expected under the conditions supposed, viz. a general increase of “real” wages, which would obviously render it more easy to bring up a family.

Hence the assumption that the eight hours day would lead to an increase of wage, or the maintenance of the present rate of wage at the cost of profits and interest, is not proven; so far from being certain, it is not even probable. Therefore, it cannot serve to justify so violent an interference on the part of the State, as the enforcement of the general legal eight hours’ day on January 1st, 1898. Such an interference would be calculated to bring a terrible disappointment of hopes to the very labourers whom it is intended to benefit.

Just as little can it be justified by the assumption that as much would be produced (hence as high a wage be given) in a shorter working-day, through the improvement of technique, and increased energy in work, as in a working-day of 10 or 12 hours.

The increase in productivity could not be expected with any certainty to be general, uniform, and sudden. The success of the experiment which has been made with the 11 hours day, which prevents such excessive work as is not really productive, cannot be advanced to justify the further assumption that the productivity of labour increases in inverse ratio to the duration of time. The increase of productivity through limiting the duration of work does justify the 10 or 11 hours day of protective policy precisely because the latter evidently stops short at that point beyond which labour begins to be less efficient; we have no grounds for assuming that the same justification exists for the eight hours day demanded in the supposed interests of a wage policy. The increase of productivity through the operation of the eight hours day would be more than ever unlikely if the abolition of “efficiency” wage in favour of exclusive time wage, which is one measure proposed, were to destroy the inducement to compensate for loss of time by more assiduous work, and if a fall in the profits were to curtail industrial activity.

But even supposing it certain, which it clearly is not, that an increase of productivity would take place sufficient to compensate for the shortening of time, it would still be doubtful whether the effect would be felt in a rise or maintenance of the rate of wage, and not rather in a rise in profit and interest. For the steadily increasing use of machinery, which is assigned as one of the reasons why productivity would remain unimpaired in spite of the shortening of hours, and more especially if this should coincide with a rapid increase of population, would actually lessen the demand for labour, and thus would improve the position of Capital in the Labour market. On this second ground also, we are precluded from supposing that the eight hours day would result in an increase of wages.

But if it be granted that the balance would not be restored, either by pressure upon profits and interest or by increased productivity, it then follows that the wages of labour must necessarily fall 20 to 30 per cent. through such a shortening of the working-day. And this, as we have seen, is not at all an unlikely issue.

The absorption of all the unemployed labour force, the industrial “reserve army,” in consequence of the adoption of the eight hours day, is an assumption quite as unproven as the one with which we have been dealing.

This result would not necessarily ensue even in the first generation, since production might be limited, and even if the hopes of increased productivity are not quite vain, it is quite possible that more machinery might be employed without necessarily increasing the number of workmen.

It is still more difficult to determine what in all these respects will be the ultimate effect of the eight hours day. The further increase of the working population—and, ceteris paribus, this would be the most probable result of the expected increase in the rate of wage per hour—may produce fresh supplies of superfluous labour; but the eventual fall of wages consequent on a decrease in the productivity of national work would necessarily increase the industrial “reserve army,” through the diminished consumption and the consequent restriction of production to more or less necessary commodities.

If a diminution of national production were really to result from the adoption of the eight hours day, it would affect precisely the least capable bodies of workers, and those engaged in furnishing luxuries, for the demand for luxuries is the first to fall off; and the less capable workers finally become the worst paid because they are able to accomplish less in eight hours. Hence it follows that the uniform, universal, and national eight hours day would have very different results on the labouring bodies of each nation, and on the competing bodies of labourers in separate industrial districts in the same nation. Hence the very uniformity of the national and international maximum working-day of wage policy is a matter which calls up very grave considerations, which, however, we are not in a position to pursue any further in this book.

Even the complete prohibition of overtime work for the sake of meeting the accumulation of business, neither ensures a higher rate of wage per hour, nor a lasting removal and reduction of the superfluous supplies of labour. The very opposite result may ensue, at least, in all such branches of industry as undergo periodical oscillations of activity and depression, through the fluctuation of the particular demand on which they depend. If the effect on wages of the legal eight hours day is extremely doubtful, and the advisability of the measure more than questionable, we come in conclusion to ask very seriously whether the State is justified in enforcing more than the mere working-day of protective policy.

Without doubt the State ought to direct its social policy towards securing at least a minimum rate of wage compatible with a really human existence, as it does by Labour Insurance, for instance. It is a possible, though an extremely unlikely, case to suppose that it might take practical steps to realize the “proportional” or “fair” wage of Rodbertus (although since the writings of von Thünen, theorists have sought in vain a method of determining this ideal measure), but even so, the practicability of such a course would have first to be demonstrated, and in my opinion this would probably be found to be not demonstrable. But surely it has now been fully shown that it ought not to permit the sudden and general shortening of the working day by 20 to 30 per cent., an experiment the effects of which cannot be foreseen.

The State does not possess this right, either over property or labour. It might affect injuriously the rate of wages of the whole labouring class, or, at least, of such bodies of wage labourers as are employed in the production of such articles as are not actual necessaries of life. The labourer might even have to bear the whole burden, since the rate of wages would suffer by this measure if a fall in national production were brought about without being counterbalanced by a lowering of the rate of profit and interest. The State has to take into consideration those considerable bodies of wage-labourers who (while keeping within the limits of the maximum working-day of protective policy) would rather work longer than earn less, and it will find it hard to justify to them the experiment of the eight hours day of a wage policy; for this would constitute a very serious restriction of individual liberty for many workers, and those not by any means the least industrious or skilful. Still we need not undertake here to work out the matter decisively from this point of view.

Will, however, the experiment be forced upon us? Who can deny this positively, in face of the irresistibly advancing democratic tendencies of constitutional right in all countries? If it be forced upon us, it may, and most probably will, end in a great disappointment of the hopes of the Labour world.

It is perfectly clear that the decision of the matter rests with England. If this country does not lead the way, if she hesitates to enforce it in the face of the competition of American, Asiatic, and soon, perhaps, of African labour, the experiment of a general eight hours day for the rest of Western Europe is not to be thought of. But in England it is precisely the aristocratic portion of the labouring classes—the “old trades’ unionists,” the skilled labour—that has not not yet been won over to the side of the legal eight hours day, and it is doubtful whether it will yield to the leaders of unskilled labour: Burns, Tillett, and the rest. At the September Congress at Liverpool, in 1890, the Trade Unionist party brought forward in opposition to the general legal eight hours day, the eight hours optional day fixed by contract, in the motion of Patterson, if I have rightly understood the proposal. The motion was defeated by a majority of only eight (181 to 173).[12] If the legal eight hours day is rejected, does that preclude for all time the possibility of shortening the time of labour to less than the 10 or 11 hours factory day at present in force? By no means.

The fundamental error in the general legal working-day as it now stands, lies not in the assumption that it will gradually lead to a further shortening of the working-day, but in the assumption that the legal maximum working-day will bring about suddenly, generally, and uniformly results which in the natural course of economic and social development only the maximum working-day of free contract is calculated to bring about, and this gradually, step by step, tentatively, and by irregular stages; that is to say, that so material a shortening of the maximum working-day cannot possibly be attained to generally by any other means than by the shortening by free contract, here a little and there a little, of the maximum working-day within each industry and each country, and this equally outside as well as within the limits of factory and quasi-factory business. We may at all events be assured that the substitution of the legal eight hours day for the factory working-day of 10 or 11 hours is not the next step to be taken, but rather the further development of the maximum working-day of free contract by means of the continuous wage struggle between the organised forces of Capital and Labour to suit the unequal and varying conditions of place, time, and employment, in the various classes of industry.

There is no objection to be offered to this manner of bringing about the shortening of the working-day. No one has any right or even any fair pretext for opposing it. No one need fear anything from the results of a general working-day introduced by this method, even if it should ultimately develop into the legalised maximum working-day of less than 10 hours.

There is the less reason for fear, as the working classes themselves have the greatest interest in avoiding any step forward which would afterwards have to be retraced; the majority will prefer, within the limits of overwork, additional and more laborious working time with more wages, to additional recreation time and less wages.

Least of all does Capital need to look forward with jealousy and suspicion to this visionary eight hours day which may lie in the lap of the future, but which will have come about, only gradually through a series of reductions by contract of the working-day, each successive rise of wage and each successive shortening of the working-day having been occasioned by a steady improvement in technique, and a healthy increase of population. The sooner some such movement as this of the eight hours day, fixed by contract, ultimately perhaps by legislation, takes a firm hold, the more striking will be the improvement of technique, the more normal will become the growth of population, and the more peaceful and law-abiding will be the social life of the immediate future. Hence, I think we may contemplate the eight hours movement without agitation, and discuss it impartially, provided of course that the Labour Democracy is not permitted to tear down all constitutional limitations upon its sole and undisputed sway.

The most important contribution that this chapter offers to the Theory and Policy of Labour Protection is then to show that the eight hours day of wage policy may be rejected, and may still be rejected, even if the 10 hours day, demanded on purely State protective grounds, is adopted. The foregoing discussion will show conclusively that there is no question of the State pledging itself to Socialism by the purely protective regulation of the working-day.

Even from the standpoint of Social Democracy, the eight hours day as now demanded is not properly speaking a Socialistic demand at all. It may be that some of the leaders of the movement may seek by its means to weaken and undermine the capitalist system of production, but the demand does not in principle deny the right of private property in the means of production. The general eight hours day is an effort to favourably affect wages on the basis of the existing capitalist order. Not only the 11 hours or 10 hours day, but even the eight hours day would be no index of the triumph of Socialism. It may rather be supposed that the leaders of the movement thrust forward the eight hours day in order to be able to conceal their hand a little longer in the promised fundamental alteration of the “system of production.” Therefore, we again repeat, even in face of the proclamation of a general eight hours day made at the “World’s Labour Holiday,” of May 1st, 1890, “There is no occasion to give the alarm!”

4. The maximum working-day and the “normal working-day.”

What we understand by the maximum working-day—limitation (whether on grounds of protective policy or of wage policy) of the maximum amount of labour allowed to be performed within the astronomical day, by confining it within a certain specified number of hours—might also be called, and indeed used more frequently to be called, the “normal working-day.” It is better, however, not to employ this alternative designation. When the word “normal working-day” is used in a special sense, it means something quite different from the maximum working-day; for it is a unit of social measurement by means of which it is supposed that we can estimate all labour performance however varying, both in personal differences and in differences of kind of work, so that we may arrive at a socially normal valuation of labour, and a socially normal scale of valuation of products. It is an artificial common denominator for the regulation of wages and prices which perhaps may be attained under the capitalist system, but which ultimately points to a socialistic commonwealth. The maximum working-day of protective right might exist side by side with the regulation of a “normal working-day,” but it has no essential connection with it.

Hence we might pass by this normal working-day which is wholly unconnected with State protection, but we think it necessary to touch upon it. There still exists a confusion of ideas as to the maximum and “normal” working-days. The meaning of the latter is not formulated and fixed in a generally recognised manner. It is quite conceivable, nay even probable, if the Socialist fermentation among the labouring masses should increase rapidly, that the proposal of a maximum working-day, will take the form of the “normal working-day,” and that in the very worst and wildest development of the idea of normal working-time. This alone affords sufficient reason for our drawing a sharp distinction between the maximum working-day of protective legislation and the “normal working-day,” and above all for clearly defining the meaning of the latter.

This is no easy task for several reasons.

The determination of the meaning of “normal working-day” includes two points: what we mean by fixing a normal, and what we should regard as “socially normal,” i.e. just, fair, proportionate, and so on.

The normal working-day would be a State normalised working-day (as opposed to a restricted working-day) adopted for the purpose of preventing abnormal social and industrial conditions, and as far as possible restoring normal relations. This would be the widest meaning of normal working-day.

The maximum working-days of protective policy, and of wage policy, are, or aim at being, normal working-days in this widest sense. Both are working-days legally normalised for the purpose of obtaining by a development of protective policy, or of protective and wage policy combined, more normal conditions of work. But this does not make it advisable to adopt the alternative designation of normal working-day rather than of maximum working-day. There are several kinds of normal working-days in this wide sense, or at least we can conceive of several; even minimum working-days might be looked upon as normally regulated days. The term might designate the normal working-day demanded on political, social, or educational grounds, perhaps even the maximum working-day which would secure to the worker every day leisure for the non-industrial occupations above mentioned; moreover it might designate a minimum normal working-day—almost indispensable under a communistic government—which would compulsorily fix a daily minimum of labour, and thereby ensure production adequate to the normal requirements of the whole community; another normal working-day, in the widest sense of the term, would be such a maximum working-day under a communistic government, as should aim at preventing the diligent from working more and earning more than others, and thereby destroying equality. None of these normal working-days (in the widest sense) concern us now; the existing social order does not require for its just and fair regulation the introduction of such normal working-days, and the cura posterior of a socialism or communism which as yet possesses no practical programme is not a theoretically fruitful or practically important matter for discussion, at least not within the limits of this book. The normal working-day with which we need to concern ourselves here—and the term is still frequently used in this narrower sense, though not universally—is, as already indicated, that normal day which should serve as a general standard of a socially equitable—normal or more normal (compared to the old capitalist regulations)—valuation of the performances of labour, and of the products of labour, as a means of reducing the various individual performances of labour to proportional parts of a “socially normal” aggregate of the labour of the nation, and as a social measure of the cost of labour products, thereby serving as a means to a “socially normal” regulation of prices.

Rodbertus is the writer who has most clearly sketched for us the idea of such a normal working-day. We shall best understand what is meant by it, by listening to this great economic thinker. Rodbertus sought for a more normal regulation of wages, within the sphere of the existing social order, by the co-operation of capital and wage labour, giving to the wage labourer as to the employer his proportional share in the aggregate result of national production.

As a solution of this problem, he lays down a special normal time labour-day and normal work (amount of work) labour-day, by considering which two factors he proposes to arrive at a unit of normal labour which shall serve as a common basis of measurement.

In order to bring about the participation of all workers in the nett result of national production in proportion to their contribution to it—hence without keeping down the better workers to the level of the worst, and without endangering productivity—it is necessary, Rodbertus holds, to reduce to a common denominator the amounts of work performed by individual workers, which vary very considerably both in quantity and quality. By this means he thinks we shall be enabled to establish a fair relation between work and wages. The normal time labour-day is to furnish us with a simple measurement of the product of labour in different occupations or branches of industry; and the normal work labour-day is to give us a common measure of all the varying amounts of work performed in equal labour time by the individual workers.

He points out that astronomically equal working time does not mean, in different industries, an equal out-put of strength during an equal number of hours, nor an equal contribution to society. Therefore the different industrial working-times must be reduced to a mean social working time: the normal time labour-day. If this amounts to 10 hours, 6 hours work underground might equal 12 hours spinning or weaving work. Or, which would be the same, the normal time labour-day would be 6 hours in mining, and 12 hours in textile industries; the hour of mining work would be equal to 1-2/3 hours of normal time, the hour of textile work would be equal to 5/6 hour of normal time. The normal time labour-day would serve to determine periodically the proportionate relations which exist between the degrees of arduousness in labour of different kinds, with a view to bringing about a just distribution of the whole products of labour according to the normal proportional value of its out-put in each kind of employment, in each department of industry, such proportional value being determined by means of the normal time measure. Also it would lead to the fair award of individual wage, for if any one were to work only 3 instead of 6 hours in coal mining, or only 5 hours in weaving or spinning, he would only be credited with and paid for half a day of normal working time.

The normal time day is not however sufficient to establish a just balance between performance of work and payment; for in an hour of the same industrial time value, one individual will work less, another more, one better, another worse. The combined interests of the whole community and the equitable wage relations of the different workers to each other, demand therefore the fixing of the normal performance of labour within a defined working time, in short the fixing of a unit of normal work. Having normalised industry on a time basis, we must now normalise it on a work basis. And this is how Rodbertus proposes to do it: According as the normal time labour-day has been fixed in any trade at 6, 8, 10, or 12 hours (in proportion to the arduousness of the work, etc.), the normal amount of work of such a day must also be fixed for that trade, i.e. the amount of work must be determined which an average workman, with average skill and industry, would be able to accomplish in his trade during such a normal time labour-day. This amount of work shall represent in any trade the normal amount of work of a normal time labour-day, and therewith shall constitute in any trade the normal work labour-day, which would be equal to what any workman must accomplish within the normal time labour-day of his trade, before he can be credited with and paid for a full day, that is, a normal work labour-day. Hence if a workman had accomplished in a full normal time labour-day, either one and a half times the amount, or only half the amount of normal work, he would e.g. in the six hours mining day, for six hours work, be credited with a day and a half, or half a day respectively of normal work time; whilst in spinning and weaving, on the other hand, he would in the same way, for 12 hours work, be credited with one and a half or a half-day respectively of normal work time.

In this way Rodbertus claims to be able to establish a fair measure and standard of comparison for labour times, not merely between the various kinds of trades and departments of industry, but also between the various degrees of individual efficiency. Each wage labourer would be able to participate proportionately in that portion of the national product which should be assigned to wage-labour as a whole. If therefore this portion were to be increased in a manner to which we shall presently refer, there would also be a rise in the share of the individual workers, in proportion to the rise in the nett result of national production. This scheme would form the groundwork of an individually just social wage system, a system by which the better workman would also be better paid, which would therefore balance the rights and interests of the workers among themselves, which moreover would ensure the productivity of national labour by variously rewarding the good and bad workers, thus recognising the rights and interests of the whole community, and lastly, which would continuously raise the labour-wage in proportion to the increase in national productivity (and also to the increasing returns of capital, whether fixed or moveable, applied to production).

I may here point out, however, that with all this we should not have arrived at an absolutely just system of remuneration of wage labour, unless we introduced a more complete social valuation of products in the form of normal labour pay instead of metal coinage.

But Rodbertus wishes to see his “normal work labour-day”—equal to 10 normal work hours—established as a universal measure of product value as well as of the value of labour: “Beyond and above what we have yet laid down the most important point of all remains to be established; the normal work labour-day must be taken as the unit of work time or normal time, and according to such work time or normal time (according to labour so computed) we must not only normalise the value of the product in each industry, but must also determine the wages in each kind of work.”

He claims that the one is as practicable as the other. First, with regard to regulating the value of product according to work time or normal work. In order to do this the “normal work labour-day”—which in any trade equals one day (in the various trades it may consist of a varying number of normal time hours), and which represents a quantity of product equal to a normal day’s work—this normal work day must be looked upon as the unit of work time or normal work, and in all trades it must be divided into an equal number (10) of work hours. The product in all trades will then be measured according to such work time. A quantity of product which should equal a full normal day’s work, whether it be the product of half a normal time labour-day, or of two normal time labour-days, would represent or be worth one work day (10 work hours); a quantity of product which should equal half a normal day’s work, whether it be the product of a normal work time or not, would represent or be worth half a day’s work or five work hours.

The product of a work hour in any trade would therefore, according to this measure, equal the product of a work hour in all other trades; or generally expressed: Products of equal work times are equal in value. Such is approximately the scheme of Rodbertus.

A really normal labour-day—normal time and normal work labour-day—would be necessary in any regulated social system that sought on the one hand, in the matter of distribution of wages, to balance equally “the rights and interests of the workers amongst themselves”; and on the other hand, in the matter of productivity, to balance equally the “rights and interests of the workers with those of the whole community,” by means of State intervention. It would therefore be necessary not merely in a State regulated capitalist society, with private property in the means of production, as Rodbertus proposed to carry it out under a strongly monarchical system, but also and specially would it be necessary under a democratic Socialism, if, true to its principles as opposed to Communism, it aimed at rewarding each man proportionately to his performance, instead of allowing each man to work no more than he likes, and enjoy as much as he can, which is the communistic method.

The only difference would be this: that any socialistic system must divide the nett result of production—after deducting what is required for the public purposes of the whole community—in proportion to the amount of normal time contributed, and must make the distribution in products valued according to the cost of their production computed in normal time; whilst Rodbertus, who wishes to preserve private property, finds it necessary to add one more point to those mentioned: the periodical normalisation of wage conditions in all trades. He is very clear upon this point. “The State must require the rate of wage for the normal working-day in any trade to be regulated and agreed upon by the employers and employed among themselves, and must also ensure the periodical readjustment of these regulations and the increase in the rate of wages in proportion to the increase in the productivity of work.”

But Rodbertus clearly perceived the difference between a normalised capitalist system and a normalised socialism, neither communistic nor anarchist. Were the workers alone, he continues, entitled to a share in the national product value, every worker would have to be credited with and paid for the whole normal time during which he had worked, and the whole national product value would be divided amongst the workers alone. For instance, if a workman had accomplished one and a half normal day’s work in his normal time working-day, he would be credited with 15 work hours, and paid accordingly; if he had only accomplished half a normal day’s work in the whole of his normal time working-day, he would be credited with only five work hours. The whole national profit, which would be worth x normal work, would then go in labour wage, which would amount to x normal work. But such a state of things, which may exist in the imaginations of many leaders of labour is, according to Rodbertus, the purest chimera: “In no condition of society can the worker receive the whole product of his normal work, he can never be credited in his wage with the whole amount of normal work accomplished by him; under all circumstances there must be deducted from it what now appears as ground rent and interest on capital.” Ground rent and interest on capital are, according to Rodbertus, remuneration for “indirect work” for the industrial function of directing or superintending production. “If therefore the worker has accomplished, in his normal time working-day, 10 hours of normal work, in his wages he will perhaps be only credited with three work hours, in other words the product value of three work hours will be assigned to him”; for the product value of one work hour would represent perhaps his contribution to the necessities of the State (taxes), and three work hours would have to go towards what is now called ground rent, and another three to interest on capital.

It is impossible here to enter upon a complete critical discussion of the practicability of the capitalist normal working-day, as conceived by Rodbertus; but I may be allowed in passing to indicate one or two points of criticism.

I maintain my opinion expressed above, that the cost of production in terms of normal labour is not the only factor to be considered in the valuation of products and the regulation of wages; hence, I still claim that the social measure of value in terms of the cost of production cannot be applied to labour products or to labour contributions without reference to the rise and fall of their value in use. Should, however, the State eventually interfere in the regulation of wages and prices, then I allow that the normal working-day of Rodbertus would become of importance to us for that purpose. For the rest, I hold that it has by no means been proved that such an exercise of interference could succeed even under a monarchical government based on private property, far less under a democratic government with a socialistic system of ownership. Neither do I regard it as proved that this method of State normalisation would actually achieve the establishment of a more normal state of affairs than can be arrived at in a social system where freely organised self-help is the rule, i.e. where both classes, Capital and Labour, can combine freely among themselves within the limits of a positive code safeguarding the rights of the workers. The direction taken by modern industrial life towards the harmonious conciliation of both classes, by means of the wage-list, the wage-tariff, and the sliding scale with a fixed minimum wage for entire branches of industry, and so forth, promises an important advance towards the establishment of a more normal wage-system.

In considering the question of the working-day as an instrument for affecting wages, it will be found that on the whole perhaps as much, or even more, may be achieved (and with fewer countervailing disadvantages) by the maximum working-day of free contract, varying according to trade, than by the normal working-day in the narrow meaning which Rodbertus has given to the term.

The complete elimination of the capitalist individualistic method of determining wages and prices, in favour of the measurement by “normal time” and “normal work” alone, would be open to grave objections both in theory and practice. Above all there is the practical danger of overburdening the State with the task of regulating and normalising, a task which only the most confirmed optimism would dare to regard lightly. It appears to me exceedingly doubtful at the present whether any State, even the most absolute monarchy with the best administration, would be competent to undertake such a task. I can see no likelihood of satisfaction on this point for some time to come, and must therefore range myself on the side of those who claim a better chance of success for the simpler method of improved organisation for the free settlements of wage-disputes by united representatives of both classes. But these and similar investigations are beyond the range of the main subject under discussion in this book.

My task is to prove that the maximum working-day of protective policy, or of protective and wage-policy, has nothing to do with the normal working-day in its strict sense—whether it be the normal working-day of Rodbertus separately adjusted in separate branches of industry, or the all-round normal working-day of non-communistic socialism. The normal working-day in the precise sense of Rodbertus, or even in the sense of the more rational socialists, affords an artificially fixed unit of value for the equitable determination of wages and prices; but it is neither a regulation by protective legislation of the longest permissible duration of the work within the astronomical day, nor a method of influencing the capitalistic settlement of wages by the legal enforcement of a much shorter maximum working-day. A normal working-hour would serve as well as a normal working-day for a common denominator for the uniform reduction of the various kinds of work to one normal measure of time and labour, with a view to the valuation of the products and contributions of labour.

It may be said that the normal working-day, in the sense of Rodbertus, by virtue of its being a matter periodically fixed and prescribed, is a normal working-day also in that wider sense in which the term may equally be applied to the maximum working-day of protective policy. But it cannot claim the title of normal working-day from the fact of this fixity or this artificial regulation, but only from the essential fact that it serves the purpose of a valuation of labour products and labour contributions on a scale which is really normal, i.e. socially just and equitable.

The importance from a theoretic point of view of a distinction between the maximum working-day and the normal working-day would of itself have justified our dwelling on the foregoing details. But these details are also of practical importance in considering the policy of the ten hours day of Labour Protection, as against the legal eight hours day. One word more on this point: the eight hours day threatens to ultimately develope, should Socialism as an experiment ever be tried, into a normal working-day of the worst possible kind.

Democratic Socialism has, hitherto at least, adopted on its party programme no formulary of the normal working-day required by it. It will scarcely find a better formulary than that of Rodbertus (omitting the periodical re-adjustment of the whole share of Labour as against Capital, see pp. 123, 124). The normal measure of Rodbertus would be an incomparably superior method to that of regarding as equal all astronomic labour time without respect to differences in the arduousness of the labour in the various trades, no attempt being made to determine the unit of normal work per normal time-day or normal time-hour. But would Democratic Socialism have really any other course open to it than to treat all labour time as equal, and so to bring about the adoption of a socialistic normal time of the most disastrous type, viz. the submergence of the socially normal working-day in the general maximum working-day?

To the enormous difficulties, technical and administrative, inherent in the normal labour time of Rodbertus, would inevitably be added the special and aggravated difficulties arising from the overpowering influence of the masses under a democratic “Social State,” on the regulation of normal time. Social Democracy, as a democracy, would almost necessarily be forced to concede the most extreme demands for equality, i.e. the claim that the labour hour of every workman should be treated as equal to that of every other workman, without regard to degrees of severity, without regard to differences of kind, and without regard to degrees of individual capacity and the fluctuations of value in use. In any case the Social State would probably not dare to emphasize in the face of the masses the extraordinary differences of normal labour in astronomically equal labour time, i.e. it might not venture to assign different rewards to equal labour times on account of differences in the labour. And yet if it failed to recognise those differences Social Democracy would be doomed from the outset.

It can thus be easily understood why Social Democracy has hitherto evaded her own peculiar task of precisely determining a practicable, socialistic, normal working-day.

There were two ways in which it was possible to do this: either by merely agitating for an exaggeration of the maximum working-day of capitalist Labour Protection, or by adhering to the communistic view which altogether denies the necessity for any reduction to normal time. And we find in fact among Social Democrats, if we look closely, traces of both these views.

According to the strict requirements of the Socialists, not only a maximum working-day, but also and especially a minimum working-day ought properly speaking to be demanded in order to meet the dire and recognised needs of the large masses of the people. Instead of this, Social Democracy holds out the flattering prospect of a coming time in which the working-day for all will be reduced to two or three hours, so that after the need for sleep is satisfied, at least twelve hours daily may be devoted to social intercourse, art and culture, and to the hearing or delivering of lectures and speeches. No attention whatever is paid to the trifling consideration, that either there might be a continual increase in the population and a growing difficulty in obtaining raw material for the purposes of production; or on the other hand that the population might remain stationary or decrease, and therewith progress in technique and industrial skill might come to an end.

While more and more the hopes of the people are being excited by promises of great results from the progressive shortening of the maximum working-day—through the increased productivity of labour—still we hear nothing with reference to the normal working time, or the regulation by it of values of products and labour. The party has not yet, to my knowledge, committed itself at all on this point; it is probable therefore that it has not arrived at possessing a clearly worked out conception of this, the very foundation question of the socialistic, non-communistic “Social State”; still less has it any programme approved by the majority of the party.

To represent equal measures of working time of different individuals in different trades by unequal lengths of normal time, or, in other words, to assign unequal rewards to astronomically equal measures of working time, is an idea that goes assuredly against the grain with the masses of the democracy. It is found better to be silent on this point. Hitze, who has taken part in all transactions of protective legislation in the German Reichstag, states from his own experience that the parliamentary wing of the Social Democrats has always had in view the maximum working-day, and never the normal working-day. He says: “None of those who have moved labour resolutions in the German Reichstag (not even such of them as were Social Democrats) have ever contemplated the introduction of the normal working-day, either as intended by the socialistic government of the future, or as conceived by Rodbertus—but they have always had in their minds the maximum working-day only—the fixing of an upward limit to the working time permissible daily, even though they may frequently have made use of the rather ambiguous expression ‘a normal working-day.’”

It will, however, be impossible for the movement to continue to evade this main point. In spite of all danger of division, in one way or another the party must come to a decision, must formulate on its programme some socialistic normal working-day as a common denominator for the valuation of commodities, and the apportionment of remuneration to all. The result of this would be to destroy all the present illusions concerning the possibility of providing employment for the industrial “reserve army,” and securing a general rise of wage per hour by means of the adoption of an eight hours day.

There are then only three courses open to them; either to develope the normal working-day logically into a socialistic form, perhaps by making use of the proposals of Rodbertus; or secondly, to treat the maximum working-day as the normal working-day, i.e. to regard the hours of astronomical working time of all workers as equal in value (without attempting any reduction to a socially normal time), and to make this the basis of all valuation of goods and apportionment of remuneration; or, thirdly, the communistic plan of dispensing with all normal working-time on the principle that each shall work as little as he chooses, and enjoy as much as he likes.

The first of these possible courses—the adoption of the views of Rodbertus—is rendered unlikely by the democratic aversion to reckoning equal astronomical times of work as unequal amounts of normal work, to say nothing of the practical difficulties and deficiencies which I have already pointed out in Rodbertus’ formulary.

The second course is the one that would more probably be followed by the Social Democrats; viz. the completion of their programme by identifying the standard of normal working-time with the astronomical individual working-time, i.e. by assigning a uniform value to all hours of astronomical time. But in this event Social Democracy would alienate the very pick of its present following; for this identification would involve that the more industrious would have to work for the less industrious, and the latter would gain the advantage. It can hardly in any case come to a practical attempt to enforce this view; but even theoretically the strongest optimism will not be able, I believe, to explain away the probability, approaching to a certainty, that such an attempt, implying the grossest injustice to the more diligent and skilful workers, would literally kill the labour of the most capable, and would therefore lead to an incalculable fall in the product of national work, and consequently also in wages. But it would be extremely difficult to convince the masses, among whom the Socialist agitation is mostly carried on, of the truth of this contention. They would undoubtedly demand in the name of equality that the astronomical hour should be treated as the normal working-hour, and this has already shown itself in the demand for a general minimum wage per hour.

It would be no great step from this to the third and most extreme alternative. This would be that there is, forsooth, no need for any normalisation, or for any normal working-day! It should no longer be: “to each according to his work, through the intervention of the State!” but rather, “to each one as much work as he can do, and as much enjoyment as he pleases!” Even that craze for equality, which would make a normal time-measure of the astronomical hour of the maximum working-day, would be superseded, and the identification of the maximum and normal working-days would be set aside by such a view as this. Practically, we need not fear that matters will go to this extreme. But it is interesting to note (and since the expiration of the German Socialist Laws in 1890), it is no longer treading on forbidden ground to point out that this cheap and easy agitation in the direction of pure communism which went on for years even under the Socialist Laws and before the very eyes of the police, has to-day already taken a very wide hold by means of fugitive literature and pamphlets.

It is not my intention to assert that the present leaders of Social Democracy are scheming to treat the astronomical working-hour as the unit of normal time in the event of the introduction of a socialist government. They are not guilty of such madness. As I have shown, the present leaders of the Social Democrats are aiming at the eight hours day only as a protective measure and a means of affecting wages, and they aim at realising it purely on the present capitalist basis. They do not give the slightest indication of desiring that the eight hours day should give to all workers the same wage for every hour of normal or astronomical working-time. Social Democracy still confines its activity entirely within the limits of the capitalist order of society, however much isolated individuals might wish to step forward at once, and without disguise. But would the present leaders be able to hold their own if the masses expressed a desire to have each astronomical labour-hour in their maximum working-day (at present of eight hours, but no doubt before long of six hours) recognised as the normal time-hour?

I trust that in the foregoing pages I have at least succeeded in making this one point clear; that the Policy of Labour Protection has nothing to do with any normal working-day. And for this reason: that it rejects the “universal” maximum working-day; and rejects it not merely as a measure of protective policy, but also as a measure affecting wages.