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.