By limiting a day's work, the reverend gentleman referred to the rule existing in certain unions regulating the maximum day's labor.
That rule does exist, and sometimes undoubtedly—labor union men not being angels or cherubim—the rule may be pushed to extremes.
But on the whole the rule is necessary, and it works for good.
We shall tell this clergyman and other citizens one special reason for limiting the day's work.
The contractors want to make all the money they can. When the unions forced them into recognition of certain hours of labor as constituting a day's work, THAT was looked upon as a dishonest practice. It was felt in the old days that a workman should be only too glad to get out of bed at daybreak and work until dark. Now even the stupidest and most selfish have come to recognize limited hours as a feature of American industry. And the enlightened gladly admit that the well-paid, well-rested, independent worker usually does more in his eight or nine hours than he used to do in his twelve or fourteen.
After the inauguration of the limited-hour day the contractors invented what is known as a "rusher."
The "rusher" is a young workman, in his prime, marvellously quick in his work as compared with the ordinary, good, capable workman.
On a job of bricklaying, carpentering, or other work, it was customary for the shrewd contractor to hire one or more "rushers." Nominally the "rusher" was paid regular union wages. But secretly the contractor paid him double wages, or more than double wages. The "rusher" worked at high pressure hour after hour, day after day. The others could not possibly have kept up with him had he worked his fastest. But his instructions were to keep just a little ahead, that the others might struggle and do their best to keep even in their task, in order not to lose their work for apparent idleness. Thus the "rusher," a man of unusual skill, getting double wages, went along well within his forces, while the others were working themselves to death in order to keep up and not lose their jobs.
The limitation of the day's output is based originally on the desire to squelch this "rusher" idea, or to put the quietus on the very young and able workman anxious to curry favor with his "boss" by making the pace too hot for the men working beside him.
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