CHAPTER XI
LONG HOURS
Our life is turned
Out of her course wherever man is made
An offering, or a sacrifice, a tool
Or implement, a passive thing employed
As a brute mean, without acknowledgment
Of common right or interest in the end.
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
There is no doubt that among the causes of unrest one of the most serious, probably much more so than either employers or workmen are generally conscious of, is the long hours of work. Those who have had to hear questions arising out of labour disputes have noticed the state of tension produced by the weariness and strain of too prolonged and continuous work. Even in the domestic circle an overworked man is often found less amiable and more ready to find fault. A harassed manager and a deputation of jaded workmen may be really very good fellows and yet find that some comparatively small question raises strong feeling and mutual recrimination, and then leads to rash action resulting in open strife, strikes, and lock-outs, and the judicial proceedings which may be necessary in consequence of them. "A Skilled Labourer," writing in the Quarterly Review, mentions as the first of the four principal grievances of workmen—"the hours are too long." Long hours have been accepted on both sides partly because during the War the call of the country for increased output, especially of munitions, was so urgent, and partly because it was thought that higher profits would thereby be obtained, and certainly higher wages earned. It seems, however, well established that longer hours do not necessarily mean in
creased output. There is a limit to the time during which a man can do even routine work effectively. If men were to be regarded only as machines for turning out work of a certain class, very long hours would be bad business. Where the work involves special skill and thought the evil results of long hours, even measured simply by the gross amount done, are still more serious. Everyone who has had to do with young students and still more with parents disappointed by their sons' failures must again and again have found that the cause of failure was too many hours devoted to reading. The students acquired the habit of sitting over their books worrying their minds, but really absorbing nothing. A senior wrangler has been known to find five or six hours a day of real work at mathematics as much as he could stand. Of course, work involving little hard physical exertion and hardly any mental effort can go on much longer, but the very monotony which in some ways makes it easy, has a deadening effect. A factory operative minding a "mule" being asked: "Is it not very hard work always watching and piecing threads?" answered, "No, but it is very dree work." But the evil effects of too long hours are not confined to the fact that unrest or disputes arise from the state of feeling produced nor to the diminution of production due to fatigue. Recurrent strains continued over a long period indeed deteriorate even things which are inanimate. The "fatigue of metals" has been the subject of careful investigations. It is time that fatigue of human beings, even looked at as machines, were more fully considered.[[5]]
The great and often permanent physical injury caused by too prolonged work is specially serious for women. Many women are such willing workers that they go on overtaxing their strength. Among girls and women students the fatigue from overstrain in preparing for examinations, from which boys and men
may rapidly recover, often results in permanent physical and even mental degeneration. Many who have watched the effects of such continuous study would advocate a complete sabbatical year in which systematic study should be suspended entirely for girls at some period between fourteen and eighteen.
It is impossible to have a healthy nation if the majority, or any very large part of it, work for excessive hours even in the factories where the best methods are employed to make the conditions as healthy as possible. Medical men of the highest authority regard the influence of too prolonged hours of work as one which urgently demands attention. Enlightened and experienced men of business like Lord Leverhulme have expressed very strong views on the subject. Man, however, cannot be looked on as a mere machine for production, nor is even health the only question for him as a human being. He must have time for other pursuits, for recreation, for a fuller life. As civilisation and education advance this need becomes stronger. The duller the work the greater the need for those who have any natural mental activity to find resources of interest outside. The pleasure derived from literature and science should be open to all. No one who knows working people can deny that the demand for it exists. A fitter on weekly wages used to show in a poor cottage one of the best collections of British butterflies and moths, made entirely by himself. Many of them had been captured late at night on Chat Moss. A hair-dresser has told how to watch the habits of birds was the delight of his Sunday bicycle rides; his assistant called attention to some little known poet whose works had a special appeal for him; another said it was the study in his rare holidays at the seaside and in local museums of some form of animal life—the name of it, now forgotten, would convey no meaning to most University graduates—that made his interest in life. You may find a large audience of workmen interested in a lecture on Shelley, and some of them as well acquainted with his poems as the lecturer. Such cases
as these may perhaps be exceptional, but given opportunity and sympathetic help and advice, they might be multiplied almost indefinitely. Other men want time for cultivation of allotments, which ought to be within the reach of thousands of urban workers who find in them a perennial source of interest. A growing number take a keen pleasure in seeing something of the beauties of their own country. Tramping through the Yorkshire dales and knowing them well, it was interesting to meet one who knew them better, and to find that he was a chimney-sweep, who saved up his earnings to spend his holidays regularly there.