The Eight-Hour Labor Debate
By Editor
The Eight-Hour-Law Demand.—We believe in minimizing of the hours of labor as far as possible; but to require that the Government shall purchase nothing but what has been manufactured by men working only eight hours a day is carrying the matter altogether too far. In fact, it is an impossibility. Many of the things which the Government needs have in their very inception been wrought out by days and nights of hardest labor known—mental labor. The designs that the workmen are materializing, the plans which they are filling up, were wrought out by men who worked more or less every waking hour throughout the twenty-four. The brains that plan for the successful operation of the large factories of the country can no more be limited by hours than the wind. If it were so, there would be multiplied failures. And while men with families ought to have some time with their families, some time for heart and home and mind culture, candor compels the belief that the majority of workmen would make worse use of the time outside of the hours of labor than inside those hours. The continually shorter day means more loafing, more drunkenness, more dissipation, more family troubles, more dissatisfaction, and more unreasonable discontent.