BITUMINOUS MINES.

During the two years 1895 and 1896, under the 10-hour system, the average output per working man per day was 2.9 and 2.72 tons. During 1898, 1899, and 1900, three years of the 8-hour day, the average output ranged from 2.98 to 3.09 tons.

There is one State, Illinois, where machinery has not been increased and where the proportion of coal mined by machinery has remained constant, hence the increased production is due to the greater efficiency of labor.

In Utah for the 4 years of the 8-hour day, 1897-1900, inclusive, there is an actual increase of output.

In the brewery business three 8-hour shifts have been introduced as against two 12-hour shifts without any injury to the industry.

REPORTS OF REDUCED OUTPUT IN 8-HOUR DAY.

[John Ray.]

I. Chambers Thorncliffe informed the committee on mines in 1866 that the output of his colliery was reduced in about the same proportion as the hours.

The commentation says that this must have been due to difficulty in haulage, as hewers are generally admitted to do as good a day's work in 6 or 7 hours as they can do in a longer stretch of hours.

The Reichsanzeiger reported, in regard to the Government coal mines of Westphalia, a falling off in output of 10 per cent. Hours were reduced in 1889 from 10 and 11 hours to 8 hours.

The commentation observes that the fall of output is out of proportion to the reduction of the hours. As there has been a further decline in output of 5 per cent since 1890, other causes must have cooperated to produce the fall.

Australian Steamship Co., Sidney, Victoria: The iron trades employed in this company got the 8-hour day in 1858 on condition of accepting proportional reduction of wages. After one year the old wages were paid and a saving of gas, oil, and other items of expense registered.

The South Metropolitan Gas Co. got in one-third less time, onesixth less work.

The Gaslight & Coke Co. got one-seventh less work.

The Commercial Gas Co. got one-twelfth less.

In Darmen the cost of gas was raised one-sixth after the change from the 12-hour to the 8-hour system. This raise was due to the fact that the stokers at the same time refused to do certain kinds of work they had been accustomed to do before.

The Cleveland blast furnaces gave up the 8-hour day because of "bad facilities of working."

West Cumberland furnaces adopted the 8-hour day in 1890. Mr. Walls, president of the National Association of Blast Furnacemen, said the change proved satisfactory to employers and employed, though it caused the latter a loss of one-fifteenth of their wages and to the former an increase of one-eighth in the labor cost.

[G. W. Eustace, Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute.]

Port Sunlight, Chestine. The hours of work are 48 per week for men, 45 for women. Wages grade from $335 up to $495 per year. Bournville, Worcestershire.-The hours of work are 48 per week for men and 42 for women. There is high surplus income.

It is emphasized in regard to these towns that the industries are not run on philanthropic principles but are great commercial undertakings, run for profit, subject to fierce competition and reaping the rich reward of a world-wide prosperity and success. The character of the industries is not given.

[Ernst Bernhard. Translated from the German.]

STAATS AND SOCIAL-WISSENSCHAFTLICHE FORSCHUNGEN.

In March, 1900, the optical factory of Zeiss reduced the hours of labor from 9 to 8. Wages and machinery remained as before. The income per hour increased from 61.9 pfennige to 71.9 pfennige. (A coin taking the place of the American cent, though not the same in international value.) The director of the works says:

We are with the result permanently satisfied.

Similar results are found in the manufacture of writing pens or steel pens of Heintze and Blankertz.

Freese, window-shade manufacture: Wages are even higher and quality of work has not suffered.

Hardware manufacture: Reduction from 11-hour shifts to 94-hour shifts to 8-hour shifts. Wages and output have not only not suffered, but were increased measurably in the case of the physically weaker men and increased as much as 11 per cent for the strong. The relation between piece and day work remained the same throughout.

Manufacture of insulating material introduced 8-hour day, reducing from 10 hours. The relation of piece and day work, wages, and machinery remained the same.

Phosphoric-acid manufacture, Belgian Society of Chemical Products, Engis, Belgium:

Up to 1892 there were 12-hour shifts with net hours of labor about 10 hours. Since 1892 three 8-hour shifts with net labor hours about 7. Efficiency in output has not changed. Hence has the hourly productivity and intensity of labor increased 33.33 per cent. This has remained thus for 12 years. Wages increased according to output.

FAVORABLE REPORTS OF 8-HOUR DAY.

Soda factory, Rothan, Bohemia, 12 hours reduced to 8 hours.
Iron-rod manufacture, Minden.

Smelting ovens of North Cumberland and North Lancashire.
Salford Iron Works.

The battleship Connecticut was built with 8-hour labor in the Government shipyards; the Louisiana was built with 10-hour labor in a private shipyard. The labor efficiency of the former was 24.48 per cent higher per average men than of the latter.

The shipbuilding firm of Short Bros. in Sunderland reduced hours from 53 to 48. Efficiency of labor has increased.

Since 1894, 18,641 men work in the English Government works 8 hours per day, hence 5 hours per week less than before. The report of the war minister is to the effect that neither cost of production nor income have grown less.

J. Webb & H. Cox.

Caston & Co., typefounders, Chiswell Street, London:

The 8-hour day has worked perfectly.

F. H. W. Massingham, editor of the Star, London:

The 8-hour system has produced no increase in the cost of production.
Freethought Publishing Co., London:

The 8-hour day answered very well, and it makes no difference in the amount of custom.

Mark Beaufoy, M. P., manufacturer of vinegar, British wines and jams, has introduced the 8-hour day and Saturday half holiday. Working hours per week are 45. States they have done more busi

ness than before these reforms.

Huddersfield Corporation Tramways states that an increase in hours above 8 per day would occur only at demand of public.

AMERICAN AND FOREIGN REPORTS.

THE 8-HOUR DAY.

Letter on the 8-hour bill-Daniel J. Keefe, president International Longshoremen's Association:

From personal experience I state that in loading lumber, coal, etc., the gang working 8 hours a day for 8 months a year do better work and as much work as the gang working 10 hours per day for 8 months a year.

American Federationist, Volume XI:

The French mine legislation prescribed the 9-hour limit in 1906, the 8-hour limit from 1908, and the 8-hour limit from 1910, for laborers working underground. Exceptions to this rule will be permitted only after public investigations as to its necessity. The quarries on the Pacific coast have had the 8-hour workday since 10 years or

more.

Mayor Low, New York, changed the two 12-hour shifts of the stonecutters employed around Columbia University into three 8-hour shifts and found at the end of the year that there was not only a saving of money, but a saving in coal alone which amounted to the salaries of two of the best-paid men.

EIGHT-HOUR BILL CONSIDERED.

James O'Connell, president International Association of Machinists: When a factory reduces the hours of labor, as, for instance, in the iron and steel industry, from the two-turn shifts to the three-turn system, new improvements were invented and new conditions brought about, so that the number of workmen in the three turns increased the output. (Fed., Vol. XI.)

James Duncan, secretary Granite Cutters National Union, member of building trades:

The granite cutters in the country are working an 8-hour day upon individual work and there is not one contractor in the country who felt it interfered with his business

in the transformation. We get more for 8 hours now than before for 10 and the Government buildings cost less money than 15 years ago. (Amer. Fed., Vol. XI.)

Samuel Gompers:

It is a universal law of industry that a reduction in the hours of labor always brings an increase in wages; that the men who work 8 hours a day always receive higher pay than the men who work 10 or 12 hours a day. Among the men who work at wage labor the longest hours a day are those that receive the lowest wage. This is true universally. (Amer. Federationist, Vol. XI.)

"The 8-hour day," by A. F. Hills, the Times, July 15, 1897:

Dealing with commercial considerations only, I have found since the introduction of the 8-hour day into our works (managing director of the Thames (Ltd.)) a greater regularity in the morning, a more active output of work, a great saving of wastage in the single break of work, and above all an increased harmony and good will. I have had experience of the 8-hour day not only in the building of battleships, but in ordinary constructional ironworks of every kind. Our civil engineering department is the largest of its kind in the south of England, and in the building of railway girders, roofing, dock gates, etc., and we find ourselves face to face with a competition beside which that of battleship building is child's play, and have been able to hold our own. There is no competition of a legitimate character which we are afraid to face upon the basis of an 8-hour working day. The bogey of foreign competition is being enormously exaggerated in the interests of the longer day. Long hours generally mean slow work, and if the 8-hour day were generally accepted throughout the United Kingdom it would mean an unmixed benefit to employers and employed alike.

VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE 8-HOUR WORKDAY QUESTION.

"The 8-hour workday," by Samuel Gompers:

The building, printing, cigar, and numerous other trades in the United States enforced the 8-hour day with little or no friction. There is always greater friction in the efforts to reduce the hours of labor of workers who theretofore worked 10 or 9 hours a day to the 10 or 9 hour day than is experienced by 9-hour workers to secure the 8-hour day. This is due to two causes: One is that the workers in those industries have been poorest organized, have shown less resistance to injustice; the other is that their employers have become accustomed to look upon the simplest request of their workers as an impudent assumption to dictate terms. Toilers recognize that there are worse evils than strife for the achievement of a great necessary reform.

"The 8-hour day on Government work," by Samuel Gompers (American Federationist, December, 1910):

Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Casey, Chief of Engineers:

I want to say to you that I am strongly in favor of what is called the 8-hour law. I believe the wage earner is getting more proceeds of his labor under this 8-hour law than he has ever been getting. I think it is an advantage to the country and to the laborer.

Commander Folger, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance:

If you could, by fact, say that every man in the land should work but eight hours, it would be a very good thing to do. The quality of the work produced would probably compensate for the difference in hours. The output of the product per unit of time will be vastly better in quantity and in quality in high grade work than if the longer period were obligatory.

Senator La Follette (quoted in the Congressional Record, May 23, 1910):

I wish to submit some figures with respect to two sister battleships, the Connecticut, constructed in the Government navy yard at New York and the Louisiana, constructed upon contract in a private yard by the Newport News Shipbuilding Co.

The difference in the cost of construction of the two battleships was $29,855. The additional cost of the Connecticut was due to delay in the delivery of armor and to

the fact that she required special fittings as a flagship. The relative quality of the work may be fairly tested from the amount of money expended annually for repairs upon each of these ships.

Difference in favor of the Connecticut for the three years of 33 per cent.

"War ship construction at our navy yards," (quoted by Senator Beveridge, from the Scientific American, January, 1908):

The Connecticut cost only 5 per cent more than the Louisiana. This was due to the Connecticut's being the first large battleship built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There are several items of cost charged to her which would not appear against any subsequent battleship, all being square.

"For day work and eight hours," by Joseph Smith:

Important in a far greater measure is the sanitary and other very material interests of the millions of bread consumers and that of the thousands of men employed in bakeshops as against a handful of profit-grabbing boss bakers.

In Norway the adoption of day work was universally enforced by law in the year 1887. In many cities of Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Australia, and Holland day work has become a reality, thereby disproving every claim made in favor of the antiquated system of night work.

Bureau of statistics of New Jersey:

The eight-hour day.-Shoe manufacturing firm in Boston, Mass.: Hours were reduced from 59 to 53 per week; reduction in labor cost, 1 per cent; increase in output, 24 per cent. Further reduction to 8-hour day resulted in increase of 3 per cent in cost owing to 8 per cent loss in output. The explanation is that the limit of exertion had been reached by the worker in compressing the work of 59 hours into 534. A new standard of amount of output must in such cases be established.

Bureau of labor statistics, New York (Bulletin, 1906):

Printers' eight-hour strike. The Typographical Journal, September 8, 1905, states there were in New York State outside of New York City 4 unions with 113 members which had an 8-hour day, while 6 unions with 412 members had arranged for 8 hours, that is, either had or were to have the 8-hour day.

The 8-hour day had bean previously established in the larger cities for nearly all newspaper work and was well-nigh universal in all places for machine compositors. Between September 8 and 27, outside of New York City, 12 unions with 689 men had secured the 8-hour day for all work. Between October and January, 5 unions with 273 members, 2 unions with 44 members, and 3 unions with 87 members were added, a total of 34 unions with 1,664 members.

In Schenectady the 8-hour day had been established prior to the preceding in the printing department of the General Electric Works.

Bureau of statistics of New Jersey (1905):

The eight-hour movement.-Out of 396 establishments reporting, 47, or 11.9 per cent of the total, made a reduction to the 8-hour day, or 48 hours per week. The building and allied trades found by far the greater part of the number working less than 48 hours per week. The 44-hour week is probably, without exception, the 8-hour day with a Saturday half holiday.