The Theory and Policy of Labour Protection Part 6

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.

Thirdly, we come to the various aspects which the maximum working-day a.s.sumes according to whether it is given a general or only a limited sphere of application. In considering its application we have to decide whether or not its protection shall be extended to all branches and all kinds of business, and degrees of danger in protected industry, and further, whether, however widely extended, it shall apply within each industrial division so protected to the whole body of labourers, or only to the women and juvenile workers.

The maximum working-day is thus the "general working-day" when applied to all industries without exception. When this is not the case, it is the restricted working-day, which may also be called the factory maximum working-day, as it really obtains only in factory and quasi-factory labour. The term factory working-day is further limited in its application in cases where its protection extends, not to all the labourers in the factory, but to the women and juvenile workers only, or to only one of these cla.s.ses. Hence a distinction must be drawn between the factory working-day for women and children, and the maximum factory working-day extended also to men. We shall therefore not be wrong in speaking of this as the working-day of women and juvenile workers, nor shall we be putting any force on the customary usage, if by factory working-day we understand the working day prescribed to all labourers in a factory.

We shall find a further limitation of the meaning in considering the aim of the protection afforded, for in certain cases the maximum working-day, even when extended to all labourers employed in a factory, is restricted to such occupations in the factory as are dangerous to health. In such cases, it might be designated perhaps the hygienic working-day.

The maximum working-day, in the sense of the furthest reaching and therefore most hotly contested demands for regulation of time, means the uniform maximum working-day, fixed by legislation nationally, or even internationally, and not the maximum working-day of factory labour merely, or of female and child-labour in factories, nor the hygienic working day. This working-day is authoritatively fixed--provisionally at 10 hours, then at 9 hours, and finally at 8 hours--as the daily maximum duration of working-time, in the Auer Motion (-- 106 and 106_a_, cf. -- 130). Section 106 (paragraphs 1 to 3) runs thus: "In all business enterprises which come within this Act (Imperial Industrial Code), the working-time of all wage-labourers above the age of 16 years shall be fixed at 10 hours at the most on working-days, at 8 hours at the most on Sat.u.r.day, and on the eve of great festivals, exclusive of intervals of rest. From January 1st, 1894, the highest permissible limit of working time shall be fixed at 9 hours daily, and from January 1st, 1898, at 8 hours daily." According to the same section, the 8 hours day shall be at once enforced for labourers underground, and the time of going in to work and coming out from work shall be included in the working-day.

"Daily work shall begin in summer not earlier than 6 o'clock, in winter not earlier than 7 o'clock, and at the latest shall end at 7 o'clock in the evening."

We have still two important points to consider before we arrive at the exact meaning of the general maximum working-day. The first point touches the difference between those employments in which severe and continuous labour for the whole working-time is required, and those in which a greater or less proportion of the time is spent by the workman in waiting for the moment to come when his intervention is required. The second point touches the inclusion or non-inclusion, in the working day, of other outside occupation, of home-work, or of non-industrial work of any kind, besides work undertaken in some one particular industrial establishment. With regard to the first point, the question may fairly be raised whether in industries in which a large proportion of time is spent in waiting unoccupied, the maximum working-day is to be fixed as low as in those industries in which the work proceeds without intermission. And it is a question of material importance in the practical application of the maximum working day whether or not work at home, or in another business, or in sales-rooms, or employment in non-industrial occupations, should or should not be allowed in the normal working-day.

The labour-protective legislation hitherto in force has been able to disregard both these points, for with the exception of the English Shop Regulations Act (1886) it hardly affected other occupations than those in which work is carried on without intermission. But there are points that cannot be neglected when the question arises of a general maximum working-day for all industrial labour, or all industrial wage-service alike--as in the Labour agitation now rife in the country.

The Auer Motion, for instance, ought to have dealt with both these questions in a definite manner; but it did not do this. With regard to those occupations in which a large proportion of the time is spent in merely waiting, _e.g._ in small shops, public-houses, and in carrying industries, there is no proposal to fix a special maximum working-day, except perhaps in the English Shop Regulations Act (12 instead of 10 hours for young persons). With regard to outside work, the Auer Motion does not determine what may be strictly included within the eight hours day. The question is this: is the maximum working-day to be imposed on the employer alone, to prevent him from exacting more than eight or ten hours work, or on the employed also, to prevent him from carrying on any outside work, even if it is his own wish to work longer; the more we cut down the general working-day, the more important it will become to have a limit of time which will affect not only the employer but also the employed, as otherwise the latter might, by his outside work, be only intensifying the evils of compet.i.tion for his fellow-workers. The Auer Motion (-- 106) only demands the eight hours day for separate business enterprises; therefore, according to the strict wording, there is nothing to hinder the workman from working unrestrainedly beyond the eight hours in a second business enterprise of the same kind, or in any industry of another kind, in which he is skilled, or in non-industrial labour, and thus being able to compete with other workmen. Does this agree in principle with the maximum working-day of Social Democracy? Is this an oversight, or a practically very important "departure from principle"? We are not in a position to fully clear up or further elucidate these two points. For the present we may a.s.sume that the action of the Labour parties was well calculated in both these respects, viz. in neglecting to draw a distinction between continuous and intermittent labour, and in excluding outside labour from the operation of the eight hours working-day.

Lastly, in accurately defining the meaning of the term we must not overlook the fact that neither in respect to aim nor to operation the maximum working-day is confined to the question of mere Labour Protection. It has no exclusively protective significance.

It is true that the hygienic factory day, the factory day for women and juvenile workers, and the factory day for men, are wholly or mainly maximum working-days appointed for purposes of State protection, but the maximum working-day may also serve to other ends apart from or in addition to this. In the general eight hours day, for instance, the economic aspect is of equal importance with the protective aspect of the question. Under the socialistic system of national industry, where there would no longer be any question of protection in service-relations, the maximum working-day, together with the possibly more important minimum working-day, directed against the idle, would serve to other important ends; it would, for instance, give more leisure for the so-called general mental cultivation of the people and would prevent new inequalities.

We will consider in the first place the purely protective aspect of the maximum working-day of the present, then the mixed protective and economic aspect of the general maximum working-day.

2. _The maximum working-days of protective legislation: the hygienic working-day, the working-day of women and children, the extended factory working-day._

And first the _hygienic working-day_.

This is imposed on certain occupations and businesses on account of the dangers to health arising out of the work, and on account of the strength required in the work.

It is no longer opposed by any party. It is fully dealt with in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill in the above-mentioned provision of the penultimate paragraph of -- 120_a_.

By the insertion of this provision in Section I. of Chapter VII. of the Imperial Industrial Code, the hygienic maximum working-day may be extended by order of the Bundesrath (Federal Council) over the whole sphere of industrial labour, not merely of factory and quasi-factory labour. The Berlin Conference (resolutions 1, 2) demands the hygienic maximum working-day for mining industries.

It is hardly necessary to prove that the hygienic maximum working-day cannot be obtained merely by the efforts of the workers in self-protection or by the general good-will of the united employers, without general enforcement by enactment or regulation. Some employers are unwilling even to maintain the shortening of the normal working-day necessary to health, others who would be willing are prevented by compet.i.tion so long as the hygienic working-day is not enforced generally and uniformly by enactment or regulation throughout that particular branch of industry. The extension of the hygienic maximum working-day to all occupations dangerous to health throughout the whole sphere of industrial labour, is justified as a necessary measure of Labour Protection.

No nation will suffer in the long run from the full extension of the hygienic working-day. It is probable that the governments will advance side by side in this direction.

_The factory working-day for women and juvenile workers._

This has long been enforced. The distress which brought it under the notice of the English legislature has justified it for all time. It is now scarcely contested.

Without special intervention of the State, the considerate employer is not able to grant the ten hours limit, even to women and juvenile workers, on account of his unscrupulous compet.i.tors.

Its enforcement with the help of a factory list offers no difficulties.

The grounds for demanding a maximum working-day for juvenile workers are so evident that they need not here be indicated. We may, however, remark in pa.s.sing that this working-day is economically of no great importance in view of the small number of juvenile workers. In the year 1888, Germany employed in factory and quasi-factory labour 22,913 children (14,730 boys, 8,175 girls) 169,252 young persons (109,788 males, 59,464 females); children and young persons together making a total of 192,165 (124,526 males, 67,639 females). The textile industries alone engaged 17.8 per cent. of the male, and 47 per cent. of the female child-labour, that being the industry which also employs the largest number of female workers.

The maximum working-day for female labour is necessary for all women workers and not merely for married women, and in England it has long been enforced. In the case of girls, work for eleven or twelve hours is highly undesirable from the point of view of family life. "Experience proves," says a Prussian inspector, "that girls so employed never become good housewives, and that women so employed can never fulfil their maternal duties, and on this account many well-meaning employers will not employ married women after the birth of the first child. The evil result of this appears more plainly the greater the number of women workers; and its bad influence on married life and on the education of children in workmen's families is very evident and makes itself felt in other spheres of life. Isolated schools of housewifery and working-women's homes are insufficient to meet the evil, especially as the extension of textile industries and therewith the increase in the number of women employed has by no means reached its highest point." The more impossible it is to dispense entirely with female labour, the more imperative does it appear to secure to all women workers, at least, the maximum working-day, at best the 10 hours working-day (with 6 hours on Sat.u.r.day) long enforced in England.

The factory day of 6 hours for children and 10 hours for young persons has already been enforced by the Industrial Regulations in Germany. Its extension to all female workers is one of the most important steps proposed by the _von Berlepsch_ Bill. At present the proposal is for an 11 hours day, but the Reichstag Commission ought to succeed in placing the limit at 10 hours.[8]

The Resolutions of the Berlin Conference fix the time at 6 to 10 hours for juvenile workers, and 11 hours for all female workers (III. 6, IV.

2, and V. 2). They further demand that the "protection of a maximum working-day shall be granted to all young men between the ages of 16 and 18."

The working-day for women and juvenile workers has. .h.i.therto been essentially a factory and quasi-factory maximum working day (cf. Bill, -- 154). England has, however, in the Shop Hours Regulation Act of June 25, 1886, extended protection to sale-rooms, of course only in favour of juvenile workers, but with strict directions as to outside work. This working-day in commercial business, amounts on an average to 12 hours in the day (74 in the week, inclusive of meal-times). If the protected person has already in the same day performed 10 hours of factory or workshop labour, only 12 hours less 10 of shopwork are permitted; when the time occupied in outside work amounts to the full workshop and factory maximum working-day, additional occupation in the shop is prohibited. The Act does not apply to those shops in which the only persons employed are members of the family dwelling in the house or are family connexions of the employer. Such intervention in respect of household industry has already been begun but has not yet gone very far.

The general extension of the maximum working-day for women and juvenile workers to all industries, including family industries, has been demanded,[9] but is as yet nowhere enforced.

The specially short working-day for children necessitates alternating s.h.i.+fts, as child labour, as a rule, is inseparably connected with other work. English protective legislation directs in this case that children (from 10 to 14 years) may be employed in one and the same place only for half a day, either for the morning or the afternoon, or else on every alternate day, for the full day; and the order of working-days must be changed every week; in daily (half-day) employment, the actual working time (without intervals of rest) amounts to 6 hours daily, and 30 to 36 hours weekly, in other cases 10 hours daily and 30 hours weekly.

_The factory working-day (in the strict sense): factory working-day for adult males._

The extension of protection of hours of labour to adults in factory and quasi-factory labour, by the so-called factory working-day (in the strict sense) has already begun to make way in some countries.

In France it was enforced as long ago as by the Act of Sept. 9, 1848 (Art. I.), in which the limit was still fixed at 12 hours; in Switzerland the limit was fixed at 11 hours by Art. II. of the Confederate Factory Act of 1877; and in Austria by the Act of Mar. 8, 1885. Other countries have not hitherto adopted it. Great Britain and other countries still hesitate to interfere in this way with the freedom of contract for adults. Switzerland, on the other hand, is ready to reduce the hours from 11 to 10, but whether Austria is prepared to do so much is doubtful.

Germany also in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill has entered a protest against the extreme length of the factory working-day. Here the course has been strongly urged, sometimes of adopting an 11 hours, sometimes a 10 hours day, meaning always the time of actual work, without reckoning intervals of rest. In the discussion on the Imperial Industrial Regulations of 1869, Brauchitsch demanded a 12 hours factory day from the Conservative benches, and Schweitzer for all large industries a 10 hours day (_i.e._ a 12 hours day, with intervals of rest amounting to not less than 2 hours).

The necessity for the limitation of the working-day of male adult labourers to 11 or 10 hours, rests partly upon the same grounds as that of the working-day for women and young persons. Hours of leisure, besides the hours of night rest, are a necessity for men also, in order that they may be able to live really human lives. Above all they ought to be able to devote a few hours every day to their family, to social intercourse, self-culture, and their duties as citizens. The economic expediency of the restriction of working hours has been proved by experience. The amount of work executed in the factories has been in no way lessened by the adoption of the 10 hours day for women and children, and moreover in England, wherever the 10 and 11 hours day for men has been adopted without legal enactment, it has proved to be a beneficial measure; this has also been the case in the Alsatian cotton factories.[10] The factory inspectors in Switzerland unanimously report the favourable effect of the 11 hours day on the amount of work executed; and the same thing on the whole may be a.s.serted of Austria.

In Switzerland the proposal that permission for overtime work should be obtainable from the magistrates was several times rejected, "because the employers soon perceived that the increased production scarcely covered the increased expense of light and heating, and that the work was carried on with less energy on the days following overtime work than when the 11 hours day was adhered to." It is evident that there the 11 hours day is not considered too short. In general the employers in Switzerland very soon declared themselves satisfied with the 11 hours day; the workmen consider it a great benefit, and it has not led to the greater frequenting of public-houses. The adoption of a maximum working-day in Switzerland has put a stop to the practice on the part of manufacturers of taking away their compet.i.tor's orders and executing them by means of overtime work, so that amongst industrial managers also, the tide is beginning to turn against too frequent indulgence in overtime work.

In Saxony even, an examination into the advantages of the maximum working-day shows "that the manufacturers themselves" (see General Report for 1888 of the district inspector at Zwickau), "are opposed to the long protraction of hours of labour; but every employer hesitates to be the first to shorten the hours, fearing lest he should find too few imitators, and be thereby thrown out of compet.i.tion." The legal factory working-day removes this fear.

Of course we have no experience to show that the further shortening of the day to less than 10 hours would allow of the execution of as much or more work than has. .h.i.therto been executed in more than 10 or 11 hours.

There is a limit to the possible increase of efficiency in machines and in hand-labour, and in the two together. Labour Protection has neither the intention nor the right to prohibit any labour that is not too long to be physically and morally permissible.

At present there seems no necessity from the protective point of view for more than an 11 or 12 hours day as a rule, with special hygienic working-days of less than 10 hours, together with unrestricted freedom of contract in regulating the hours of work below this limit.

Above the limit of 10 or 11 hours the lengthening of labour time seems to diminish rather than to increase its aggregate productivity, and this explains why the 11 and 10 hours day, without any intervention from the State, has been so generally and successfully adopted by custom and contract. It is the general experience, as the Dusseldorf inspector notes in his report, that "those works in which the smallest amount of labour is performed, have as a rule the longest hours of labour; all attempts to increase the amount of labour at favourable periods of the market, by offering higher wages, whilst at the same time maintaining the long hours, have only attained a short-lived success, or have altogether failed; the same result is produced when in certain occupations the usually short hours of labour are prolonged in order to profit by the opportunity of a good market; it is only for the first few days that the increase in the amount of work executed corresponds to the increase in the hours of work, and the old level is quickly resumed; on the other hand, it is frequently affirmed by the managers that the capacity for work of our labourers is in no wise inferior to that of the English."[11]

The legal 11 or 10 hours day would not be justified if custom and freedom of contract were sufficient to adjust the true proportions of working time. This however is not the case, and the legal working-day is therefore necessary in order to supplement the work of free self-protection.

With regard to the voluntary adjustment of the duration of the working-day, we find that the 10 and 11 hours day already prevails in a large proportion of the German industries: as in Bremen, whence according to the factory report, only 33.8 per cent. of the adult labourers work beyond 10 hours, and only 3.8 per cent. beyond 11 hours, and in Berlin, where in 3,070 firms, 71,465 male labourers work for 10 hours and less; and the same is reported by other district inspectors.

But side by side with this we find a longer and frequently a decidedly too long working-day, and nowhere does every firm adhere to the 10 or 11 hours day. Even in the Lower Rhine Provinces the 12 hours working-day is in force in the smelting houses (Hitze). In Saxony the same number of hours obtains, as a rule, in textile industries, although many manufacturers would prefer the 10 hours day, if all compet.i.tors would adopt it. In Bavaria and Baden the 11 to 12 hours working-day prevails widely. In certain separate kinds of work, as in mills and brick kilns, the working hours are even longer.

The advisability of fixing the legal factory day at 10 or 11 hours is not to be disputed. It is just where the 10 or 11 hours day has not been secured by custom that, as a rule, the workmen and such managers as are willing are least in a position to extort it by way of self-help from other competing employers. And where custom has already led to the general adoption of the 10 to 11 hours working-day, it seems quite permissible to enforce it on such firms as have not adopted it.

It is no sufficient argument against the introduction of the extended compulsory factory working-day, to say that the adoption of the working-day for women and young persons would necessarily entail the adoption of the working-day for men without recourse to legal enforcement, since men could not be employed beyond the specified number of hours, while this was forbidden in the case of women and young persons employed in the same business. As a matter of fact, the larger proportion of trades are carried on entirely, or mainly, by male workers, though there may be a certain amount of purely accessory work performed by women and young persons. Hence the adoption of the limited factory working-day (_i.e._ for women and children) by no means necessarily or uniformly entails its general adoption. Even in England this has not been the case generally, and although we find that the maximum working-day for men very largely obtains without legal enactment, this has not been the result of the adoption of the legal working-day for women and juvenile workers, but has been won by the healthy struggle of the trades' unions for the maximum working-day fixed by contract.

Now the question arises whether the 11 or the 12 hours day is to be chosen, and whether the adoption of the factory working-day should be proceeded with in Germany without its being adopted at the same time by England and Belgium.

Several of the German States have recently introduced the 10 hours working-day in their government works. This would point to a preference for the 10 hours day. The proposal made by Switzerland at the Conference for the adoption of this lower limit rests partly on the ground of its agreement with the duration of the 10 hours day for women and juvenile workers.

But here some caution is necessary. Private enterprise is not so free from the dangers of compet.i.tion as government enterprise; whilst Germany might very well do with the 11 hours day since Switzerland and Austria have been able to introduce it without harmful results.