by John Rae

“ People are fond of celebrating the social and political virtues of a peasant proprietary, but the city of Melbourne has even a better wall of security in the belt of working-class cottages by which it is encircled, and the pride of the modest owners in their little home and garden diverts them not merely from political but from convivial temptations. The population has thus been undergoing most important changes of national character, which could not have come about at all without the longer leisure provided by the eight hours day. ”

“ At last one of the largest employers of labour, the contractor for the new State railway—who, by the way, had shortly before quoted with approval an observation made to him in a private letter from John Bright, which I think is worth repeating here, because Mr. Bright is so usually supposed to have been an opponent of short hours: 'If you ever suffer the ten hours system to rear its head in Victoria again, you are unworthy of the name of men'—this very contractor now seized the opportunity to enforce simultaneously a reduction of wages and an extension of hours. ”

“ What use does the working man of Victoria make of the leisure he has obtained through the eight hours day? The 'go' and energy he is said by so many observers to put into his work is itself good evidence that he does not spend his time in vicious dissipation. If a shorter day in the workshop meant only a longer evening in the tavern he could not possibly show such signs of invigoration, and his day's work and his day's wages would soon have hopelessly declined. The general opinion in Victoria is that the habits of working men have improved and not deteriorated through the short hours. ”

“ This federation has made the eight hours day the cornerstone of the whole labour movement of Australia. It has committed mistakes—grievous mistakes, for example, in the recent strike—but when one thinks of the political force it could exert if it chose, one is astonished at its moderation. Lord Hopetoun was right when he told the working men of Melbourne last Demonstration Day that it was their organization that made them so loyal and law-abiding. ”

“ Possibly a new and better educated generation had risen, but anyhow, they came to set a value on the short day they had not set before, and to feel it to be for them, what it already was for so many of their friends, an essential of existence. One more section of the working class had added the short day to their standard of life, to the sum of comforts which the opinions and habits of their class make daily necessaries of being ”

“ In a democratic community, a ministry cannot afford to offend any considerable section of the population by inflicting penalties on them for judging for themselves on what they will think the purely personal question, whether they will have an hour's pay or an hour's leisure. A few of the factories—clothing factories chiefly—seem, however, to have adopted the eight hours rule of their own accord, but now they usually give out work to be done at home after factory hours, and no doubt specially to be paid for. ”

“ In the same way there has been developed that remarkable love of out-door recreations which is now characteristic of Victoria. The bright warm climate no doubt encourages this disposition, but the shorter day of work allowed the opportunity for its gratification. Nor do the Victorian people neglect more intellectual pleasures. Every visitor to Melbourne, for example, remarks on the magnificent Public Library of the city, thronged with working-class readers on the Saturday afternoons. ”

“ Altogether, the more we examine the subject the more irresistibly is the impression home in from all sides that there is growing up in Australia, and very largely in consequence of the eight hours day, a working class which for general morale, intelligence, and industrial efficiency is probably already superior to that of any other branch of our Anglo-Saxon race, and for happiness, cheerfulness, and all-round comfort of life has never seen its equal in the world before. ”

“ For all this advantage, moreover, nobody seems to be a shilling the worse. It is truly remarkable how immaterial apparently has been the cost of the eight hours day in Victoria. Look for the effects of it where you will, they still ever elude your observation. Wages have not fallen, wages have not risen, production has not fallen except in certain trifling cases; prices have not risen except again in certain trifling instances; trade has not suffered, profits have not dwindled (or we should have heard croaking) ; the unemployed have not vanished, not so much as shrunk in any perceptible degree ”

“ It is natural to think that the prolonged and now almost national experiment, which is the occasion of such universal congratulation every year in the community of Victoria, must, if we could only ascertain the facts of it with any degree of accuracy, have light to throw on some of those puzzling questions on which the oracles are now returning contradictory answers. ”

“ Much of that result flows, no doubt, from better management on the part of the employers and other general causes of progress, but much of it also undoubtedly arises from an improvement in the industrial efficiency of the artisans themselves, the direct effect of the leisure they have acquired.
It is almost a universal opinion in the colony that the men work harder now while they are at their work, and that they turn out work of a better quality than they did under the long-hour system. ”

“ Then Victoria has its own measure—one sometimes thinks a double measure—of the unsettled class, the 'sundowners,' 'swagmen,' remittance men, ne'er-do-weels, who will work now for a season at sheepshearing or again for a season at the diggings, but are found most of the time wandering about the country from station to station looking for work, and generally preferring not to obtain it. ”

“ The masters set themselves at once to practise economies of various sorts, to make more efficient arrangements of the work, to introduce better machinery or to speed the old, to try the double shift and other expedients to maintain and even augment the production of their works. The men return to their toil in better heart after their ampler rest, reinvigorated both in nerve and muscle, and make up in the result sometimes in part, sometimes wholly, by the intensity of their labour for the loss of its duration. ”

“ Shortening the day has apparently once again proved its own reward. It was found fifty years ago that in many branches of work the English mills did quite as much in ten hours as they used to do in twelve, and it has been found recently that the mills of Massachusetts do quite as much in ten as they used to do in eleven, the main reason being that the increased rest improved the physical and mental efficiency of the workman as a productive agent to quite the extent required to make the change profitable. ”

“ It was always the main plea of the pioneers of the movement. A joiner, who had wrought in the West Indies and in Brazil, said he found it far more trying to work in Victoria than to work in those countries. Doctors came forward, both at Melbourne and at Ballarat, and declared ten hours a day in the glaring sun of Australia was deadly, and left a man fit for nothing but drink or sleep. ”

“ A new generation had arisen in the interval, which probably set more store by the short hours for their own sake, and which certainly felt stirred by the example they had before them of other trades enjoying the leisure of a short day now for so many years without appearing to suffer anything in consequence. ”

“ And no doubt it may be easier to secure shorter hours at first and to maintain them afterwards in a new country, where wages and profits are both relatively higher, than in an old one, where they are both a little lower; because neither employers nor employed will feel quite the same difficulty about the loss they frequently—with reason or without it—fear they must incur by the change. ”

“ The only trades who still work long hours are the dyers, the tailors (except the cutters, trimmers, and pressers) , the textile workers, and the ropemakers. Agricultural labour, too, remains out of the short-hour movement; but the miners, the most numerous industrial occupation in Victoria, among whom the eight hours shift had obtained for many years only very partially, have now adopted it more generally in consequence of the Mines Regulation Acts 1883 and 1886. These Acts, however, do not apply to alluvial mining, in which accordingly long hours still prevail. ”

“ At all events, the statistics of petty crime in Victoria—in which fully half the cases are cases of drunkenness—show that the occupations which have the worst record next to the unskilled labourers are the old eight-hour trades—the masons, bricklayers, plasterers, smiths, engineers—which, however, it must be granted, are at the same time the most arduous and exhausting trades. There is a good deal of poverty in Victoria caused by drink ”

“ The principal branches of industry in which long hours still prevail in Melbourne are those in which women are largely employed—the tailor trade in which two-thirds of the hands are women, and the textile factories, like the wool mills, for example, in which there are three women employed for every four men, or the rope and jute works, in which there are three women for every two men. ”

“ By leaving work early in the afternoon, they are enabled to live out in the suburbs in neat cottages with little gardens behind them, which are almost invariably owned by their occupiers, and they spend much of their leisure tending their little gardens or in some out-door sport or with their families. The two first effects of the Ten Hours Act in this country were the multiplication of mechanics' institutes, night schools, and popular lectures on the one hand, and the multiplication of garden allotments on the other. ”

“ Speeches are made in which capitalists, politicians, and labourers, all rejoice together over an experiment that once caused many anxieties, but which they now acknowledge has, without doing any injury to trade, given the workpeople time to live the life of rational beings, and in the opinion of some of the speakers, has even developed that remarkable love of out-door enjoyments which is now creating a Merrier England under the Southern Cross. ”

“ An eight hours day is no remedy for this complaint. Then even in the ordinary occupations there seems to be in some ways more unsteadiness of employment in Victoria than at home, more changing of masters, and more time lost consequently between job and job. That was remarked upon by several of the witnesses before the Shops Commission. Mr. John Reynolds, for example, a working engineer, who emigrated to Victoria in 1870, said, 'There is a great difference in steadiness of employment here and at home. At home you may serve your time in a shop, and be in it till you are an old man. ”

“ The others make the excuse that it is such a hot trade. I find the colonial youth generally intelligent, expert, and steady.' M. R. Twopenny, in his Town Life in Australia (p. 98) , says, 'The best workman, when he chooses, and the most difficult to get hold of, is the thoroughbred colonial,' and that though the sudden increase of wages is sometimes too strong a temptation for the fresh incomer, the settled working-class population are at least as temperate as they are in England. ”

“ Some of the hands also carry home the work with them, and labour for many hours after the factories are closed. In millinery and dressmaking there is often a show of complying with the more humane system of eight hours work daily; as a matter of fact, however, this is the exception rather than the rule. The front doors are closed, and young girls are kept for many hours, and during the busy season all night, to work and execute the orders received. There is reason to believe that no appreciable extra remuneration is given for the work done during over-hours. ”

“ Healey, the Postmaster-General, proposed, 'That in all cases where a trade had established the eight-hour system, the contracts should recognize it.' He would support trades in acquiring the eight-hour day voluntarily, but he would not have it forced on any of them, for he said he was once a working man himself, and thought it wrong to prevent a man from working extra time when he wanted to improve his condition or provide for his family. ”

“ It is true the system has only become general in the colony very recently, and it is not so general yet in Ballarat and Geelong as in Melbourne. The building trades, everywhere the pioneers of short-hour movements—the masons, quarrymen, bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, plumbers, painters, and builders' labourers—have enjoyed it uninterruptedly, though not without severe struggles, since 1856. ”

“ Hodgkinson, a public man of Victoria, said in his speech at the eight hours demonstration of 1873 that he had often watched men working in the Public Gardens, and that though left to themselves very much they worked as well as when under contractors, that the Government stroke was unknown among them, and that he was convinced they did more work now in the eight hours day than they did before in the ten. ”

“ Only one shadow falls across the impressive celebration—labour's inevitable shadow, it appears, even under an eight hours system in a new country—the unemployed, a handful of whom attempted last year, as a demonstration that the eight hours day was no general panacea, to break their way into the procession under a black flag, inscribed with the fierce legend, 'Feed on our flesh and blood, ye capitalist hyena ”