Work shift

“ The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. ”

“ For those who live out of sight of this great industry, never hearing the rattle of the clogs over the roads in the early morning, at the dinner hour, and again when the bell rings for ceasing work; who only know from passing them in the train the look of the huge and brilliantly lighted mills, it may require some effort of imagination to realise the importance of these matters to the operatives, who for 561⁄2 hours every week are to a greater or lesser extent working under trying conditions. ”

“ Work in the factory or in the office, work which brings us into contact with the outside world, calls for the exercise of qualities and attainments which we had no need of before, for the abandonment of habits and ideas which can only hamper our progress in our changed surroundings. ”

“ And in order that I may enjoy this life it is necessary that from morning till night house-porters, dvorniks, cooks (male and female) , footmen, coachmen, and laundresses, should work; to say nothing of the manual labour necessary so that the coachmen, cooks, footmen, and others may have the instruments and articles by which and upon which they work for me,—axes, casks, brushes, dishes, furniture, glasses, shoe-black, kerosene, hay, wood, and food. All these men and women work hard all the day and every day in order that I may talk, eat, and sleep. ”

“ What will the American workman do to express his American temperament through his labour union to his employer? The American workmen will go to their employers and say: "Instead of doing six hours' work in nine hours, we will do nine hours' work in nine hours." ”

“ I am glad of the opportunity of saying what I think on the matter, and of explaining somewhat in detail just how I should expect, in fact, how I have time after time induced union men to do a large day's work, quite as large as other men do. ”

“ Hours for the domestic worker must be definite, as they are in shop or factory work. The working day must be shortened. Time outside of working hours must be absolutely the worker's own. The worker must either live outside the home in which she works, or must have privacy, convenience, comfort, and the opportunity to receive her friends, as she would at home. ”

“ With manual labor, as with intellectual labor, there is a maximum, after which the muscular and cerebral forces decline, and then the work drags along slowly and without vigor until the end of the forced daily labor. Consider also the beneficient suggestive influence of a reduction of hours, and you will readily understand why the recent English reports are so unanswerable on the excellent results, even from the capitalist point of view, of the Eight-Hour reform. ”

“ Shorter hours of work, by allowing higher standards of comfort and purer family life, promise to enhance the industrial efficiency of the wage-working class — improved health, longer life, more content and greater intelligence and inventiveness. ”

“ I am speaking, of course, of that class of people of our race who depend mainly upon a day's work—working by the day, as we call it—for their living. These men with whom I talked gave several illustrations of this tendency. In the first place, I think they mentioned, without exception, this fact—that if the coloured people are employed in a factory, they work well and steadily for a few days, say until Saturday night comes, and they are paid their week's wages. ”

“ The first working model may also make its first success at some odd hour in the morning after a job of work that culminates forty or fifty solid hours—after a few years of preliminary planning and building. ”

“ Who, among the hard workers of our eastern cities, needs two months' vacation, and can only get away from the desk or office for two weeks?
Who feels the confined work tell on his lungs, or his eyes, or shudders at that tremulousness of the shoulders and arms which precedes the breaking-down from over-work? ”

“ And it would do you all the good in the world if you had a job that made you scramble and rub elbows with your fellow-men. Now, if I could get you a job, for, say, two or three days a week, one that would allow you heaps of time for your proper work—would you take it? ”

“ Business hours are frequently long, but they are limited, and after the day's work is over, the remainder of the twenty-four hours is at the disposal of the employees, who can still enjoy the happiness and freedom associated with the life of their own social circle. ”

“ As soon as a careful study had been made of the time elements entering into one class of work, a single first-class workman was picked out and started on ordinary piece work on this job. His task required him to do between three and one-half and four times as much work in a day as had been done in the past on an average. ”

“ Then, for certain hours he works between the dawning and the dark,
And delivers one day's work for one day's pay.
This industrial arrangement has advantages for both,
If employer and employed are honest men. ”

“ In certain weaving factories I have been told that the girls are required to work sixteen hours a day; and that on Sundays they are allowed to have some rest, being then required to work but ten hours! ”

“ The manual worker's energies are so absorbed in the physical tasks that he is annoyed by any suggestion to change his method. If he were given the position at a desk he would probably be interested in the progressive schemes for betterment of methods of work or management of business. ”

“ As a result of this change of feeling such an increase in their determination and physical activity, and such an improvement in the conditions under which the work is done as will result in many cases in their turning out from two to three times as much work as they have done in the past. ”

“ When division of labor takes place, we have, it is true, a greater change in the life of the individual. The numerous unlike acts of the isolated man, in furtherance of the satisfaction of his wants, yield to the repetition of special operations not directly related to his wants. Occupation, surroundings, training, work-discipline are greatly modified, and lead to no small change in the man himself. ”

“ Accustom all the servants under your direction to rise early, and let them breakfast at an early hour. If orders be given betimes in the morning, there will be more time to execute them,—servants will perform their work with more ease,—and less hands will be required. If the economy of time were duly considered, and a regular plan of daily employment laid down, much business may be effected without hurry or fatigue. ”

“ With the progressive division of labor, work has become more and more mechanical. A definite share of overfatigue and its sequels, especially neurasthenia, must be ascribed to this monotony—to the absence of spontaneity or joy in work. ”

“ As it is, men who prefer working all the year to working two-thirds of the year, and often half a day at that, have, by a natural elimination, been weeded out steadily, and have left a large share of men, bred to a habit of irregular work and short hours. ”

“ You have been doing in the past few days all the left-over jobs which should have been attended to since warm weather began. Once you get clear of legacies from the past you'll find a day's work can be done in much less than a day and will neither exhaust nor weary you. ”

“ The hours of labour among the small masters are scarcely brought within any system at all; for all the work is piecework, not paid for by the day or hour; and each man works as long as he likes, or as long as his business impels him. ”

“ Thus, as in other professions, there are « 171 » times of extra pressure, when every hour in a long day has its full complement of busy work, and times of comparative rest, when the labour is a good deal lighter. ”

“ Second, all the labor-saving machinery in the world will but slightly reduce the output of time and energy in the household work unless the worker will apply her mind to the problem, adapt herself to new ways of performing a piece of work, and be willing to think. ”

“ If they have been accustomed to work at particular periods of the day, and the order of things is suddenly reversed, the working hours changed into hours of rest, and vice versa, they may not do as well for a short time, but they will soon accustom themselves to the change, and eat and rest as well as before. ”

“ And that these possibilities are already recognized and accepted by not a few of the great body of workers, is proved by the fact that the greater the opportunity to work by the piece, and the greater the latitude afforded to workmen to control their own time in connection with earnings, the greater the disinclination to diminish the hours of labor. ”

“ Reduced to its elements, it means that each worker would, in the end, work for what he could get out of it, or if he found that he got the same advantage without working so hard, then he would not work so energetically. ”

“ The fact that through the improvement of machinery so many men are thrown out of employment, or at best, working but half the time brings them to reflection. They have leisure, and they consider how their conditions can be changed. ”

“ These are Knockers-Up, going their hasty rounds, from house to house, to rouse the workman to his labour. They are generally old men, who are still active on foot; or poor widows, who retain sufficient vigour to enable them to stand the work; for it is an employment that demands not only severe punctuality, but great activity: there is so much ground to cover in so little time. ”

“ Hold the faith and purpose of increase during work hours, after work hours, and before work hours. Hold it in such a way that every person who comes in contact with you, whether foreman, fellow workman, or social acquaintance, will feel the power of purpose radiating from you; so that every one will get the sense of advancement and increase from you. Men will be attracted to you, and if there is no possibility for advancement in your present job, you will very soon see an opportunity to take another job. ”

“ In one room the hours of labor were left unmodified, in the other modified, first increased, then decreased. They made interesting experiments to see whether a man produced as much output, in eight hours as he could in ten ”

“ For the worker who is well established in her employment and has a good income, home dressmaking and millinery become questions of health, time and energy. This worker should make the best use of her strength. ”

“ About three blasts in this hard rock is considered a fair day's work, the men working eight hours a day in shifts—which does not mean that they array themselves in chemises to work in, but that they are relieved, or shifted, at the end of eight hours, by other workmen taking their places. ”

“ As all work, men and women alike, and as machinery has been brought here to a wonderful degree of perfection, the actual labor necessary to maintain the people is, of necessity, very light. At first, a hundred or so years ago, in the early days of the community, the time of labor was fixed at five hours per day. But every decade, with the growth of the population, the labor hours have been diminishing. ”

“ The work-day generalisations, which emerge from the state of the industrial arts, concomitantly fall into a deeper obscurity, answering to the depth of indignity to which workmanlike efficiency sinks under such a cultural scheme ”

“ You say you cannot do it till Monday. 'Well,' he says, 'I shall get it done elsewhere.' People working at home are found to do it, and as they have not got the machinery or appliances it means that they work at it all Sunday, and make their little children of nine or ten work too, whereas the grown women may not work an hour longer in factories. ”

“ Next choose for the application of the two principal functional foremen, viz., the speed boss and the gang boss, that portion of the work in which there is the largest need of, and opportunity for, making a gain. It is of the utmost importance that the first combined application of time study, slide rules, instruction cards, functional foremanship, and a premium for a large daily task should prove a success both for the workmen and for the company, and for this reason a simple class of work should be chosen for a start. ”

“ Work in business is generally divided into two periods. Yet this division can not always be effected, and in railroad and steamship positions, in post offices, upon trolley lines, in hotels, in hospitals, and in other cases too numerous to mention, where work must follow a continuous round, the working hours are divided into more than two periods, according to the nature of the work and the interests of the employer, not however exceeding a fixed number of hours per day or per week. ”

“ We work till ten and sometimes later, but then they sleep between and we can’t; and they get the change of running out for a loaf of bread or whatever’s wanted, and we don’t stir from the machine from morning till night. ”

“ If these women are not obliged to resume work within two weeks, they are thankful, and count themselves fortunate. Many come back to the factory after eight, and even after three to four days, to resume full work. I once heard a manufacturer ask an overlooker: “Is so and so not back yet?” ”

“ If you do things by the job, you are perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. ”