An Argument For An Eight Hour Law Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from An Argument for an Eight-Hour Law It will be observed that this proposed statute is in some respects quite radical, and in others very conservative. It is radical in that it does not stop, as such statutes usually do, with declaring that a given number of hours shall constitute a day's labor, leaving a man to perform as many days' labor as he chooses during each twenty-four hours, but it goes to the root of the matter and declares that such employment is contrary to the social and economic polity of the State and shall be altogether unlawful. And further, it lays its restrictions and imposes its penalties alike upon the employer and the employed. It would be as unlawful to work under the prohibited conditions as it would be to employ others to work. It is, for this sort of legislation, conservative in the following respects: (i) It restricts only habitual employment of the kind specified. It does not interfere with the free action of the employer and employed, in an emergency. Occasional work or employment for ten, twelve, sixteen, or twenty-four hours in the day, to meet some pressing necessity of urgent demand, would not be unlawful. It may be urged that the word "habitual" is too indefinite to be used in a statute; but I do not think it would be found to be so in practice. In case of a prosecution under this law, a court and jury would have to decide, in each case, whether the employment was occasional and temporary, to meet exceptional conditions, or whether it was a persistent but covert attempt to violate the spirit of the statute; and this is as it should be. Good faith on the part of the employer and employed would always meet with a proper consideration, but attempted evasions would be dangerous. (2) It is conservative in that it confines its restrictions to labor in a "factory, mine, or work-shop." I am by no means sure that I have fixed the proper and final limitation to the scope of the statute. I hope and expect that it will in time be extended further and given a wider scope, and that there are other fields of industry in which it will finally prove an ameliorating factor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.