LONG HOURS
_Our life is turned_
_Out of her course wherever man is made_
_An offering, or a sacrifice, a tool_
_Or implement, a passive thing employed_
_As a brute mean, without acknowledgment_
_Of common right or interest in the end._
--WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
There is no doubt that among the causes of unrest one of the most
serious, probably much more so than either employers or workmen are
generally conscious of, is the long hours of work. Those who have had to
hear questions arising out of labour disputes have noticed the state of
tension produced by the weariness and strain of too prolonged and
continuous work. Even in the domestic circle an overworked man is often
found less amiable and more ready to find fault. A harassed manager and
a deputation of jaded workmen may be really very good fellows and yet
find that some comparatively small question raises strong feeling and
mutual recrimination, and then leads to rash action resulting in open
strife, strikes, and lock-outs, and the judicial proceedings which may
be necessary in consequence of them. "A Skilled Labourer," writing in
the _Quarterly Review_, mentions as the first of the four principal
grievances of workmen--"the hours are too long." Long hours have been
accepted on both sides partly because during the War the call of the
country for increased output, especially of munitions, was so urgent,
and partly because it was thought that higher profits would thereby be
obtained, and certainly higher wages earned. It seems, however, well
established that longer hours do not necessarily mean increased output.
There is a limit to the time during which a man can do even routine work
effectively. If men were to be regarded only as machines for turning out
work of a certain class, very long hours would be bad business. Where
the work involves special skill and thought the evil results of long
hours, even measured simply by the gross amount done, are still more
serious. Everyone who has had to do with young students and still more
with parents disappointed by their sons' failures must again and again
have found that the cause of failure was too many hours devoted to
reading. The students acquired the habit of sitting over their books
worrying their minds, but really absorbing nothing. A senior wrangler
has been known to find five or six hours a day of real work at
mathematics as much as he could stand. Of course, work involving little
hard physical exertion and hardly any mental effort can go on much
longer, but the very monotony which in some ways makes it easy, has a
deadening effect. A factory operative minding a "mule" being asked: "Is
it not very hard work always watching and piecing threads?" answered,
"No, but it is very dree work." But the evil effects of too long hours
are not confined to the fact that unrest or disputes arise from the
state of feeling produced nor to the diminution of production due to
fatigue. Recurrent strains continued over a long period indeed
deteriorate even things which are inanimate. The "fatigue of metals" has
been the subject of careful investigations. It is time that fatigue of
human beings, even looked at as machines, were more fully considered.[5]
The great and often permanent physical injury caused by too prolonged
work is specially serious for women. Many women are such willing workers
that they go on overtaxing their strength. Among girls and women
students the fatigue from overstrain in preparing for examinations, from
which boys and men may rapidly recover, often results in permanent
physical and even mental degeneration. Many who have watched the effects
of such continuous study would advocate a complete sabbatical year in
which systematic study should be suspended entirely for girls at some
period between fourteen and eighteen.
It is impossible to have a healthy nation if the majority, or any very
large part of it, work for excessive hours even in the factories where
the best methods are employed to make the conditions as healthy as
possible. Medical men of the highest authority regard the influence of
too prolonged hours of work as one which urgently demands attention.
Enlightened and experienced men of business like Lord Leverhulme have
expressed very strong views on the subject. Man, however, cannot be
looked on as a mere machine for production, nor is even health the only
question for him as a human being. He must have time for other pursuits,
for recreation, for a fuller life. As civilisation and education advance
this need becomes stronger. The duller the work the greater the need for
those who have any natural mental activity to find resources of interest
outside. The pleasure derived from literature and science should be open
to all. No one who knows working people can deny that the demand for it
exists. A fitter on weekly wages used to show in a poor cottage one of
the best collections of British butterflies and moths, made entirely by
himself. Many of them had been captured late at night on Chat Moss. A
hair-dresser has told how to watch the habits of birds was the delight
of his Sunday bicycle rides; his assistant called attention to some
little known poet whose works had a special appeal for him; another said
it was the study in his rare holidays at the seaside and in local
museums of some form of animal life--the name of it, now forgotten,
would convey no meaning to most University graduates--that made his
interest in life. You may find a large audience of workmen interested in
a lecture on Shelley, and some of them as well acquainted with his poems
as the lecturer. Such cases as these may perhaps be exceptional, but
given opportunity and sympathetic help and advice, they might be
multiplied almost indefinitely. Other men want time for cultivation of
allotments, which ought to be within the reach of thousands of urban
workers who find in them a perennial source of interest. A growing
number take a keen pleasure in seeing something of the beauties of their
own country. Tramping through the Yorkshire dales and knowing them well,
it was interesting to meet one who knew them better, and to find that he
was a chimney-sweep, who saved up his earnings to spend his holidays
regularly there.
The success of the Workers' Educational Association shows both the
strength of the demand among the workmen, and sometimes, too, among
working women, for intellectual life and their capacity to make use of
any opportunities offered for regular study. It is to be hoped that its
promoters will not forget that some branches of natural science and
literature, opening new realms of interest removed from the ordinary
cares of life, are at least as important subjects for study as economic
and social problems, and that one of the most important of such problems
is how to give those who must earn their daily bread by work that is
often dull and wearisome, the opportunity of sharing as far as possible
in the intellectual life. We may well wish Mr. Mansbridge and his
friends success as pioneers in the work of reconstruction, and renewed
and extended activity when the pressure of War requirements is removed.
It is to be hoped that the original ideals of the Association may never
be forgotten.
The aim of the Association is neither technical, i.e., to make workmen
better qualified for their special work, nor to attain a higher general
education with a view to their obtaining employment of a different class
and ceasing to be manual workers. It is to enable them, while continuing
to earn their living by manual work, to participate in the fuller life
given by intellectual activity. There are some subjects which can be
pursued and studied _thoroughly_ with pleasure and profit without any
long or exact preliminary training. With some wise guidance in reading
and some stimulating criticism to help him, the workman can really
obtain all that is important from the study of the literature of his own
language--to learn to know and to enjoy the best that has been written.
It is of no importance that he will probably not become a "literary
expert," able to trace the influence of this or that obscure writer of
one age or country on the literature of another. It is to be hoped that
he will not learn the kind of literary jargon affected by so many modern
critics, or attempt in his essays to imitate those who think that
obscurity indicates profundity. There are some sciences, too, especially
certain branches of natural science, which can be pursued by men whose
time is mainly taken up by manual work.
The idea of erecting an educational ladder by which all will proceed
from the elementary to the secondary school and thence to the
University, is a false one. Any such ladder must continue to be narrow
at the top. It is impossible in any economic conditions that we are
likely to see in our time that the majority of our people will be able
to devote their whole lives to study until the age at which a University
course can be finished. Indeed, for all classes there is a modern
tendency to prolong the school period unduly, to keep boys under the
discipline and following the methods of the secondary school until
nineteen years of age, so that they finish a University course, which is
also becoming more prolonged, after twenty-three, and then at last take
up their vocational training. Neither parents nor the nation can afford
to make such a course the normal one. It is no doubt of the greatest
importance to secure a career for special talent so that poverty shall
not prevent a really able boy or girl following such a course of study
as would enable his or her talents to have their full scope. The old
Grammar Schools, especially in the North of England, afford many
examples of poor boys who by means of their school and University
scholarships were enabled to obtain the best training the country could
give, and so attain the highest positions in Church and State. These
must necessarily be the few. It is a cruelty by means of scholarships to
tempt those who have neither the financial means nor exceptional talent
to try for a career in which there will really be no opening for them.
Even with the limited number of scholarships which local authorities
have been able to offer, there have been many cases in which bitter
complaints have been raised that young people had been induced to
prepare themselves for some walk in life in which there was no demand
for their services. Of course, the more knowledge is required in various
industries the more scope there will be for those who have had a long
training, but there is nothing more injurious to the State than to turn
out a number of persons who have had a prolonged academic training, but
who are not able to do something for which there is a demand, and for
which the world is willing to pay. The results of such a course of
action may be seen on a large scale in India. In one of the colleges of
an Indian University in a large manufacturing town, fourteen young
men--very agreeable and frank, outspoken fellows--met at random in one
of the hostels, were asked what, on completing their college course,
they intended to do; twelve answered to become "pleaders," and two hoped
for something in the Government service. None proposed to follow
manufacturing industry, agriculture, or commerce. The legal profession
which they proposed to enter was so crowded that pleaders are said to
have been competing with each other to obtain cases by a kind of Dutch
auction regarding fees, and also to promote litigation wilfully in order
to obtain a living. It is from a kind of "intellectual proletariat" in
all countries, that dangerous political agitators are drawn who take up
political life not to improve the conditions of their fellows, but to
find some sort of a career for themselves, having no useful occupation
to turn to.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: Since the above lines were written I hear that a Committee
of Inquiry has been appointed by the Government to report on the
subject.]