A Shorter Work - Week Is Essential

...Slavery to the machine was the fearful blot on early British industrialism, as it was upon early industrialism of this country...

...That means that each establishment should turn out 10,000 pairs of the hereinbefore mentioned articles each year...

...There's plenty of time...

...For ins t a n c e , the City of New York, and to a lesser extent every city in the country, with the exception of Milwaukee, is heavily in debt...

...When a person does his own work around the house—for example— or a housewife does her • stuff, the moment the job is done it ia done...

...When they saw an ardent young worker speeding up and trying to turn out more and more product they patted him on the shoulder snd said, "Not so fast, laddie...

...When you pay your bills for milk and bread and laundry and clothing, you pay something extra In dollars and cents to the racketeer and to the office-holder who Is supposed to serve your interests, but who helps the racketeer fleece you instead...

...Great movie cathedrals were put up in place of neighborhood nickelodeons...

...Bid* us grind treaeure and fashion pleasure For other hopes and other lives...

...they soon learned to call it the speed-up or stop-watch system...

...They lived in better homes, built after their former and shabbier homes had been rated...

...It is a significant fact that in creating a new industrialism where there was none before, the leaders of Soviet Russia—in fact, Lenin himself—studied the works snd the system of that Taylor whose system was so bitterly fought by workers here...

...What's the Matter With New York...

...What about tho fat—In the swivel chairs...

...Numberless jobs overlap and there actually wouldn't be any room to park their holders...

...But ponding the coming of Socialism something must be done NOW...

...first, for the sskc of humanity, snd, second, to save ths world from the consequences of its own unregulsted efficiency...

...out of our pockets...

...for a bottle of perfume, $150 for a bathing suit, $15 each for berets, $7.50 per pair for hose, dresses at $235 each, handkerchiefs at $10 each, talcum powder at $7.75 a box...

...It Is not necessarily laziness on the part of the workers, nor a desire to shirk necessary work...

...They ate more and better food...

...New industries were created to place new luxuries at the disposal of the masses, such as radios, automobiles, electrical devices, and so on...

...If it can be done quickly there is so much more time for other—snd more enjoyable and more important—^things...

...the Board of Aldermen, who meet once a week, to $5,000 a year...

...It's something to think about and talk about...

...and the tragic Haymarket meeting was called as a protest against those killings...

...The people in the higher-salaried brackets, who perform absolutely no useful service nine times out of ten, and who were appointed as an act of political favoritism, have bad their hauls increased and sometimes doubled, while school building programs have lapsed, adequate relief for the unemployed has been withheld, social services have been curtailed, because of lack of funds...

...While "out of the kitchens" meant into the mines and into the mills rather than into government service for the Russian women, nevertheless, we do believe that every housekeeper, whether she will ever run a government or not, should certainly know something about how a government is run...

...You'll understand why we say with such assurance that only a Socialist administration can shake off corruption, graft and wast...

...And one of ths most important of the resolutions will be to the effect that there must be Planned Production...

...Householder, pay for it...

...a book called "Muscling In," the author's name we've forgotten, and Norman Thomas' book...

...And thi.t isn't all...

...The workers wore better clothes, and had more of them...

...You're spending too much money already...

...To make the 10,000 pairs there should be a certain number of workers employed at a 40-hour week, at good'wages...

...The first struggle against the long work day and working week has already been a humanitarian cry for release from bitter and enslaving industry...

...When (or if) the world ever gets out of its present mess there will be s lot of pious resolutions to the effect that It Must Not Happen Again...

...After all, bankers have to live, too...

...They're "the works...

...You'll have to cut down expenses first...

...The result will be a repetition of precisely the chaos and insanity that led to the boom and the crash and today's distress...

...they did not cheat, but they did not break their necks at their job...

...Well, even if we did, it's important enough to say again...

...THERE IS EVERY INCENTIVE IN THE WORLD FOR SPEEDING UP AND GETTING THE JOB DONE IN A HURRY...

...Our Iron Master The beginnings of any industrial system are marked and marred by slavery to the machine, when Fast and fouler our iron master, The, thing we mode, forever driven...

...A certain no-account female who never did a useful thing in her life, but is related by marriage to an ex-hij-hest official of this city, ran up a bill of $220,000 for dud.i, also during this time of depression...

...Did we sav that the only American city in which this condition does not exist is in Socialist Milwaukee...

...Wolf...

...Too Efficient In industry it is precisely the other way around...

...But while fighting for the thirty-« hour week it is also desirable to make perfectly clear the REASONS for wanting a shorter working week...

...That is Planned Production...

...To go back to our housekeeping analogy, in addition to the huge salaries you pay the useless Incumbents of your household, they get a "commission" from the merchants you buy from...

...And that is rigorous limitation of the working week...

...But this, in the last analysis, cam...

...And if your children were walking the streets begging, you would hardly double the salaries of the men who have to button up the pants of the pantry-men I No Money for Camps And after you told the children that there's no money for camp or even for parks, and after you've told your sick people that there's no money for proper hospital service, you wouldn't put sn army of paunchous beef-eaters to polishing swivel chairs with the most generous portion of their anstomy, would you...

...In sll capitalist countries, wherever industry has developed to something resembling perfection, production is so swift, so efficient, that it takes too little time to finish the job . . . with the disastrous result that the work is finished too soon and thousands—and then millions— are thrown out of work...

...And crowding on the work (and cutting the pay as low as possible) ? Human beings being what they are, and industry being what it is, it is safe to predict that the moment the ink is dry on an agreement NOT to compete and cut throats, each maker of the precious implements will promptly set out to make as many as he can and as quickly as he can and to grab off as much of the market as he can, regardless of consequences to anyone else...

...Of course, there are plenty ^of dames who spend substantial money on clothes, but they sort of earn the money in one way or another...

...The result will be that each one will seek to, make the whole million...

...Cs'Canny The British workers long ago learned that it did not pay to work too fast...

...you may ask...

...There is one sure way out...

...And now, Father Knickerbocker turns to the bankers and cries: "Please lend me money, my children are starving...

...WsU, for onS thing they won't hsvs to sit ia Bryant Psrk or live In shscki oa the waterfront By Gertrude Weil Klein A Woman's Point of View "J7VERY cook should know how to run the government...

...The principle back of that drive has got to be driven home to every worker and every member of the nonworking class in the country...

...So Father Knickerbocker turns to his hardworking, useful, poorly paid servants, the teachers and clerks, the nurses and stenographers, the firemen and street cleaners, and cries: "Wolf...

...and the blood-smeared aftermath of Haymarket set back the 8-hour movement— and the labor movement— for years thereafter...

...cleaners, dyers, laundrymen all pay tribute to the "little brothers" of our political servants...

...did not loaf...

...The net funded debt of New York City is $1,831,278,000...

...And here we come to the whole crux of the matter...

...What, it was asked, would the workers do if they had leisure time, other than to w.-wte it and their substance in debauchery and riotous living...

...And what will they do with their spsr* time...

...Only a few years before the battle for the eight-hour day had been carried on by Socialists and other radicals in the labor movement, and out of that battle grew the fierce strike at the McCormick Harvester works in Chicago, out of which came the fight on the streets on May 3rd, 188(>, at which four men were killed...

...And if any of our women readers would like to know more about their city's housekeeping methods we'd suggest that they read "Criminals and Politicians" by Denis Tilden Lynch...

...The hardhearted bankers are ready to devour us unless we cut your salaries...

...Our difficulty if, not that there i$ too hut,' but that there it too much...

...And that sounds quite all right, until one begins to do a little thinking, as for example: Suppose the world craves, let us say, precisely 1,000,000 pairs of suspenders each year...

...By William M. Feigenbaum A Shorter Work - Week Is Essential Not Became They Are Lazy, But Because There Alone Lies Salvation for Themselves and Society, the Workers Fight for a 30-Hour Week...

...sergeants-atarms, whose duties no one seems to know, proportionately—but the army of political appointees has increased to such an extent that it would be embarrassing if they all did show up on their jobs...

...It is good to realize that the American labor movement is undertaking to jKipularize the slogan of the thirty hour week, and that all the organized workers will l>e called ujjon to light for that eminently desirable aim...

...They began with the thing they called ca'canny—not working too fast...

...But t h a t ' s precisely what a city run by any of the old political machines does...

...And the quicker the better...

...There is no other permanent solution of the problem...

...But today we s r e in a new phase...

...The drive for the shorter working week AS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE is recognition of the fact that there has been a revolutionary change in industry...

...And yet the workers produced too fast, and goods piled up more quickly than could be consumed so that within an incredibly short time they worked themselves out of their jobs by the millions...

...The bankers turn to Father Knickerbocker and say: "Nix...

...You may...

...We seem to recall similar resolutions after November 11, 1918...

...In a small way, a woman runh o u s e h o l d is running a g o v eminent, and her gove r nment t i e s up d i r ectly with that of her city a nd of her country...

...Landmarks were torn down and office buildings were put up...

...Thay're sacred...

...Their wives and daughters secured things that would have been luxuries undreamed of by an earlier generation...

...For unless there is s sharp limitation of the working week— ENFORCED RIGOROUSLY—ths world will head for disaster again ths moment the hoped-for economic recovery sets in...

...as it is a fact today that in building a modern industrial system in Soviet Russia workers are compelled to work long, wearing and unrelenting hours at wages that mean little (if anything) more than a pitifully meagre living...

...By all means, push the drive for the six-hour day and the five-day week (without diminution of wages...

...Expensive Talcum Powder And take a look at this while we're busy spreading sunshine...

...The American workers developed new and greater needs and demands...

...that is Socialism...

...A large part of the $200,000,000 to $600,000,000 a year extorted from the business men of New York City by racketeers goes into the pockets of their political protectors in both parties...

...The sooner ths job gets done, THE MORE EFFICIENT LABOR IS, the worse it is for the workers—and thus, incidentally, for everyone else...

...Eight Hours Forty years ago there was inscribed upon the banners carried in labor day parades the single figure 8. Thousands of men marched with torchlights sputtering kerosene over oilcloth signs with the single figure 8. Labor's slogan was: EIGHT HOURS' WORK: EIGHT HOURS' SLEEP: EIGHT HOURS' RECREATION...

...They did not slow up...

...When the capitalists sought to introduce "efficiency" here, in the shape of the so-called Taylor system, it was the labor movement that opposed it everywhere on the sound ground that such speeding up subordinated the profits of the employer to human welfare, the life of the worker himself...

...Now if you were running a household—a large household that required a staff of servants, and if you were so deeply in debt that every time you went out bill collectors stumbled over the threshold —you wouldn't buy an $8,000 limousine for your head butler, whose chief duty is opening the front door when Queen Marie comes to call, would you...

...The "little brothers" who run what is called a racket could not exist if not for the help and protection of our political servants...

...Dealers in milk and dairy products, poultry, meat, fish, and almost every kind of food, makers of paper boxes, clothing, leather goods...

...This means that every person in the city has to pay out of his or her pocket $260 for the pleasure of being run by Tammany Hall...

...And you, Mrs...

...Suppose the country is blessed with precisely 100 establishments equipped to produce the suspenders the world so passionately desires...

...No less a person than Nicolai Lenin said this when he launched the drive to "get the women out of the kitchens...

...Not only did the Mayor of New York increase his own salary to $40,000 a year...

...But:— The 100 employers are competing with each other, and can anyone imagine any one of them NOT trying to make as many of the dear little pants-supporters as possible...

...Not if you're sane, you wouldn't...

...g Y all means, the shorter working week...

...The demand for an eight-hour I dny was long considered radical and revolutionary...

...and even as late as 1919, when the slaves of United States Steel struck against the hideous 84-hour week system in the Pittsburgh and Gary steel hells, their struggle was dftmned as sedition by snnctimonous Judge Gary and others...

...But it won't get you anywhere...

...They won concessions in the shape of shorter hours and better wages...