SHORT TIME.
THE passion for leisure seems to increase among us. For nearly two hundred years, ever since the Puritan uprising gave the death blow to public holidays„the tendency. of English life has been to increased toil. In the old world, though the labourers were enslaved, six hours seems to have been considered a reasonable day's stint. In Asia, China always excepted, the mass of labourers only work seven hours for wages and nine hours for themselves, making up, in the latter case, for -the addition by countless holidays. The earlier form . of Christianity, though it extended the working day from matins to vespers, that is ten hours, still introduced an infinite number of days on which no work was to be done, and the practice of holiday-making survived the creed which had produced it. With the gradual advance of civilization, however, toil became more necessary to keep pace with the rush, while the strict idea of the Sabbath, which permeated English life, put an end to work for one-seventh of the year. Half the holidays were in Puritan eyes superstitions, and the other half inexpedient, and, by degrees, Good Friday, and Christmas-day remained the only legal close days, and ;Easter (Monday the only popular one. Work was to go on all the year, except—and the ex- ception is curiously characteristic of the English people—when a public funeral gave occasion for a gloomy conviviality. The intro- duction of improved agriculture, the rise of the factory system, and the general rush and scramble of a population which increases by half a million a year, intensified all toil, till twelve hears came to be regarded as the natural period of work. Traders) from 1800 down to our own time, generally worked much longer, an industrious man generally keeping his shop open from six to ten, a practice still fol- lowed by the trades independent of their shopmen. Professional men, however, worked less, early dinners and a taste for wine inter- fering greatly with continuous toil. The period of excessive exertion, perhaps, culminated in 1830, when twelve -hours' work was considered the stint which none but the lazy would endeavour to avoid.
For the last fifteen years a strong tendency has been observable in the contrary direction. It began, or rather became apparent, with the efforts of Lord Ashley to improve the condition of factory opera- tives. After years of discussion, it was agreed that avarice was stronger than foresight, and that the overtoil of young children was ruining the hopes of a generation. "Parliament, therefore, limited the labour of children to ten hours, and then prohibited their employment in the mines. The law was obeyed with little difficulty, and a desire for leisure spread among the work- ing class. The twelve hours' stint dropped silently, except in the ease of the agriculturists, to eleven, and then to ten, the latter, except in one or two trades, such as the printers, being now the accepted length of a day's work. Beyond that point overtime begins. The shopmen followed with their cry for early closing, which was generally obeyed, the shops throughout England now closing at hours varying from six to eight. The half-holiday on Saturday was the next attempt, which, though defeated by a traditional system of paying wages, met with an unexpected degree of sympathy, and will be aided by the form taken by recent strikes. Some trades, notably the masons, carpenters, and painters, have striven to reduce the working day to nine hours, knocking off work at four. As this demand is at variance with public convenience, and with the law of nature, which seems to fix the average of sunlight as the duration of man's labour, it has been resisted, but the compromise involves a wide extension of the Saturday half-holiday.
All this while the hours of professional work have, on the whole, increased. Civilization presses heavily on the educated poor, and to succeed, a man must now be prepared to encounter at least fourteen hours work a day. (Thousands who work in office from ten till five, work again at home from seven till twelve, and if really successful, add to that long period two hours more stolen out of the early morn- ing. The educated classes, moreover, do not eat while working, and the actual work of a barrister in practice, a politician, an editor, a surgeon, or an engineer, is probably lust double that of any artisan. He has a compensation in -his additional means of locomotion, and occasional holidays ; but to judge by the frames of those around us, the toil of the educated classes has passed the limit at which disease begins. The deaths from nervous and heart diseases increase in a frightful proportion, while that form of invaliding which goes by the name of 'retiring to the country" seems to be the destiny of every successful man. There is little probability of a reaction in their behalf. Year by year the educated class grows wider, the struggle for existence more severe, and we must add the prizes of success more palatable to the taste. If by a slight alteration in the social economy health could be a little better preserved, there would be little to regret in the process. Men may as well die of work as of disease, and to most of us the sauntering life of a hundred years no would seem inexpressibly wearisome. But the fact remains that the tendency of the last half-century has been to lighten toil to the mechanic and the trader, and increase it to the educated man.
It remains to be seen whether the steady diminution of work will in the long run affect the prosperity of the people. Holidays as they are observed in Asia and the South are unquestionably mischievous, and it would seem at first sight as if the persistent toil our fathers encouraged must produce more than modern short time. But there is a margin of laziness in all trades which a healthy willingness would remove, and which would more than compensate.for fewer hour. Half the trades work as if they were working on compulsion. The prepos- terous system of paying by wages instead of by the work done which
has become almost universal in England, tends to produce sluggish- ness and indifference. Compare a ditcher working for the farmer,
and the same man helping to drain an allotment, or watch a mason setting bricks on a large house, and a blacksmith who works for him- self or is paid by the job. That wages make life easier for the men may be conceded, but if the hours are diminished to the extent which seems probable, if 8 A.M. and 5 ron. are to be the limits of mechanical labour, the work must be done in a very different style from the present slipshod mode. The professional steals his holiday by working for the reduced period with painful eagerness, and the mechanic will be compelled by laws stronger than those which go- vern associations or kingdoms to follow his example.
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