48 POLITICAL ECONOMY 



office and says to you, ' For the next six months you must all 

 come back after dinner, and work from 7 to 10 every evening ; 

 of course you will be paid for your extra hours at an increased 

 rate.' The consternation in the office would be great ; here and 

 there one of you would like it, but to the mass it would be intoler- 

 able. They could not go out to dinner or to the theatre ; they 

 would have to give up their reading at home ; they could not 

 see their friends ; and if this sort of thing were to go on year 

 after year, and become the rule, not the exception, most of you 

 would look out for lighter work and less pay. Over-time, 

 habitual over-time we mean, is due to the simplest possible 

 cause. It allows employers to make more money, with a given 

 fixed capital. Suppose that their works are large enough to 

 turn out 50 locomotives per annum, with men working ten hours 

 a day ; then if the men work fourteen hours a day, the works may 

 perhaps turn out 60 or 65 locomotives per annum. The profits 

 on the capital invested will therefore be so much increased, 

 that for the extra hours wages can be profitably paid at a 

 higher rate at time and a quarter, or time and a half, in tech- 

 nical language. Masters say, as Mr. Smith says in his evidence, 

 their works are not elastic, and if they get extra orders they 

 must work extra time. As brick walls are not elastic, they 

 stretch flesh and blood, and it being, as we have shown, clearly 

 their interest to keep their productive powers at a maximum, 

 they keep flesh and blood somewhat tightly stretched, so that 

 in many works the habitual hours are from 6 in the morn- 

 ing to 8 at night, and in some from 6 to 10. Unions have 

 opposed this, and most properly so. It is better for the 

 men and better for the country that a larger number of men 

 should be employed for the smaller number of hours. Never 

 mind how the men employ their leisure ; we will neither assume 

 with some that they pass it in laudable courses of study, nor 

 with others that they pass it in the pothouse ; independently of 

 all these really irrelevant arguments, we say there is no reason 

 why workmen as a body should not decline to work more than 

 a given number of hours, provided in those hours they can 

 make the wages they require. It may be inconvenient to a few 

 of their number not to have the opportunity of making more, 

 but it would be intolerable that a large mass of workmen 



