PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 545 
derived from a1 incremental addition to leisure is greaté? than the utility 
of the increment of wage sacrificed by transferring an increment of time 
from production to consumption, the operative would gain from a contrac- 
tion of the working day, other things being equal. Recurring to our earlier 
numerical example, we see that from the long-sighted point of view the 
productivity of the last fraction of the nine hours day is zero while its 
value as leisure must be greater than zero. Hence the operative would 
choose to work less than nine hours a day, it being understood, remember, 
that he is paid his marginal worth and knows what that will be for 
different daily periods of work. Leisure consists in rival satisfaction- 
yielding occupations, active or passive, which are rendered possible by wages. 
There is consequently a close connection between this and that other deter- 
minant of the operative’s choice, namely, the positive or negative utility 
associated with labour itself. It may be granted that in the long run, 
after the working day has exceeded a certain length, any further addition 
to it diminishes the satisfaction directly derived from working or adds to 
the balance of dissatisfaction. If a balance of dissatisfaction were asso- 
ciated in the long run with the efforts of the last minute in the working 
day which the operative would otherwise choose, as would ordinarily be the 
case, he would elect, other things being equal, to work an even shorter day, 
the duration of which would he determined at the point at which the 
gains and losses came to equivalence when everything was taken into 
account—that is to say at the point at which his satisfaction was maximised. 
Did the last minute of working still yield satisfaction in the long run when 
the hours were nine (referring to the case supposed), which is so highly 
improbable as to be a negligible case, the operative would prefer to devote 
more than nine hours of his day to production were this satisfaction of 
working greater than the value associated in the long run with the last 
minute of leisure left when nine hours a day were given to business. 
So far in considering the operatives’ interests we have fixed our eyes on 
a remote perspective. We next focus our attention upon immediate ten- 
dencies and suppose them not to be counteracted by forces arising out of a 
regard for ultimate results. In these circumstances the operative would be 
inclined to select a longer working day than that which would be con- 
tinuously the most advantageous to him, because he would be blind to the 
reaction of the longer hours on efficiency and so on earnings and the capacity 
to take pleasure in work. Many people lower the general level of their 
earnings in the future, and spoil their enjoyment of work and leisure in the 
future, by making as much as they can in the present. However, even in 
these circumstances operatives would not approve such long hours as 
employers who were short-sighted, because the latter would make no allow- 
ance for the disutility of labour to the operative or the utility to him of 
leisure. 
We are assuming throughout, it must be remembered, that the wage 
will always be the operative’s marginal worth—that is, what would be lost 
if he were dismissed—and that he knows it. Actually, of course, there 
is frequently an appreciable discrepancy between the marginal worth of 
labour and its wage, and the usual connection between them has not been 
commonly understood by the wage-earning classes. It would seem from 
the records of labour movements as if the operative’s fear—based as much on 
ignorance as on distrust—lest the longer day should mean no more pay, 
though the weekly product would be greater, has protected him against the 
injurious consequences of short-sightedness ; but I am inclined to think 
that the dominant force in these labour movements has consisted in ideals 
of life, formed half instinctively, which are unconnected with views, falla- 
cious or otherwise, concerning the mechanics of distribution. Bad argu- 
ments have been used to justify good ends. To these ideals of life I shall 
refer again, 
1909. NN 
