PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 549 
Actually, of course, some of the gain would be taken in the form of 
higher wages. Further, it must be noticed that the assumptions made do 
not accurately correspond with fact, though they are satisfactory for the 
purposes of a first approximation. On the one hand they lead to an over- 
estimate of the advantages of continuous running, because twenty-four 
hours of work could not possibly be squeezed into a twenty-four hours day, 
and because the cost of artificial light during night work is disregarded, as 
are also the costs connected with awkward points in organisation, with the 
sharing of responsibility for the proper treatment of machinery, and with 
the fact, universally experienced, that night-shifts are not so productive as 
day-shifts. On the other hand, they lead to an under-estimate of the 
advantages of continuous running, because the cost of depreciation, as we 
have seen, is not proportional to the daily hours of work,? because the 
shorter hours would raise the efficiency of labour, and because the demand 
for capital would be redueed, as would also the demand for land for manu- 
facturing purposes. The inevitable contraction of the demand for capital 
is a point to be emphasised. If working hours per day were raised from ten 
to twenty-four, then, the reaction on the efficiency of labour still being 
disregarded, the old output could be obtained with five-twelfths of the old 
capital: the consequence would be a fall in interest, an augmentation of 
the amount of the plant per head of the people working with it at one time, 
and therefore an increased output per head. 
_In view of its great economies, the shift system calls for very careful 
consideration. The magnitude of the advantages which the wage-earners 
might hope to derive from its more extensive application has 
been denied, on the ground both of theory and of experience of 
those businesses in which it has been tried. But theoretic objecticus 
of a fundamental nature will be found to reduce to false doctrino 
concerning the determination of wages; and it must be remembered 
that as the benefits accruing from the comparatively few cases in which 
the shift system is practised are by competition spread over the whole 
community, the gain of any individual is cut down to a very small figure. 
It must not be supposed that the effect of its universal adoption would be 
equally inappreciable. Without general recourse to shift systems I cannot 
see any immediate prospect of much additional leisure for the mass of 
the population. Shifts could be designed so that no one shift would be 
particulariy disagreeable to work in, and, if all shifts did not offer equal 
advantages, the operatives could be moved round, being assigned for so many 
weeks to each shift. The shifts for foremen, and the management generally, 
which would have to be strengthened, might be arranged to run over a 
portion of two operatives’ shifts, so as to cement the new work on to the 
old; and the connecting of the work of each shift with that of the shift 
which it followed could also be secured by arranging that the unit of 
labour should be a group of partners, consisting of one man from each 
shift, it being the duty of each man before commencing work to sce his 
partner in the displaced shift and receive instructions from him. 
Naturally, a shift arrangement could only be introduced gradually. Are 
the objections to shifts of such gravity as to counteract their immense 
economies? The fact that an affirmative answer was generally given to this 
question in the past is no proof that the affirmative is the right answer 
to-day in England, or even in industrial Canada. Conditions have been 
revolutionised in the last fifty years. Improvements in artificial lighting 
‘and in intra-urban transportation have alone swept away a mass of the 
conditions underlying the evils which used to be associated with night 
work. And two or three shifts of approximately seven hours each, or 
? Had the depreciation been taken as independent of the hours of work the 
calculation in the previous note would have pointed to a seven hours day instead of 
an eight hours day. 
