550 TRANSACTIQNS OF SECTION F. 
three or four shifts of approximately six hours each—I state a not ititie- 
diately attainable ideal—are very different in their effects upon social life, 
exclusive of those associated with the shorter period of toil for each work- 
man, from two shifts of some ten or eleven hours each. With the shorter 
shift in use, arrangements could be made without much difficulty for all 
operatives to get most of their sleep in the night, if they so wished, and to 
enjoy most of their leisure in daylight. But it is not my intention in this 
address to make a practical proposal, or argue points of detail. I merely 
present certain theoretic corollaries which have incidentally been derived 
from our analysis of conditions determining the length of the working day. 
In conclusion, I may quote Dr. Marshall’s final judgment that were shift 
systems more extensively adopted ‘the arts of production would progress 
more rapidly ; the national dividend would increase ; working men would 
be able to earn higher wages without checking the growth of capital, or 
tempting it to migrate to countries where wages are lower: and all classes 
of society would reap benefit from the change.’ * 
Let me now summarise my main conclusions, and humanise them by 
restoring the moral and social elements from which our premisses were to 
some extent abstracted. I have hitherto spoken of progress in such terms 
that the critic would have some excuse for charging me with narrowness of 
vision. Progress is not summed up in improvements in productive methods 
which reduce the cost of things, nor in these improvements combined with 
the application to production of ideas which render work pleasanter and 
more educative. Nor is it wholly, or in bulk, summed up even if we add 
improvements in distribution (resulting in a more satisfying sharing of 
wealth) and a greater responsiveness of production to the needs of the com- 
munity. The essentials of what most of us really understand by progress 
are to be found only in the world of consciousness—in the spiritual con- 
stituents of the universe. I mean what we cannot exactly define if we are 
not philosophers—and hardly then—but something implying a full living, 
with understanding of life and its surroundings, including its ethics, and 
a living with volitional powers strong enough to enable us to follow our 
lights. As all this is actually, though vaguely, desired in some degree by 
humanity generally, it is no doubt covered by the satisfactions measured in 
demand, but the admission of its reflection on one plane cannot be regarded 
as its adequate inclusion in our social philosophy. The most im- 
portant aspect of the question of the length of the working day consists in 
its relation to the most intimate constituents of progress. Let us call 
progress in this sense ‘ culture ’—a term perhaps the best of the single terms 
available to convey my meaning. Now the world appears to be so designed 
that culture has on the whole a proportionately important place in the 
most primitive economic conditions. The hours of labour in such conditions 
may be long, but work is not so continuously absorbing that social inter- 
course during work is impossible, while variety of experience, contact with 
nature, and the calls made on initiative, afford that intimacy with life as 
a whole, and that evocation of moral forces, which must be obtained in 
later stages of civilisation largely through systematic education and books. 
I have argued above that each step in civilisation brings intensified 
specialism. Work is by no means rendered non-cultural ultimately, but its 
cultural aspects are specialised, as are its objective aspects. Interest may 
be deepened on the whole, but it is no longer diffused ; the need for thought 
and purpose may be no less than before, but the thought and purpose are of 
a confined character. The intensification of economic life which is implied 
is in itself all to the good, but the community must lose something of 
culture unless, corresponding with this intensification, there is an expansion 
of leisure and a specialised use of leisure for the purposes of culture. 
1 Marshall, Principles of Hconomics, 5th ed., p. 695, 
