Economic and Social Importance of the Eight-Hour Movement

While no proposition for industrial reform can produce any real improvement in the laborer's condition which does not promote the advance of real wages, even that can only be economic and wise when it takes place without permanently increasing prices or reducing profits.

This measure is presented to the community for consideration and discussion, wholly as a practical economic proposition in the adoption of which all classes are mutually interested. It is just as irrational to expect the employing classes to favor a proposition which would destroy profits as it would be to expect the laborers to support the scheme for reducing wages. There is no good reason for asking any class to support a proposition which would be injurious to its own material and social well being. No measure for social reform is worth considering which contemplates improving the condition of one class by impairing that of another. Therefore, while no proposition for industrial reform can produce any real improvement in the laborer's condition which does not promote the advance of real wages, even that can only be economic and wise when it takes place without permanently increasing prices or reducing profits. Would a general reduction of the hours of labor tend to promote this result? We unhesitatingly answer yes!

We are entirely willing that the proposition for the general adoption of eight hours shall be accepted or rejected upon the scientific correctness of this reply. All we ask is that the subject shall receive the unbiased consideration to which it is entitled; and that its merits be determined by the widest induction and the closest deduction that accessible industrial data and economic science afford.

This proposition really involves three questions which we will briefly consider separately: First, would it tend to increase real wages? Second, would it tend to raise prices? Third, would it tend to reduce profits?