Economic and Social Importance of the Eight-Hour Movement

The standard of living in any community is always high or low, according as the social life of the masses is simple or complex; that is to say, as the number of the habitual daily wants of the people is large or small.

Wages being governed by the standard of the laborer's living, whatever directly or indirectly effects that must affect wages. The standard of living in any community is always high or low, according as the social life of the masses is simple or complex; that is to say, as the number of the habitual daily wants of the people is large or small. It is lower in Asia than in Europe, lower in Europe than America, lower on Mott Street than on Fifth Avenue, for the reason that the wants of the people in the former places are fewer, and their social life simpler than those in the latter. In proportion as man's wants are limited to his physical necessities, does he remain brutal and barbarous. And only as his desires for things which enter into his social life, and the use of which exercises an elevating and refining influence upon his character, are intensified into wants, does he rise in the scale of social, intellectual and moral development. This is why we always find the quantity of wealth produced is the smallest, the methods employed the crudest, and the scale of civilization the lowest, in those countries where the social wants of the people are the fewest.