The True Cost of the Eight-Hour Day

It is stated by Bradstreet's, which has employed its agents to make an approximately correct census of existing labor troubles, that 325,000 men have taken part in the contest for shorter hours. Of these, it is estimated that 175,000 have struck, and 150,000 have gained their demands without striking. There are supposed to be also some 30,000 who gained their object after striking. Up to date, less than 300,000 have been successful.

Working men will be disappointed if they reckon upon every advance made or every point yielded as a permanent gain. It will be many months before the exact ground won by this movement can be measured. There were many firms which, on the first of May, were engaged upon orders previously received or contracts previously entered into, which they could not abandon without immense loss. Therefore it is evident that a part of the advantage secured is temporary. There will come a time when a portion of the employers who have conceded shorter hours and equal or greater pay will propose a reduction of wages, and will shut down if the men decline to accept the conditions.

The effect of these strikes has been to make the capital which had at last found courage to go into productive investment back away in its vaults. It will be many a day before it gets its courage back. Take the one item of building. Reports from all the cities coincide. We know that the enterprises postponed in St. Paul and others are the same in New York, from Boston, from Chicago, from every city of any size in the country. The capital that was to be invested in building will either sit idle or it will be put into real estate or flung out of the reach of labor troubles. The sum of all trades, mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, and all the workingmen employed in factories where anything belonging to building or furnishing is produced, will have just that much less employment.