France and the 40-Hour Week The French Prime Minister's broadcast
last Sunday has shaken the position of his Government. His general argu- ment on that occasion was sound enough. He said that France was suffering, not from over-production, but from under-production ; and that the national income, which in 1931 amounted' to 49,000 million gold francs, had in 1937 shrunk to 22,000. And in this connexion he referred to the 40-hour week, which "only in France and Mexico" was the normal regime of work. He did not propose to abolish it, but to permit overtime at io per cent. higher rates. Had he been an economist, concerned only to state truths, little fault could be found with him. But he was in fact a politi- cian, concerned to state policies. And among Frcnch Socialists the 4o-hour week has become a shibboleth. Two of them—members of the Republican Socialist party, which sits just to the right of M. Blum's I.O.S.F.—at once resigned from the Ministry. Their places were filled, but the Cabinet had received a heavy blow, though M. Blum himself has done much to avert a crisis by emphasising the necessity of internal union in the face of external perils. But for the dangerous foreign situation, it would have fallen. A domestic crisis in Paris just now might have the very worst effects on Herr Hitler, and the politicians of the Palais-Bourbon, nxkless as they may often appear, cannot ignore that.
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