The Shorter Hours Problem The 40-Hotir Week Conference at Geneva
has ended with the adoption of a sensible resolution, from which the British Government delegate, alone among repre- sentatives of Governments, saw fit to dissent. Most of the Government delegates, and all the workers' delegates, took the view that the proposal to reduce hours deserved the most serious consideration, and that as 'soon as possible, and they voted accordingly for placing the subject on the agenda of this year's Inter- national Labour Conference. In the condition in which the world finds itself, and in view of the ideas on employ- ment developing in the United States and Italy and other countries, the expedient of shorter hours is emphatiCallY one to be explored without prejudice and precOneeption, and the 'exploration is best conducted internationally. If the British Government's policy really is to stifle all discussion and "declare categorically against the institution of a 40-hour week " it would at least have been seemly for the Minister of Labour or the Parliathentark Secretary to have gone to Geneva to indicate the fact instead of sending a civil servant to bang the door.
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