SHORTER HOURS [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
.
am at a loss to understand your continued hostility to the Geneva plan. for shorter hours. It is true that to
• Make shorter hours an excuse for farther wage reductions would be disastrous, but if the agreement to shorten- the working day were international in scope, is there any reason why this should follow ?
The 40-hour working week_ would in fact affect thn.e countries, which use sweated labour and long hours far more than those, such as Great-Britain, where the actual reductions in working time. would be much smaller. Surely it is better for men to work fewer .hours each day than longer hours one week and none the 'next ; or for all Men' to WOrk:40 hours' per week than for some to work 48 hours and the rest to remain idle.
Moreover, shorter hours would be a means of raising prices, which is the admitted- objective. of all sane economic policy ; since, if fresh labour were not employed, production would be checked, while it more men were employed the, flow of money would be increased. And it is a better method than wage increases, for it acts as an incentive to the reabsorption of labour in industry.—I am, Sir, &c., University College, Oxford. JAMES H.- WHITE.
[We are only opposed to the indiscriminate or premature application of the Geneva plan, not to the principle of shorter hours as such. As to raising prices, it is the prices of primary products that need raising, so as to redress the balance between agriculture and industry. Merely to raise the prices of industrial products would have just the opposite effect. -. ED. The Spectator.] :
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