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[92]
That my reply was not a sufficiently practical one is admitted, but I answered: “Let Massachusetts set the example of short hours; her manufacturers are strong enough to do it, and the others will soon be brought in.”
The rejoinder was: “We cannot afford to do that.”
“ Well, then, run ten hours, and run faster, and you will get all the best help even if you pay somewhat reduced wages.”
To this it was said: “We are paying as high wages as our neighbors in the other States, and we have a better class of men and women than they do because of our facilities for living.
We cannot run faster.”
They were honest in this belief, but it was a mistake, as time has shown, because now quite all machines are speeded quicker, and in some instances, when a given machine runs slower, the same person attends more machines.
“ But you are using up in your business the health and lives of your operatives, and destroying their constitutions, an injury which they are transmitting to their children.”
“We do not admit that.
But even if it were so, our operatives are at liberty to go away whenever they choose.
They have the remedy in their own hands if they are being made sick.”
“But their necessities require them to work here, and you have a duty to your fellow-creatures.”
“Yes,” the principal one of them said, “and one duty is to give the people as cheap calico as can be made.”
I have heard that same argument since in regard to tariff reform, or free trade, by those who claim superiority in party action because they claim to adapt conscience to politics.
But I have never been convinced by it.
The contention went on and I made many speeches at night in many parts of the State whenever I could find time to get away from my law business.
Agitation went on. In the legislature, of course, the ten-hour men were beaten.
The manufacturing newspapers exhausted their billingsgate upon me. There was no bad name that could be used that was not liberally bestowed; but the leaven of right eventually “leavened the whole lump,” and has finally produced the bread of life for the working-men.
I remained a pronounced and somewhat prominent member of the Democratic party.
We ten-hour men introduced ten-hour resolutions
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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