es, especially, the eight-hour day
has come to be well nigh the rule. In 1912 it was estimated[1] that
1,847,000 wage earners were working in the United States on the
eight-hour basis; of these 475,000 were public employees. A large
proportion of the remainder were women and children whose hours were
limited by law, or were men working in the same establishments with
them. Since that date the eight-hour day has been more widely adopted
both through private action in many establishments and by legislation.
The year 1915 witnessed an especially rapid spread of the eight-hour
day.

Sec. 2. #The shorter day and the lump of labor notion.# The shorter
working day is advocated by most workers in the belief that it will
result not in less pay per day, but in even greater pay than the
longer day, even if the output should be decreased. This view is
connected with the lump of labor notion.[2] It assumes that men will
work no faster in a shorter day, and that there is so much work to be
done regardless of the rate of wages; and concludes that the shorter
day will reduce the amount of labor for sale and cause wages to rise.
To the extent, however, that laborers, as consumers, mutually buy each
other's labor, evidently this loss due to curtailing production must
fall upon the laborers as a class. The workers nearly always call for
the same daily pay for a shorter day, which means a higher wage per
hour. If wages per hour increase less than enough to make up for the
fewer hours,[3] the purchasing power of the workers must be reduced.
If the output per hour is increased proportionally to the pay per
hour, the existing wages equilibrium would not be disturbed. But if
the output increases not at all or in less than the proportion of
the increase in pay, there is an inevitable disturbance of the wage
equilibrium. In a competitive industry this would compel a speedy
readjustment of wages downward. If a certain group, or large number,
of workers were to begin turning out only 80 per cent as large a
product as they did before while getting the same money wage, the
costs per unit would be thereby increased. Prices must rise or many of
the establishments must close, and then prices would rise as a result.
This must throw some of the workmen out of employment and create a
new bargaining situation for wages. If the general eight-hour day were
applied to every industry and to all wage workers at once, then
all workers and all employers in the i