Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1893 — What It Means. [ARTICLE]

What It Means.

Most men who Insist upon ten hours' pay for nine hours’ work do not stop to think what this means to the employer. Supposing a factory employ fifty hands at $2 a day, which in slo an hour for ten hours’ work. ‘ Therefore, nine hours’ work means giving each man 29 cents a day, the fifty men $lO a dav, or $3,000 for the three hundred working days in a year. But that is not all. In order to turn out the same amount of output, the manufacturer must make up this one hour by hiring one new man for every nine men, or five new men for the fifty men. The five new men, at $2 a day, cost $lO a day, or another $3,000 for the three hundred working days, a total of $6,000, or 12 per cent, extra cost on an output of $50,000. If the manufacturer does not mako up the lost time by hiring new men, his pay-roll has, nevertheless increased $.1,000 a year, while the output will have decreased 10 per cent., because of tho one hour in ten granted the men. It means, again, additional space or additional, machinery for the five new men, which represents another 3 per cent, at least. Thus you see that the demand for tin hours’ pay for nine hours’ work, which looks so Innocent on its face, amounts to 15 pfer cent, extra expense on the cost of goods, when the average profit is only about 6 per cent. Therefore, except this is made a universal rule everywhere, any manufacturer granting it will simply be wiped out by the competition having this 15 per cent disadvantage.—Furniture Worker.