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The Elevator Constructor

FRANK J. SCHNEIDER, Editor

PERRY BUILDING, PHILADELPHIA 16th and Chestnut Streets

Entered as second-class matter April 8, 1907, at the Post Office at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, under Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

VOLUME XIII

APRIL, 1916

NUMBER 4

T

HERE are but few on earth free

from cares, none but carry burdens of

sorrow, and if all were asked to make a package of their troubles, and throw this package on a common pile, and then were asked to go and choose a package which they were willing to bear, all would select their own package again.

Your heartaches may be great, burdens heavy, but look about you, and with whom would you change?

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American Federation of Labor

A Few of Its Declarations Upon Which It Appeals to All Working People to Organize, Unite, and Cement the Bonds of Fraternity.

1. The Abolition of all Forms of Involuntary Servitude, except as a punishment for crime.

2. Free Schools, Free Text-Books, and Compulsory Education.

3. Unrelenting Protest Against the Issuance and Abuse of Injunction Process in Labor Disputes.

4. A workday of not more than Eight Hours in the tewnty-four-hour day.

5. A strict recognition of not over Eight Hours per day on all Federal, State, or Municipal Work and at not less than the prevailing Per Diem Wage Rate of the class of employment in the vicinity where the work is performed.

6. Release from employment One Day in Seven.

7. The Abolition of the Contract System on Public Work.

8. The Municipal Ownership of Public Utilities.

9. The Abolition of the SweatShop System.

10. Sanitary Inspection of Factory, Workshop, Mine, and Home.

11. Liability of Employers for injury to body or loss of life.

12. The Nationalization of Telegraph and Telephone.

13. The passage of Anti-Child Labor Laws in States where they do not exist and rigid defense of them where they have been enacted into law.

14. Woman Suffrage coequal with Man Suffrage.

15. Suitable and plentiful Play Grounds for Children in all cities.

16. The Initiative and Referendum

and the Imperative Mandate and Right of Recall.

17. Continued agitation for the Public Bath System in all cities.

18. Qualifications in permits to build, of all cities and towns, that there shall be Bathrooms and Bathroom Attachments in all houses or compartments used for habitation.

19. We favor a system of finance whereby money shall be issued exclusively by the Government, with such regulations and restrictions as will protect it from manipulation by the banking interest for their own private gain.

20. We favor a system of United States Government Postal Savings Banks.

The above is a partial statement of the demands which organized labor, in the interest of the workers-aye, of all the people of our countrymakes upon modern society.

Higher wages, shorter workday, better labor conditions, better homes, better and safer workshops, factories, mills, and mines. In a word, a better, higher, and nobler life.

Conscious of the justice, wisdom, and nobility of our cause, the American Federation of Labor appeals to all men and women of labor to join with us in the great movement for its achievement.

More than two million wage-earners who have reaped the advantages of organization and federation appeal to their brothers and sisters of toil to unite with them and participate in the glorious movement with its attendant benefits.

There are affiliated to the American Federation of Labor 110 International Trade Unions with their 22,000 Local Unions; 43 State Federa tions; 641 City Central Bodies, and 565 Local Trade and Federal Labor

Unions which have no Internationals. We also have 1,729 volunteer and special organizers, as well as the officers of the unions and of the American Federation of Labor itself, always willing and anxious to aid their fellow-workmen to organize and in every other way better their conditions.

For information all are invited to write to the American Federation of

Labor headquarters at Washington,
D. C.

Wage-workers of America, unite!
American Federation of Labor
Headquarters:

801-809 G. Street, N. W.

Washington, D. C.

Samuel Gompers,

President

Frank Morrison, Secretary

A Popular Fallacy

That the Short Day Is Less Productive Than One of Longer Toil

In the vital important element of labor regulation the one rock ribbed, moss grown and indomitable obstacle to an intelligent adjustment and planning of the hours of labor is the calm and unshakable assumption on the part of the public that an eight hour day is necessarily and in the very nature of the case a smaller day than a ten hour or a twelve hour onethat is to say, less productive, less valuable, less renumerative to the employer. This plausible and conclusive assumption is of course loudly heralded abroad by the employer of labor, and the community "falls for it" unanimously and swallows it whole without even stopping to put its teeth into it.

It sounds so alphabetically and elementally convincing and plausible. If a man earns $2 in a day of ten hours, naturally he can earn only $1.60 in eight hours.

Consequently any demand to have his day shortened and still receive exactly the same wage is a barefaced imposition upon the good nature of an innocent and long suffering employer.

If the worker demands shortening of his day without corresponding re

duction of his wages he is asking for either blackmail or charity, according to popular logic, the only question being whether the employer can magnanimously afford to give it to him out of his legitimate profits.

The only trouble with this universally accepted and self evident proposition is that it doesn't happen to be true and utterly lacks the support of facts.

On the contrary, incredible if not paradoxic as it may sound, thousands of experiments on both sides of the Atlantic, in all sorts of trades, have overwhelmingly proved that so far the shorter the work day the more work is turned out.

In addition to this, the quality of work is so much better, the wastage by breaking, spoiling and soiling so much less, the accidents both to machinery and to men so much fewer, that the eight hour day saves to the employer more than the additional wage per hour cost on these counts alone.

In fact, so far as the worldwide process of lowering the one and raising the other has gone to date, the fewer the working hours and the higher the wages the lower the labor cost of the product.-Woods Hutchinson, M. D., in New York Ameri

can.

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