Page 129 - clra62_0019-(GIPE)

t 22 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
among certain trades organized into trades unions; but
the unions, after aU, only include about a tenth part of
the labour of the country. There has been no such
conspicuous shortening of the hours of labour among
professional men, clerks, domestic servants, and many
others whose labour is an essential part of the general
sum total. N ext-and this is perhaps even more im-
portant-the shortening of the hours of labour is not
coincident with the beginning of the last ten rears,
though it has been in full operation for the whole of
that period, but rather with the beginning or middle of
the previous ten years, viz., 1865-75; so that it should
. have been fully in operation upon the production of
1875; and the check to our rate of growth if due to
this cause should thus have been felt between 1865 and
187 5, rather than between the latter date and the present
time. The same with the general disposition to take
things easy. This disposition did. not spring up in a
day in 1875, but was probably as effective as a cause of
change in the earlier, as in the later, period. It must
count for something as a cause of the annual production
of the country being less at a given moment than it
would otherwise be; but in comparing two periods,
what we have to consider is whether the growth of this
disposition has been greater in one period than in
another; and there are no data to support such a con-
clusion as regards the last ten years compared with the
previous ten.
We must apparently, therefore, reject this explana-
tion also. It is not adequate to account for the apparent
change that has occurred in the rate of our growth from
the year 1875 as compared with the period just before.
Our progress in periods previous to 1875 took place in
spite of the operation of causes of a similar kind which
were then in operation, and there is no proof at all that
the shortening of the hours of labour and the growth of
a ctisposition to take things easy have been greater since
1875 as compared with the period just before than they
were between 1865 and 1875 as. compared with the