The Economic Effects of Variations of Hours of Labour

Abstract

The number of hours a man works is not a matter which is determined independently of other circumstances. It depends partly on habit, partly on technical or legal necessity, partly on the relative pulls of product, production and leisure, and these in turn are partly dependent on it. To exhibit the form of this dependence under the complex conditions of industrial civilisation is one of the chief problems of the analysis of economic equilibrium, but it is not a problem with which I wish to deal in this paper.² My object here is of rather a different order. Assuming that a variation of hours takes place, I wish to inquire what other changes we should expect to be associated with it. For the purposes of this analysis, that is to say, the change in the length of the working day is to be regarded as the independent variable. What I discuss is not what causes bring it about, but what consequences follow from it. From a philosophical point of view, no doubt, this procedure is more arbitrary than the analysis of the conditions of equilibrium, but from the point of view of social policy it has much to recommend it. The practical problem which we have to decide at any given moment is the problem whether our present distribution of time between work and leisure is satisfactory; and although the final solution, involving as it does an appeal to subjective standards of worth, is outside the scope of scientific inquiry, yet a precise knowledge of the objective consequences of any variation is of material assistance in arriving at a solution.

A paper read before Section F of the British Association at Glasgow, September, 1928.