Eight Hours Must Come
On the eight-hour working day.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1890)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 11.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/eight-hours-must-come/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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I HARDLY know enough on the subject to give an opinion as to the
time when eight hours are to become a day's work, but I am perfectly
satisfied that eight hours will become a labor day.

The working people should be protected by law; if they are not, the
capitalists will require just as many hours as human nature can bear.
We have seen here in America street-car drivers working sixteen and
seventeen hours a day. It was necessary to have a strike in order to
get to fourteen, another strike to get to twelve, and nobody could blame
them for keeping on striking till they get to eight hours.

For a man to get up before daylight and work till after dark, life is
of no particular importance. He simply earns enough one day to prepare
himself to work another. His whole life is spent in want and toil, and
such a life is without value.

Of course, I cannot say that the present effort is going to succeed—all
I can say is that I hope it will. I cannot see how any man who does
nothing—who lives in idleness—can insist that others should work ten
or twelve hours a day. Neither can I see how a man who lives on the
luxuries of life can find it in his heart, or in his stomach, to say
that the poor ought to be satisfied with the crusts and crumbs they get.

I believe there is to be a revolution in the relations between labor
and capital. The laboring people a few generations ago were not very
intellectual. There were no schoolhouses, no teachers except the church,
and the church taught obedience and faith—told the poor people that
although they had a hard time here, working for nothing, they would be
paid in Paradise with a large interest. Now the working people are more
intelligent—they are better educated—they read and write. In order to
carry on the works of the present, many of them are machinists of the
highest order. They must be reasoners. Every kind of mechanism insists
upon logic. The working people are reasoners—their hands and heads are
in partnership. They know a great deal more than the capitalists. It
takes a thousand times the brain to make a locomotive that it does to
run a store or a bank. Think of the intelligence in a steamship and
in all the thousand machines and devices that are now working for the
world. These working people read. They meet together—they discuss. They
are becoming more and more independent in thought. They do not believe
all they hear. They may take their hats off their heads to the priests,
but they keep their brains in their heads for themselves.

The free school in this country has tended to put men on an equality,
and the mechanic understands his side of the case, and is able to
express his views. Under these circumstances there must be a revolution.
That is to say, the relations between capital and labor must be changed,
and the time must come when they who do the work—they who make the
money—will insist on having some of the profits.

I do not expect this remedy to come entirely from the Government, or
from Government interference. I think the Government can aid in passing
good and wholesome laws—laws fixing the length of a labor day; laws
preventing the employment of children; laws for the safety and security
of workingmen in mines and other dangerous places. But the laboring
people must rely upon themselves; on their intelligence, and especially
on their political power. They are in the majority in this country.
They can if they wish—if they will stand together—elect Congresses
and Senates, Presidents and Judges. They have it in their power to
administer the Government of the United States.

The laboring man, however, ought to remember that all who labor are
their brothers, and that all women who labor are their sisters, and
whenever one class of workingmen or working women is oppressed all other
laborers ought to stand by the oppressed class. Probably the worst paid
people in the world are the working-women. Think of the sewing women in
this city—and yet we call ourselves civilized! I would like to see all
working people unite for the purpose of demanding justice, not only for
men, but for women.

All my sympathies are on the side of those who toil—of those who
produce the real wealth of the world—of those who carry the burdens of
mankind.

Any man who wishes to force his brother to work—to toil—more than
eight hours a day is not a civilized man.

My hope for the workingman has its foundation in the fact that he is
growing more and more intelligent. I have also the same hope for the
capitalist. The time must come when the capitalist will clearly and
plainly see that his interests are identical with those of the laboring
man. He will finally become intelligent enough to know that his
prosperity depends on the prosperity of those who labor. When both
become intelligent the matter will be settled.

Neither labor nor capital should resort to force.—The Morning Journal,
April 27, 1890.
