It is generally known that many economists and agitators, with neither affiliations nor sympathy for Socialism, have been contending for years that with the rapid increase in labor-saving machinery and the consequent displacement of labor, reduction in the hours of service has become an absolute necessity. The points made in support of this position are numerous, and as the most salient ones appear in a memorial on the part of a National Labor Convention to the Committee on Depression in Labor and Business of the Forty-sixth Congress, drafted November 10, 1879, I may briefly quote a few. The memorial asked a reduction: 1. In the name of political economy. “All political economists are agreed,” they said, “that the standard of wages is determined by the cost of subsistence rather than by the number of hours employed. Wages are recognized as resulting from the necessary cost of living in any given community. The cost of subsistence for an average family determines the rate, and it is for this reason that single men can save more if they will.” 2. In the interest of civilization. “The battle for a reduction of the hours of labor is a struggle for a wider civilization.” With less hours, more leisure is afforded for mental and social improvement. In proof the memorialists appealed to the past and to the fact that one day of rest in seven has raised the social condition of the people. Besides, they urged, the “history of the short-hour movement in England proved conclusively that every reduction of time in the United Kingdom had invariably been followed by an increase of wages,” and the consequent improvement of workingmen. 3. The changed relations between production and consumption demand remedial legislation. A reduction of hours would give more men employment. Under existing conditions, capital and production have increased while the number of persons employed has fallen off. These are doctrines one would think the Socialist, pretending to have the interests of labor at heart, would unquestionably and heartily indorse. Far from it. True to his nature as a social disturber, disorganizer and malcontent, he sees in it a possible solution of many labor troubles and the approach to a rearrangement of existing conditions on a basis different from his own theories. When this question arose in Chicago in the winter of 1885-86, the _Alarm_ entered its most emphatic protest. In its issue of December 12, 1885, it had this to say, under the heading, “No Compromise”: We of the Internationale are frequently asked why we do not give our active support to the proposed eight-hour movement. Let us take what we can get, say our eight-hour friends, else by asking too much we may get nothing.