The necessity for extending protection beyond the factories cannot be lightly set aside; in trade, excessive hours of labour are exacted from workers not belonging to the family, and in continuous and intermittent employments, and in household industry they are probably exacted from the relatives. The same thing occurs in handicrafts. It is not impossible for the matter to be taken in hand; but at present it meets with many difficulties and much opposition. Only the factory and quasi-factory maximum working-day for adults belong to the immediate present. 3. _The maximum working-day of protective policy and of wage policy; general maximum working-day; eight hours movement._ The general maximum working-day of 8 hours, as demanded since May 1st, 1890, rests admittedly on grounds, not merely of protective policy, but also of wage-policy. In so far as it is demanded on grounds of protective policy, it would call for little remark. The only question would be, whether on grounds of protective policy the maximum working-day is an equal necessity for all industrial work, and whether this necessity must really be met by fixing 8 hours, and not 11 or 10 hours, as the limits of daily work, a question which, in my opinion, can only be answered in the negative. The new and special feature which comes to the fore in the demand for the general eight hours day, is the impress which (its advocates claim) will be made by it on the wages question, and this in the interests of the wage-labourer. The universality and the shortness of the maximum working-day would lead, they say, to an artificial diminution of the product of labour. This second side of the question of the eight hours day, which touches on wages, does not properly speaking come within the scope of a treatise on the Theory and Policy of Labour Protection. We must not, however, omit it here, for the demand for such a working-day is very seriously confused in the public mind with the purely protective maximum working-day, whereas the two must be clearly distinguished from each other. By discussing and examining the general eight hours day, it must be shown how important an advance it is upon the factory 10 hours day; and it must be shown that the favour with which the factory 10 hours day is to be regarded on grounds of protective policy, need not extend necessarily to the general eight hours day; the one may be supported, the other rejected; protective policy is pledged to the one, but not to the other. From this standpoint we enter upon a consideration of the eight hours day.