From the PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION Since this essay was written, the course of affairs has on the whole seemed to justify its line of argument, to the extent even of an almost complete subsidence of the agitation for an Eight Hours Law. I am far, however, from taking satisfaction in that bare fact, which may stand as much for the general and regrettable subsidence of public interest in social problems, as for any intelligent recognition that an Eight Hours Law is a wrong industrial policy. That subsidence has gone on step for step with the rise of public interest in the pseudo-problems of so-called imperial politics, problems the very statement of which is often an expression of defect of economic science, and which are as often fitly solved by doctrines which are the negation of it. One holding the views set forth in the following pages can take satisfaction only in seeing some new and better approach towards the ideal for which, at its best, the Eight Hours movement stood; and such an approach can hardly be said to be taking place on any large scale, though there are signs of its being here and there found feasible even without any resort to new social machinery. In 1894 there was published a valuable and welcome research by Mr. John Rae, entitled "Eight Hours for Work," wherein the history of the idea of a restrictive law, and of the practical attempts to realise it, is more fully set forth than in any previous book on the subject. Mr. Rae argued that previous writers had speculated with unverifiable materials, and therefore " obtained only problematical results." This seems to me an over-statement ; but, supposing it to be accepted, it incurs the answer that, despite the quantity and quality of his historic material, Mr. Rae also has left us to absolutely problematic " results," in that he failed to meet some of the main economic and industrial issues raised by the proposal for an Eight Hours Law. What he showed, with much care and fulness, was that in a considerable number of undertakings in our own and other countries the working of an eight hours day had been found to mean rather an increase than a decrease of output per head, and so had been in these cases an unalloyed gain to the workers, masters, and consumers alike, while even in cases where shorter hours meant lower wages, the effect on the morale of the men was good. Such testimony is comforting so far as it goes. It is, however, remarkable that the demonstration has been followed by decline and not increase of zeal for an Eight Hours Law on the part of many who formerly agitated for it....