hours continuously. ¹ Hours of labor on street railways also
extend over excessive periods through the swing run system
which employs a man a few hours during the morning rush
and then lays him off till the evening rush. During the in-
terim he must be on call and usually cannot go home, so that
his actual working day extends from the time he starts work
in the morning till he is through with his last trip at night.

Then, too, many employees are working seven days a week.
Investigations show that much of the present-day continuous
operation of industries involves seven-day labor. For
instance, in Minnesota in 1909, 98,558 men, or approximately
14 per cent. of the gainfully employed males in that state,
were working every day in the week. ² In New York in
1910, out of 179,000 union members in a number of specified
industries, almost 20 per cent. were engaged in seven-day
labor. ³

Worst of all, many establishments which operate continu-
ously, such as iron and steel plants, paper-mills, and glass and
chemical works, combine the twelve-hour day with the seven-
day week, and in not a few cases require their employees to
alternate weekly or fortnightly between day and night shifts,
working twenty-four hours without rest when the change is
made. So glaring are the evils of this condition that under
the auspices of the International Association for Labor Legis-
lation a special conference on the subject was held in London
in June, 1912, and resolutions were adopted favoring inter-
national action to secure eight-hour shifts in continuous in-
dustries. ⁴

Under modern industrial conditions such excessive hours
of work break down health. Even with short hours the strain
of modern industry, with its speed, its piece-work, its division
of labor, involving the monotonous repetition of the same
process, sometimes even of the same movement, is a heavy
tax on the worker. But with the eleven- or twelve-hour day

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