I cannot bring myself to believe that with all these safeguards it will not be possible for the coal industry, if given time, to accommodate itself to the new conditions.  It is only two years ago that I was invited from the benches opposite to contemplate the approaching ruin of the gold mines of the Rand through the change introduced in the methods of working.  That change has been enforced, with the result that working expenses have been reduced, and the standard of production has increased.  In making that transition, if time had not been allowed to tide over the period of change, then, indeed, you might have had that disaster which hon. gentlemen opposite have always been ready to apprehend.  But there is here to be a gradual process of adaptation, for which not less than five years is permitted.

We are told that positive reasons, and not negative reasons, ought to be given in support of a measure which regulates the hours of adult labour—­that you ought to show, not that it will do no harm, but that good will come from it.  There are, of course, such reasons in support of this Bill, but they are so obvious that they have not been dwelt upon as much as they might have been.  The reasons are social reasons.  We believe that the well-being of the mining population, numbering some 900,000 persons, will be sensibly advanced in respect of health, industrial efficiency, habits of temperance, education, culture, and the general standard of life.  We have seen that in the past the shortening of hours has produced beneficial effects in these respects, and we notice that in those parts of the country where the hours of coal-mining are shortest, the University Extension lecturers find that the miners take an intelligent interest in their lectures—­and it is among the miners of Fifeshire that a considerable development in gardening and also of saving to enable them to own their own houses, has followed on a longer period of leisure.

But the general march of industrial democracy is not towards inadequate hours of work, but towards sufficient hours of leisure.  That is the movement among the working people all over the country.  They are not content that their lives should remain mere alternations between bed and the factory.  They demand time to look about them, time to see their homes by daylight, to see their children, time to think and read and cultivate their gardens—­time, in short, to live.  That is very strange, perhaps, but that is the request they have made and are making with increasing force and reason as years pass by.

No one is to be pitied for having to work hard, for nature has contrived a special reward for the man who works hard.  It gives him an extra relish, which enables him to gather in a brief space from simple pleasures a satisfaction in search of which the social idler wanders vainly through the twenty-four hours.  But this reward, so precious in itself, is snatched away from the man who has won it, if the hours of his labour are too long or the conditions of his labour too severe to leave any time for him to enjoy what he has won.