must know very well that with us in London the bell rang at 6 o’clock, and if the men were not there to turn to, they lost a quarter of a day.” “Very well,” Parnell said. “I’ve plenty of work I can do for myself, and if you don’t care to accept my terms I can’t help you to put up your building.” He turned and walked away. He had not gone far before he was called back, and was asked to go on with the work on the eight-hours principle. The little strike was successful. It could not have been otherwise, seeing that there were only three carpenters in Petone at that time.
Parnell set to at once, and engaged what unskilled labour he could find. “Don’t forget,” he said to the men, “that I’ve bargained for only eight hours a day; work to begin at eight o’clock. Mind you stick to that!”
The chief mover in the agitation for legislative recognition of the principle was Mr. Bradshaw, a resident of Dunedin. In three different sessions he introduced his Eight Hours Bill, and was supported by Mr. Seddon on each occasion. The Bill did hardly anything more than declare that eight hours should be a day’s work, and 48 hours a week’s work. It had only one clause, and it was introduced by Mr. Bradshaw in a few words.
“It’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of in my life,” one member said when Mr. Bradshaw sat down, after moving the second reading in 1885. “It will come to this, that we won’t be able to get a boy to clean our boots unless we enter into an agreement with him to do it.” This member was afraid that if the House discussed the Bill seriously the whole country would laugh at it.
Sir Robert Stout, who was then Premier, supported the Bill on the ground that New Zealand was likely to become a manufacturing country, and that it was necessary to look after the physical well-being of the working classes. He said that it was surely not much to ask Parliament to simply declare what it believed should constitute a fair day’s work. In that year, as in the previous one, the proposal was defeated. In 1886, Mr. Bradshaw was again before the House with his Bill. He said that the principle of eight hours a day was generally recognised
