The length of the working week is, of course, only one dimension of the onerousness of labor. Other dimensions are the intensity of labor during the workday and general working conditions, both of which greatly complicate the picture. Conditions of labor in industrial capitalism in many ways improved over time, as the state increasingly stepped in to regulate things like safety in the workplace. Yet at the same time, as capitalism advanced, more efective managerial systems intensified the extraction of labor during work. Intensity of work is clearly not indicated by the length of the working day, and the extensive and intensive dimensions of labor can vary independently.
A comparison with an earlier stage of capitalism is instructive on this point. Although hours were long in the nineteenth century, social historians have provided much evidence that in the early period of capitalism, work was not clearly diferentiated from nonwork. As E. P. Thompson (1967, p. 60), in his famous paper on industrial work time, noted, before the advent of the factory, artisans worked irregularly over the course of the working day, with “no great sense of conflict between labor and passing the time of day.” Eric Hobsbawm (1964), in a classic overview of the topic, describes the way in which work across the capitalist world in the earlier nineteenth century was informally broken up by nonwork activities, even including frequent interruptions of the working day for drinking sessions. Labor historian David Montgomery (1980) maintains that the history of the American working classes broadly conforms to the pattern described by Hobsbawn. Herbert Gutman (1973), writing about work patterns in nineteenth and early twentieth century, concurs with Montgomery’s assessment. In just one of a great many examples, Gutman quotes a cigar factory owner in 1877 complaining about his workers: “The dificulty with many cigarmakers is this. They come down to the shop in the morning, roll a few cigars and then go to the bar or saloon and play pinochle or some other game . . . working probably only two or three hours a day” (p. 558). Roy Rosenzweig (1985) describes a similar workplace culture in late nineteenth century America in his account of the transformation of work and leisure in Worcester, Massachusetts. Within this older culture of the workplace, work efort was dictated by custom and habit rather than by the exigencies of production.16
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Time for Things