{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":132,"pdf_page":140,"physical_index":140,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"de2ad80a3c8e89584f779b74c6ac9ce94ffff13ca5fa0100446e5bcf7ae7e95e"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"Labor’s pursuit of purchasing power, as opposed to pushing for a broader and more political agenda that challenged capitalism itself, corresponded to the waning of the struggle to reduce the length of the working week. In the period following the Civil War the industrial struggles about work time were animated by ambivalence about wage labor because of its close association with bondage. The efort by labor to limit the length of the working day was conceived of as being part of a broader movement to overthrow, or at least contain, “wage slavery.” In 1866, the General Congress of Labor resolved in a meeting in Baltimore that “the first and great necessity of the present is to free the labor of this country from capitalist slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working day in the states of the American union.” (Toph 1898, p.  131). Limiting hours at work would, according to this reasoning, limit the extent of the subjection of workers to wage slavery, since work under capitalism and wage slavery essentially amounted to the same thing. The call to reduce the length of the working week powerfully galvanized workers and was closely associated with the May Day demonstrations of the 1880s. In 1872 over 100,000 workers went on strike in New York City in support of an eight-hour limit to the working day at a time when, according to the 1870 census, the number of people working in manufacturing in the city was 144,285. As with the broader question of wage labor, the concern to shorten the working day was shared by a many in society. William Bliss (1897, p. 1,230), minister, investigator for the Bureau of Labor, and editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Reform, wrote, “Today almost all economists and social reformers favor a shorter day, the only questions being how rapidly it can be introduced, and in what ways.”\n\nThe issue of the length of the working week continued to have some presence on the agenda of organized labor until World War II. In the 1930s, for example, against the backdrop of mass unemployment, work time was still a living issue for unions.14 But over the first half of the twentieth century, the importance of the issue of work time gradually waned (as the concern with increasing purchasing power waxed). And, as historian Benjamin Hunnicut (1984, 1998) has noted, the efort to limit hours at work, somewhat mysteriously, almost vanished in the second half of the century. There were occasional local upwellings of support for shorter hours. For example, sociologist Jonathan Cutler (2004) shows how in the 1950s and 1960s members of UAW local 600 branch pushed, against the will of the union’s leadership, for shorter hours. But in the postwar period, there was nothing like the huge national shorter hours movement of the late nineteenth-century.15 Of course, in part the issue of work time became less pressing because, as we saw in Chapter 3, hours fell significantly between 1880 and 1920. Yet, as I noted in that chapter, it is not at all clear why, as productivity improved, and hourly income continued to increase, working hours did not continue to decline at an equivalent rate.\n\n132\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":131,"next_page":133}