How Puritanism and the work ethic reduced working hours in the USA

Working hours in the USA have declined dramatically in the last 200 years. This has not been as a result of kindness on the part of employers or a recognition that shorter hours mean higher productivity, it arose from a combination of puritanism, the haunting fear that someone somewhere might be happy, and the work ethic, the mindset that says work is intrinsically valuable, is a blessing not a curse, and should dominate life. The reduction of working hours was resisted by employers who did not realise that long hours meant workers did not have time to spend their money on the goods the factories produced, just as offshoring jobs today reduces business costs but weakens the overall domestic market. This article can be considered a summary of Whaples' work with observations of my own in various places. I also used Russel's Renegade History of the USA as a source

Russell noted that while the case for longer hours was based on the work ethic, some unions pushed for shorter working hours not on health grounds but because long hours with low pay would make the workers hate work, and some moralists argued that long hours left the workers with no time for self improvement, and the only way they could relax was in those palaces of evil, the bars and dance halls, whereas if they had more time they could be trained to enjoy more civilised and uplifting pursuits like theatre and opera: as long as they did not start getting ideas above their class of course. The purpose of shortening the working week was this not to give the worker the ability to do what they wanted, but to do what the arbiters of the culture of repression that arrived with the Pilgrim Fathers wanted. Russell paints this an another effort to make American the nemesis of their own freedom.

Early settlers had to work hard to survive, and many believed in the calvinist notion that work was good in itself: some states passed laws that required all except the gentry to engage in productive activity from sunrise to sunset. The revolutionary period brought changes that made sun to sun working less popular and a shorter hours movement began around 1820, with the first unions and a ten-hours-a-day slogan (rather like the agitation for a 48 hour week in the UK, during the 1950s or early sixties).

Although the length of the workday is largely an economic decision the cases for and against shorter hours have often been argued on moral grounds. In the early 1800s, some argued shorter work hours improved workers' health, allowed them time for self-improvement and relieved unemployment. Others replied that workers would abuse leisure time (especially in saloons) and that long, dedicated hours of work were the path to success, which should not be blocked for the great number of ambitious workers. Similar arguments were banded about in the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s when the European Union sought to pass a law restricting working hours, the main argument being that government should not interfere in contracts willingly entered into between hard up unemployed workers and employers who, while they needed the workers, had the balance of power in their favour because they could wait till workers had to accept their terms.

After the Civil War a new movement for an Eight Hour day arose. Some states passed eight hour day laws but made no requirement that the workers be paid the same as for a ten hour day. Since that would result in a 20% reduction in pay few workers wanted the 8 hour day, and employers tended to be unwilling or unable to pay the extra. Nevertheless the decline in the length of the working week continued.

Once the working week had fallen to about 50 hours pressures for a 5 day week arose, not least from Jewish workers who wanted the Sabbath free. Ford adopted the 5 day week in 1926 but there was still opposition to this from most employers.

At one point the six hour day seemed likely to arrive but other factors prevented this, the main one being that the wives of male workers did not like having their husbands around for an extra two hours a day ( Suggesting to me that a lot of marriages were none too stable). In addition the man needed the extra money to keep up with the neighbours (presumably this was a the result of wifely nagging in those extra two hours) and meet other costs such as health insurance.

Whaples carefully examined the length of the working day and week in the USA from colonial times onward. He noted that because of ambiguity in the definition of working week and because most workers were freelance agricultural workers who did not record their time, estimates of the working week are very imprecise before the mid 1800s. One estimate was an eight to ten hour day, with perhaps three hours for additional tasks, which was rather longer than the English agricultural worker's day of six hours ( even now we have not reverted to a six hour day). It is not clear whether working hours rose in the 19^th Century, but it has been estimated that the hours per head worked by African America slaves fell by 26 to 35 percent with the abolition of slavery. This is in contradiction of Thaddeus Russell's analysis of interviews, in the 1930s, with ex slaves many of whom complained they had to work far harder as freeman than they had as slaves, and his description of abolitionists telling ex-slaves that they would have to work much harder as freemen than they did as slaves.

The hours worked in manufacturing are more reliable because factory owners insisted on fixed hours of work. The working week seems to have declined from nearly 70 hours in 1830 to 60 hours in 1890. By around 1919 the average week was 48 hours, falling to around 40 hours after world war two. The decline in working hours appears to be consistent across many industry sectors, and applies both to black and white workers. Whaples cites a working day of 8.5 hours in 1880 and a hard to believe 4.7 in 1995.

The decline in working hours from the peaks of of the 1800s arose partly from changes in production and partly on moralistic grounds. It was paid for by increasing productivity and eventually employers realised that hours could be shortened without loss of productivity. The work week could have been as low as 30 hours, leaving time for workers to start small businesses that might have grown into large ones, or at least provided a family business, but women used their power to force men back to work for the extra two hours to pay for labour saving devices and the kind of luxuries the moralists claimed was essentially sinful.