Our Own Time provides the first full account of the movement to shorten the working day in the United States. Combining the narrative and trade union emphasis of traditional labor history with the focus on culture and the labor process characteristic of contemporary labor history, the book offers an illuminating reinterpretation of the history of the U.S. labor movement from the colonial period onward. The authors argue that the length of the working day or week historically has been the central issue raised by the American labor movement during its most vigorous periods of organization. Beginning with a picture of working hours in colonial America and the early republic, Roediger and Foner then analyze the ideology of the movement for a ten-hour workday in the early nineteenth century. They demonstrate that the ten-hour issue was a key to the dynamism of the Jacksonian labor movement as well as to the unity of male artisans and female factory workers in the 1840s. The authors proceed to examine the subsequent demands for an eight-hour day, which helped to produce the mass labor struggles of the late nineteenth century and established the American Federation of Labor as the dominant force in American trade unionism. Chapters on labor movement defeats following World War I, on the depression years, and on the lack of progress over the last half-century complete the study. Our Own Time will be an ideal supplemental text for courses in U.S. labor and economic history.
Preface
Time, Republicanism, and Merchant Capitalism: The Consciousness of Hours before 1830
Shorter Hours and the Transformation of American Labor, 1830-1842
Mill Women and the Working Day, 1842-1850
Hours, Labor Protest, and Party Politics in the 1850s
The Civil War and the Birth of the Eight-Hour Movement
Victory, Defeat, and New Alliances, 1867-1879
Haymarket and Its Context
The Rightward Drift of the AFL and the Temporary Decline of the Hours Issue, 1887-1908
Class, Reform, and War: The Working Day from 1907 to 1918
Trade Unionism, Hours, and Workers' Control in the Postwar United States
The Great Depression, the New Deal, and Shorter Hours
The Hours Statement since 1939
Bibliographic Essay
Index
Overview
Our Own Time provides the first full account of the movement to shorten the working day in the United States. Combining the narrative and trade union emphasis of traditional labor history with the focus on culture and the labor process characteristic of contemporary labor history, the book offers an illuminating reinterpretation of the history of the U.S. labor movement from the colonial period onward. The authors argue that the length of the working day or week historically has been the central issue raised by ...