Redeeming Time: Protestantism and Chicago's Eight-Hour Movement, 1866-1912
During the struggle for the eight-hour workday and a shorter workweek, Chicago emerged as an important battleground for workers in "the entire civilized world" to redeem time from the workplace in order to devote it to education, civic duty, health, family, and leisure.
 
William A. Mirola explores how the city's eight-hour movement intersected with a Protestant religious culture that supported long hours to keep workers from idleness, intemperance, and secular leisure activities. Analyzing how both workers and clergy rewove working-class religious cultures and ideologies into strategic and rhetorical frames, Mirola shows how every faith-based appeal contested whose religious meanings would define labor conditions and conflicts. As he notes, the ongoing worker-employer tension transformed both how clergy spoke about the eight-hour movement and what they were willing to do, until intensified worker protest and employer intransigence spurred Protestant clergy to support the eight-hour movement even as political and economic arguments eclipsed religious framing.
 
A revealing study of an era and a movement, Redeeming Time illustrates the potential—and the limitations—of religious culture and religious leaders as forces in industrial reform.
1119220650
Redeeming Time: Protestantism and Chicago's Eight-Hour Movement, 1866-1912
During the struggle for the eight-hour workday and a shorter workweek, Chicago emerged as an important battleground for workers in "the entire civilized world" to redeem time from the workplace in order to devote it to education, civic duty, health, family, and leisure.
 
William A. Mirola explores how the city's eight-hour movement intersected with a Protestant religious culture that supported long hours to keep workers from idleness, intemperance, and secular leisure activities. Analyzing how both workers and clergy rewove working-class religious cultures and ideologies into strategic and rhetorical frames, Mirola shows how every faith-based appeal contested whose religious meanings would define labor conditions and conflicts. As he notes, the ongoing worker-employer tension transformed both how clergy spoke about the eight-hour movement and what they were willing to do, until intensified worker protest and employer intransigence spurred Protestant clergy to support the eight-hour movement even as political and economic arguments eclipsed religious framing.
 
A revealing study of an era and a movement, Redeeming Time illustrates the potential—and the limitations—of religious culture and religious leaders as forces in industrial reform.
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Redeeming Time: Protestantism and Chicago's Eight-Hour Movement, 1866-1912

Redeeming Time: Protestantism and Chicago's Eight-Hour Movement, 1866-1912

by William A. Mirola
Redeeming Time: Protestantism and Chicago's Eight-Hour Movement, 1866-1912

Redeeming Time: Protestantism and Chicago's Eight-Hour Movement, 1866-1912

by William A. Mirola

Hardcover(1st Edition)

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Overview

During the struggle for the eight-hour workday and a shorter workweek, Chicago emerged as an important battleground for workers in "the entire civilized world" to redeem time from the workplace in order to devote it to education, civic duty, health, family, and leisure.
 
William A. Mirola explores how the city's eight-hour movement intersected with a Protestant religious culture that supported long hours to keep workers from idleness, intemperance, and secular leisure activities. Analyzing how both workers and clergy rewove working-class religious cultures and ideologies into strategic and rhetorical frames, Mirola shows how every faith-based appeal contested whose religious meanings would define labor conditions and conflicts. As he notes, the ongoing worker-employer tension transformed both how clergy spoke about the eight-hour movement and what they were willing to do, until intensified worker protest and employer intransigence spurred Protestant clergy to support the eight-hour movement even as political and economic arguments eclipsed religious framing.
 
A revealing study of an era and a movement, Redeeming Time illustrates the potential—and the limitations—of religious culture and religious leaders as forces in industrial reform.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780252038839
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Publication date: 12/03/2014
Series: Working Class in American History
Edition description: 1st Edition
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

William A. Mirola is a professor of sociology at Marian University in Indianapolis. He is the coauthor of Religion Matters: What Sociology Teaches Us about Religion in Our World.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction: Protestantism and Labor Reform Movements 1

1 A City of Industrial and Religious Extremes 21

2 Opening Eight-Hour Protests and the 1867 Eight-Hour Law 43

3 Eight Hours and the Financial Crisis of 1873 71

4 Marching to Haymarket and the 1886 Eight-Hour Campaign 91

5 A "New Consciousness" for Constructing a Morality of Leisure 117

6 Shifting Eight-Hour Reform from Consciousness to Creed in the Twentieth Century 155

Conclusion: Religion and the Trajectory of Labor Reform Movements 193

Notes 209

References 211

Index 225

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