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A Quest for Time: The Reduction of Work in Britain and France, 1840-1940
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.
330 pages, Hardcover
First published June 8, 1989
5 people want to read
About the author
Gary S. Cross
26 books20 followersGary S. Cross is distinguished professor of modern history at Pennsylvania State University.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 4, 2018
Cross examines how standards of labor rights, revolving around time restrictions on total hours worked without extra pay, came to be won over a century of struggle 1840-1940 in the UK and France. The 8 hour day, the 40 hour workweek capped by the weekend, and vacation leisure time came to be accepted as normal, when previously tight control over all of workers time was the norm. Cross argues that this fundamental change of gender, family, and cultural discourse was won by an alliance of labor unions, socialists, and middle class liberal reformers, picking up steam after 1919 in the face of Communist revolution.
He notes that the earliest reforms were in the UK, which limited children from working over a 12 hour day in 1819, which of course sounds absolutely ludicrous today for even adults to work that amount with no days off. The earliest middle class pushed reforms were aimed at women and children, but soon labor and socialists pushed for all workers to be included in time off.
Cross makes the point that workers could get time off by "purchasing" leisure, or basically forfeiting pay for days off, which of course, seldomly were they able to do in order to afford to live for themselves and their families. Labor sought to remedy this with paid time off and wage gains that would make regular days off (the weekend) attainable, while at the same time cutting into unemployment by forcing employers to hire more workers. Middle class reformers joined by arguing that Sunday church attendance would increase if workers had more than Sunday off to take care of outside work tasks.
Despite the dreams of Socialists that workers would devote themselves to studying revolutionary literature and talks, when after large scale strikes and fear of Bolsheviks forced the first large scale labor hour reforms with the 8 hour day in 1919, workers instead spent their leisure time at the movies or with their families. Consumer society largely blossomed, despite the fears of capitalists who had argued that workers would cause amok if left to their own devices. Instead, capitalists rewrote history to claim credit for giving more time to shop. Over 1920-40, paid vacation days and the 40 hour workweek were also largely won as the countries hurled towards war, which emerged as a basic tenant of labor law afterwards. Cross notes that organized labor ended up embracing the clock even more strictly than capital had, for it was a way to limit what was asked of workers. Labor sought to compete with capitalists in how leisure time was filled by providing recreational programs, which Cross underexplores or dismisses.
Cross's work is mostly an intellectual history as opposed to a labor history or an economic history, as it engages with the ideas of how suited for work were women (turns out, very much suited but just as angry at mistreatment as men) and morality of using children and women as workers. Capitalists responded that if workers time was not tightly controlled, they would end up in the bar, and so it was better to spend 70 hours in a mine or a factory. Further arguments about why labor stopped at 40 hours has been explored (in the American context) in Cutler's Labor's Time.
He notes that the earliest reforms were in the UK, which limited children from working over a 12 hour day in 1819, which of course sounds absolutely ludicrous today for even adults to work that amount with no days off. The earliest middle class pushed reforms were aimed at women and children, but soon labor and socialists pushed for all workers to be included in time off.
Cross makes the point that workers could get time off by "purchasing" leisure, or basically forfeiting pay for days off, which of course, seldomly were they able to do in order to afford to live for themselves and their families. Labor sought to remedy this with paid time off and wage gains that would make regular days off (the weekend) attainable, while at the same time cutting into unemployment by forcing employers to hire more workers. Middle class reformers joined by arguing that Sunday church attendance would increase if workers had more than Sunday off to take care of outside work tasks.
Despite the dreams of Socialists that workers would devote themselves to studying revolutionary literature and talks, when after large scale strikes and fear of Bolsheviks forced the first large scale labor hour reforms with the 8 hour day in 1919, workers instead spent their leisure time at the movies or with their families. Consumer society largely blossomed, despite the fears of capitalists who had argued that workers would cause amok if left to their own devices. Instead, capitalists rewrote history to claim credit for giving more time to shop. Over 1920-40, paid vacation days and the 40 hour workweek were also largely won as the countries hurled towards war, which emerged as a basic tenant of labor law afterwards. Cross notes that organized labor ended up embracing the clock even more strictly than capital had, for it was a way to limit what was asked of workers. Labor sought to compete with capitalists in how leisure time was filled by providing recreational programs, which Cross underexplores or dismisses.
Cross's work is mostly an intellectual history as opposed to a labor history or an economic history, as it engages with the ideas of how suited for work were women (turns out, very much suited but just as angry at mistreatment as men) and morality of using children and women as workers. Capitalists responded that if workers time was not tightly controlled, they would end up in the bar, and so it was better to spend 70 hours in a mine or a factory. Further arguments about why labor stopped at 40 hours has been explored (in the American context) in Cutler's Labor's Time.
August 28, 2010
Read this and you'll have a good understanding of the political economy of working hours at the turn of the 19th Century in Britain (and France, but honestly, I skipped those bits).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews