Eight-Hour-Day Movement

The eight-hour-day movement was a focused mobilization of the American and European labor movements in the 19th and early 20th centuries to reduce the length of the workday to 8 hours, down from 10, 12, or even 16 hours in some industrial jobs. Artisans, craftsmen, skilled and unskilled, native born and immigrants, men and women, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, all found in the eight-hour-day movement a cause around which to unite as wage workers. The eight-hour day produced a class consciousness among workers that no issue had done previously or since. The eight-hour day was a central tenet of all [Page 511]working-class organizing and written into all working-class manifestos as such. Eight hours was more than simply an economic issue. It was a moral issue that embraced their beliefs about work, leisure, education, and health in the new industrial order.

New South Wales, Eight-Hour-Day March, late 1890s.

In the United States, mobilizing for an eight-hour day began at the end of the Civil War, spearheaded by Ira Steward and George McNeill. America's burgeoning urban centers, especially Chicago, were key national centers for labor organization and protest for eight hours. In 1864, the National Labor Union was established as a federation of skilled trades with the central goal of establishing a federal law mandating an eight-hour day for all workers. In 1867, Illinois was the first state to enact an eight-hour law, following 2 years of mobilization by Illinois workers. This law received close attention by other states, especially New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, that were ready to adopt similar laws. Yet, eight-hour laws proved difficult to enforce. They often included clauses that made exceptions where contracts existed to the contrary, allowing employers to change their contracts with employees and avoid reducing working hours completely.

American workers were divided in the 1870s and 1880s over the best strategies for achieving the eight-hour day. Craft unions and the Knights of Labor remained loyal to the idea of legislating eight-hour workdays, believing that electing labor-friendly politicians would ensure labor's goals were enforced. Socialist and anarchist labor organizations advocated strikes to force employers to concede eight hours but saw shorter workdays as meaningless without an end to capitalism.

Rank-and-file workers were more willing to use national strikes and boycotts against employers to win shorter hours. The national strike of May 1, 1886, remains the best known. This national strike succeeded in achieving eight hours for some, but the subsequent events in Chicago's Haymarket set the movement back as a wave of anti-labor hysteria swept the country. By the 1890s, the American Federation of Labor adopted a new strategy of eight-hour strikes within single industries rather than nationwide. This strategy proved more successful and easier to coordinate. By 1910, even employers realized that shorter workdays meant more rested, productive workers. Public sentiment too was more favorable to an eight-hour workday. Nevertheless, the eight-hour day was not universally realized in the United States until the Wage and Hour Law was passed in 1938.