An Eight Hour Day is Long Enough.

Echoes

Part I

Reluctantly I wake jolted from a sleep less than content with panic that I had overslept. Dark and dusty, the old clock reveals the time with a subtlety of thunder. 5:30 almost exactly. Rising from bed is an arduous process that requires all but a tenth of the energy that will soon be required to get through another day of work. I’ve been working at the mill now for gone 30 years and it never seems to get any easier but yet I rise, I travel and I work.

Some folks say a change is coming and I only pray I am around long enough to witness it. It seems unlikely but there is always hope. Better hours, better pay, a better life and who would not want that? Until that day, I work because I have a wife, kids and well, at least I have a job.

I hear the boss man and those that run the company make a pretty penny. It would be nice if they shared some of that or extended some gesture that demonstrated they appreciate their workers.

Part II

The radio station lost its tuning so I awoke suddenly from a tumultuous sleep to the sound of loud static. “I should just use the beeper.” I thought to myself grumpily and the typical internal conversation began once again. “I do not want to go to work. You have to go to work. Do I have to? Yes, you have used up all your sick time. I can afford a day unpaid. No, actually you cannot. Shit. I have to go to work.”

It is not the job itself that is unbearable but the hours, the pay and though I hear others talk about that ideal work/life balance, I would not have a clue what that is. If I am not working at the office, I am working at home and if not working at home I am thinking about work the next day. Those that run my company earn ludicrous amounts of money and will not use a penny of that to hire more people to take away some of the burden. Just once, I would love to find a company that demonstrated some sort of appreciation toward their workers.

Submission and Acceptance

Work — It is what defines us if you think about it. We labor and toil for someone else to earn a wage to forge a life. We long to return to a place where life was simpler or should I say perceived as simpler. So long as there is any sort of chance of exploitation, exploited we shall be whether we admit it or not. The system is firmly in place now and there is not much we can do about it. Without exception, we all yearn and strive for a good life, a better life, an ideal sort of life. When it comes to how we earn our daily bread, the expectations are the same regardless of who you are or where you live. We, all of us on all four corners of this earth expect to be valued, appreciated, treated fairly, the concept of honest work for honest pay to continue to hold true and to be provided with safe working conditions. These expectations are all very basic and not at all unrealistic or outrageous.

Beginning with an Ideal

Eight girls sewing by hand, looking at the camera during a sweatshop inspection
DN-0001247, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum

Though prone to corruption, greed and autocracy, we can give thanks to Knights of Labor for fighting for certain ideals that helped pave a path toward equal pay, maximum hours, minimum pay, end to child labor, better work conditions and an overall caring and nurturing of the American worker. Despite some of the more atrocious allegations against this group, it does seem they started off on the right track as can be seen in their preamble:

The alarming development and aggressiveness of great capitalists and corporations, unless checked, will inevitably lead to the pauperization and hopeless degradation of the toiling masses.

It is imperative, if we desire to enjoy the full blessings of life, that a check be placed upon unjust accumulation, and the power for evil of aggregated wealth.

This much-desired object can be accomplished only by the united efforts of those who obey the divine injunction, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.”

Therefore we have formed the Order of Knights of Labor, for the purpose of organizing and directing the power of the industrial masses, not as a political party, for it is more – in it are crystallized sentiments and measures for the benefit of the whole people, but it should be borne in mind, when exercising the right of suffrage, that most of the objects herein set forth can only be obtained through legislation, and that it is the duty of all to assist in nominating and supporting with their votes only such candidates as will pledge their support to those measures, regardless of party. But no one shall, however, be compelled to vote with the majority, and calling upon all who believe in securing “the greatest good to the greatest number,” to join and assist us, we declare to the world that are our aims are: (this is followed by their aims)

Great words that hold the same value and significance still today. It is because of those initial ideals we finally had put in place most of what they were striving for in the form of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

From the Department of Labor website:

In its final form, the act applied to industries whose combined employment represented only about one-fifth of the labor force. In these industries, it banned oppressive child labor and set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, and the maximum workweek at 44 hours.

Sweatshop poster, Sacred Motherhood, by Luther Bradley
DN-0004658, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum

I leave you with a quote from an interview where a mill worker reflects upon his fifty years at the Plume and Atwood Mill given around the time of the passing of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

“I believe the lads should have a little easier work than what I had, “says Mr. White. “I’ve worked hard in my time, and maybe it hasn’t hurt me any, but if the boys can get along without breakin’ their backs, why, so much the better, I figure.”

“I’ve worked in the mill in my day, until nine o’clock at night, from seven in the mornin’, with an hour off for lunch. That’s too much, I don’t think you’ll ever see the like of that again, though. And a good thing, too. I wouldn’t want to go back to it, and I don’t think anyone else would. An eight hour day is long enough.”

Learn more from these amazing resources I used to gather information for this article:

• 8-Hour Work Day Library of Congress

• Preamble and declaration of principles of the Knights of Labor of America

• Knights of Labor Wikipedia Article

• Labor Day Wikipedia Article

• WayBack Machine Archive of Knights of Labor Article

• The First Labor Day Library of Congress

• Overworked America Mother Jones

• Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage
United States Department of Labor

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