THE FIVE-DAY WEEK
Of more than six and one-half million wage earners who
were employed in manufacturing in the United ‘States in
1909, only 7.9% were found in establishments operating
forty-eight hours or less per week, but by 1923, the latest date
for which the Bureau of the Census has compiled figures of
this nature, 46.19 of the eight and three-fourths million
workers fell within this group. On the other hand, 69.49, of
the industrial wage earners worked in 1909 longer than
fifty-four hours per week, but the proportion falling in this
group had in 1923 been reduced to 23.2%. Details of the distribution
 of wage earners according to the prevailing hours
of labor per week from 1909 to 1923 are given in Table 1.
Similar testimony is afforded by the available figures regarding
 the average number of hours per week. For example,
in its monthly studies concerning wages, employment and
hours of work in twenty-five manufacturing industries, the
National Industrial Conference Board found that in 1928
the average normal work week in these industries was between
 forty-nine and fifty hours, while in 1914 this average
was fifty-five hours. This gradual decline in the average
hours of work per week noted since 1914 is part and parcel of
a general movement in American industry which has been
going on for a number of years. Continuous figures on the
same basis are not available, but it is interesting to note that
an inquiry conducted by the United States Bureau of Labor
Statistics for the years 1890 to 1906 shows a similar trend.
Based on the average of the period 1890 to 1899, the index
number representing hours per week stood in 1890 at 100.7
and from that year there was an almost uninterrupted decline
to a minimum of 95.4 in 1906.
It is interesting to note that the curtailment of the hours
of work has not been accompanied by any reduction in the
earnings of the workers. On the contrary, in spite of occasional
 setbacks, the trend of wages has been upward during
the past century and the earnings of the workers today are
often many times what they were early in the nineteenth
century, although working time has been substantially reduced.
 The inquiries of the National Industrial Conference
Board, to which reference has been made, show, for example,
that the average weekly earnings of all wage earners in manu-