Economic essays

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Eight-hour theory in the american federation of labor / Henry Raymond Mussey

Collection:: Economics Books

230 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK It is not the purpose of this paper to trace the external progress of the eight-hour movement. Disregarding the rhetorical exag- erations of a public address such as that just quoted, it is sufficient to observe that there was an interesting agitation during the sixties and the early seventies, which provided nearly all the ideas of the later movement. A long interval of quiescence fol- lowed the panic of 1873. In the middle eighties the unions again took up the question, making an unsuccessful attempt to intro- duce the eight-hour day in 1886. A period of vigorous agitation followed, culminating in the successful effort of the carpenters in 1890. The miners, who were chosen by the Federation as the next trade to lead the fight, failed at the last moment, to the dis- couragement of the other unions. Then came the great Home- stead and Coeur d’Alene strikes of 1892, and attention was liverted to other issues, the eight-hour question losing its primacy. In the course of years, however, progress was made, and in 1907 President Gompers reported more than two dozen crafts work- ing only eight hours, most of them in the building and printing trades and the mines. The International Typographical Union had just expended four million dollars in establishing the eight- hour day.’ It remained for the events of the war to complete the process just sketched, and to usher in the present era, in which eight hours may be regarded as the normal workday of organized labor. It is the ideas underlying the movement, especially in its earlier period down to 1892, with which we are concerned. Why did the men who were to unify the American labor movement take up first the question of hours, and for ten years make the shorter workday the central demand in their positive platform? The opinion may be hazarded that it is because the theory of the eicht-hour day happened to fit particularly well the practical needs of their situation, and was therefore a tool well-nigh indis- pensable to them in their hard task of organization. The matter is not without interest for the student of economic theory, and particularly of the productivity theory of wages, inseparably connected with the name of Professor Clark. For more than forty years, from the establishment of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881 down L Proceedings, 1907, p. 32. 2 Ibid., p. 33.

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: Economic essays

Monograph

Chapter

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

Chapter

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation