Our Own Time

Download or read book Our Own Time written by David R. Roediger and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1989-03-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with a picture of working hours in colonial America and the early republic, Roediger and Foner then analyze the movement for a ten-hour workday in the early nineteenth century. They demonstrate that the ten-hour issue was a key to the dynamism of the Jacksonian labor movement as well as to the unity of male artisans and female factory workers in the 1840s. The authors proceed to examine the subsequent demands for an eight-hour day, which helped to produce the mass labor struggles of the late nineteenth century and established the American Federation of Labor as the dominant force in American trade unionism. Chapters on labor movement defeats following World War I, on the depression years, and on the lack of progress over the last half-century.