Kewaunee County & the 40 Hour Work Week

Unimaginable unemployment, cuts in hours and pay, and increasingly worsening working conditions for those who did have jobs, were only a part of what became the Great Depression. Today we read about other countries that have less than a 40 hour work week and wish. Few remember the time in our history when government was advocating a shorter work week. One of 30 hours. It happened during the 1930s and in the depths of the Great Depression. The issue of hours affected Kewaunee County as it did the rest of the country.

History tells us that around 1800, men, women and children in the manufacturing workforce put in 14 hour work days. The country was seeing an industrial revolution. Martin Van Buren was president in 1840 when he issued an executive order limiting the manufacturing work day to 10 hours. At the end of World War l in 1919, an 8-9 hour day was advocated and hours were maximized at 48 a week. It happened because of an international labor group. No sooner was it accomplished than the country was in the Depression. President Herbert Hoover proposed limiting the work week to 30 hours. It passed the Senate but didn’t fly in the House. Then Franklin Roosevelt, elected in 1932 on a platform that differed little from 1924 and 1928, enacted more social legislation than most can wrap their heads around today. By the early to mid-1930s, lack of jobs, foreclosures, soup lines and even starvation brought the issue of work hours and that began to get confusing.

The April 15, 1933 issue of Newsweek - one of the first issues in the magazine’s history - headlined a startling article about the U.S. work week being cut to 5 days and 30 hours. There were severe penalties for overtime work, prompting Kewaunee County merchants to quickly announce new hours. The bill was passed as a means to increase employment during the Depression, the worst economic catastrophe known to the U.S.

News articles indicate Kewaunee County employers were worried about compliance with federal regulations. Government’s idea was that more people with jobs meant increased buying power thus helping the country get out of the Depression. At the same time, the state was trying to win federal funds for public works, work that would also help prime business. Where would money come from to hire more people? Kewaunee County folk did not think it was as simple as it sounded.

Six months before the Newsweek article, author Joe Mitchell Chappel was urging protective tariffs as a way of guarding the American worker from the sweat and peasant labor of other lands. Chappel talked of a shorter work week and a work day, saying it was sound.

By late January 1934 federally funded CWA (Civil Works Administration) workers in rural areas and cities with populations less than 2,500 learned that because of dwindling funds, they would be limited to 15 hours a week of work until the end of the CWA period in February. It was felt that living costs were higher in larger areas so those workers would get 24 hours of work a week. Wikipedia tells us that spending about 200 million a month and temporarily employing about 4 million construction workers, CWA functioned during the winter of 1933-34, ending on March 1, 1934. The Record Herald pointed out that 197 Kewaunee County men had been part of the program but the county’s number was being cut to 166. In late March 1934 the paper said a mid-March pay roll was $1,305.20 for 112 men in the county quota. To put that in another perspective, the men received about $11.65 for 60 hours of work, or roughly 18 cents an hour. At the time 25 cents bought a man’s admission to a dance. Ladies paid 10 cents, a used tire could be bought for one dollar, an adult haircut at Timble’s was 40 cents, 4# of navy beans went for 19 cents, a dozen oranges sold for 25 cents and hamburger was 10 cent a pound. Eighteen cents won’t even buy a quarter hour at a parking meter today.

A November Record Herald editorial couldn’t see how limiting labor could go forward without a worsening of the economy. It said if limiting hours to 30 would put more men to work, would limiting hours to 20 or even 5 create more work? The paper couldn’t figure out how families other than the “idle rich” could get what they needed with reduced work and increased idleness. The limited hours would not affect agriculture, though it was pointed out that in Kewaunee County farmers worked 6 hours before dinner and another 6 after, however farmers knew they put in far more. The editorial said that any store open 8 or 9 hours a day placed a physical toll on employees. It also opined that it was really factories that proponents wanted to limit, and yet that wouldn’t work either because production costs would increase prices to a point of unaffordablity.

Farmers were against the advocated 30 hour work week and higher wages for non-farm labor. In October 1937, farmers felt it meant higher costs for them. They felt non-farmers working fewer hours wouldn’t be able to buy their products. It was pointed out that higher standards of living would come with lower production costs and higher wages. It was further said higher production costs and higher wages would bring down the standard of living because food and clothing were basic necessities.

About 6 months later there were other issues. Farm cooperatives also had to face labor issues and if farm products had to be produced in 40, or even 50, hours a week, a lot of farmers were going to find it impossible to exist at “present levels” or at levels in excess. That would put city dwellers in a more difficult economic position.

Hours continued to be a hot topic. A December 1938 Record Herald article  pointed out that in 1849, American industrial workers began work at sunrise, got 40 minutes for breakfast and lunch and then went on to work till 7 PM. In 1938 the average work week was less than 40 hours. Then there was the blame game. Merchants weren’t getting rich on sales in the days of high taxes and wage and hour restrictions.

President Franklin Roosevelt and Labor Secretary Frances Perkins initially endorsed the idea of shorter hours and work week, but buckling under opposition from the National Association of Manufacturers, FDR dropped his support for the bill, which in turn was defeated. It wasn’t long before Roosevelt advocated the job-creating New Deal spending and a forty-hour work week limit, passed into law on October 24, 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Again, it wasn’t long before there was another change.  World War ll production saw those in defense manufacturing positions working at least 45 hours a week.

Women’s hours seemed to be a separate issue and beat the 1938 40-hour week. In May 1937 the House passed a bill on to the Senate setting hours at 8 hours per day and no more than 44 hours a week, however in an emergency a 9 hour day and 50 hour week would be accepted. By August news articles discussed machines bringing shorter hours and shorter work weeks thus offering more leisure time.  A Record Herald editorial questioned why leisure was necessary because there were those that had nothing but leisure. It went on to say that it took a better man to stand up under all that leisure and make something of himself, more than it did for one who was always on the go.

The paper went on to opine that economic forces were bewildering. Swings too far either way always caused hardship to somebody. Seventy-five years ago the paper said, “Too bad there isn’t some way of determining the happy medium.”  The 40 hour work week has long been a staple in the U.S. Countless articles on its history can be found simply by Googling. One of the most interesting articles appeared in a Jayson DeMers article in Forbes on May 15, 2015. DeMers feels the 40 hour work week is dead for a number of reasons. As Abraham Lincoln said, "We cannot escape history."

Sources: Algoma Record Herald, Jayson DeMers in Forbes 5/15/2015 online; Google; National Park Service guide at Lindenwalk, Kinderhook, NY; Newsweek 4/15/1933; Wikipedia.