Worktime between Haymarket and the Popular Front: An International Perspective

Abstract

The quest for an eight-hour day was the central issue of the struggles leading to the Haymarket massacre of 1886. It also was at the heart of a widening scope of labor activity in the 1880s. The AFL's call for national eight-hour demonstrations on May 1, 1890 encouraged admiring European labor movements to join the Americans in an international strike for eight hours, the event which partially inspired the organizing of the Second International. Given these often-noted facts, it is ironic that the history of the hours issue after 1890, and especially between World War I and the popular front, when the major reductions in worktime occurred, has been largely neglected by American and European labor historians. In the half-century between Haymarket and the popular front worktime particularly dominated the attention of international labor and produced the forty-hour week standard and the ideal of the annual vacation.