Eight-hour Day Research Articles

THE UTILIZATION OF OPTIMUM METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS FOR THE REDUCTION OF LOS ANGELES AUTOMOTIVE POLLUTION.

Advantage can be taken of optimum conditions of turbulent mixing to decrease the intensity of automobile-caused pollution in the Los Angeles Basin. Changing the summertime peak traffic hours—delaying the morning rush by one hour—will result in an improvement of 24 percent for an eight-hour day, in terms of oxidant concentrations. Greater improvements (up to 54 percent) are possible by use of seven or six-hour days, should they be found to be economically feasible.

A 16-MM, 35-MM PROCESSING MACHINE FOR CINEFLUOROGRAPHIC FILMS.

Despite the variety of processing machines for motion-picture films already available commercially, there is still a pronounced gap between the largest machine commonly used for cinefluorography (capacity 1,000 ft. per eight-hour day) and the next larger size (capacity 8,000 ft.). The larger machines require some 300 ft. of leader, which is enough to cause a loss of time in processing the separate short lengths of film, a frequent need in cinefluorography. When it became obvious that the daily output of film from our department (University of Rochester, Department of Radiology) would soon exceed 1,000 ft., it was decided that rather than purchase an 8,000-ft. machine, it would be better to build a new one of intermediate size, especially designed to meet cinefluorographic requirements. Since our work involves both 16-mm and 35-mm films, a design which would process both sizes with a minimal changeover time was an important consideration. Not all the larger machines will process both sizes of film and thos...

The Davis-Bacon Act and the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act: A Comparison of Coverage and Minimum Wage Provisions

Some thirty years ago the national conscience was aroused by the destructive effect of widespread unemployment on wages of workers. It was a time of depression. Competition for limited markets forced employers to cut labor costs. Wages and prices spiraled downward. One bold way chosen to stop this trend was the National Industrial Recovery Act,1 providing for codes of fair competition for both prices and wages. Another, confined to the construction industry, was the Davis-Bacon Act, passed in I93I and strengthened in I935,2 requiring the payment of prevailing wages to laborers and mechanics performing contracts for the construction, alteration, and repair of public works of the United States. A third, and also limited effort, was the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act, passed in I936,3 after the National Industrial Recovery Act had been declared unconstitutional. This act became law at a time when regulation of labor standards and the use of the commerce powers for this purpose were considered beyond the reach of congressional action.4 It was clearly within the reach of Congress, however, to prevent the purchasing power of the federal government from being used to permit bidders on federal supply contracts to profit by depressing wages and working conditions. The Walsh-Healey Act established the eight-hour day and the forty-hour week, prohibited child labor, set safety standards, and authorized the Secretary of Labor to determine prevailing minimum wages for contract performance. It is, in a general sense, a counterpart of the Davis-Bacon Act, setting labor standards for supply contracts, as does the Davis-Bacon Act for construction contracts. These basic statutes on labor standards for government contracts-the WalshHealey Act and the Davis-Bacon Act-are the concern of this article: their usefulness, their need, their operation, and their shortcomings. Each aspect of both statutes will be separately examined.

Submilligram determination of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen

The procedure described byFrazer4,6 for the simultaneous determination of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen has been scaled down to the submilligram level with no serious loss of accuracy. Approximately six complete determinations can be made in an eight-hour day. Whereas the accuracy depends to a large extent upon the analyst's technique, the method presented is comparatively straightforward. Analysts with no previous microanalytical training have been able to obtain results equivalent to the accuracy shown in Table I after two weeks of experience with the procedure.

The Uneven Distribution of Leisure: The Impact of Economic Growth on "Free Time"

ciety. In advertising parlance, we are moving from the Fabulous 'Fifties to the Soaring 'Sixties, in which the average man will wallow in an abundance of (and the goods and services to fill it). Sometimes the point of comparison is Reformation Europe, more often some decade of the 19th century. A typical formulation: from 1850 to 1950 we moved from a 70or 72-hour workweek down to a 40-hour week-a 12-hour day, six-day week to an eight-hour day, five-day week, or we have increased our free time-beyond work, eating and miscellaneous nesessities-from about 2.18 hours a day in 1850 to 7.48 hours in 1960.1 It is usually assumed that hours of work will continue to decline. (In 1955 a 20th Century Fund study predicted a 36.5-hour week by 1960; the 40-hour standard still prevails, but union agitation for more leisure continues. ) What ver their judgment of the quality of the new leisure, and whatever their explanation of the main drift, most observers assume that economic growth brings a rather heavy drop in the propensity to work. This idea rests on time series for various societies and industries which show

A method for the determination of trinitrotoluene in air.

Properties of Trinitrotoluene Trinitrotoluene is the high explosive used as a main bursting charge in shells, mines, and bombs. It is a potent poison for the liver, blood, and blood-forming organs, and fatalities have been recorded from toxic anaemia, toxic jaundice, and acute yellow atrophy of the liver. From 1916 to 1918 there were notified 403 cases of toxic jaundice, 105 (26%) being fatal, and 15 cases of toxic anaemia, all of which were fatal. In the second world war, toxic jaundice cases numbered 116, with 25 deaths (21-5 %), and toxic anaemia cases 24, with 15 deaths. These figures take no account of the lesser degrees of intoxication where further deterioration was halted by timely intervention. 2 : 4 : 6-Trinitrotoluene is one of six isomers, and has the formula C6H2(N02)3CH3. It is ob tained by nitration of the coal-tar product toluene and melts at 81 to 82? C. It is practically insoluble in water, but is soluble in fat and many organic solvents. The vapour pressure at room temperature is very low. Nevertheless, according to Occupation and Health (International Labour Office, 1934), it is capable in the dry state of giving off fumes into the atmosphere at a temperature as low as 32? C. Furthermore, the low vapour pressure means that any vapour arising from hot melted trinitrotoluene will readily condense into fume on meeting cooler air and collect as a fine powder on any surface colder than 70? C. Air pollution is for all practical purposes in the form of suspended solids. Inhalation is by far the most important mode of entry to the body. Stewart, Witts, Higgins, and O'Brien (1945), in observations on persons exposed to contact of different kinds, found that the greatest effects occurred in those who were working in melt houses where there was the most intense exposure to fume. The maximum allowable concentration for an eight-hour day and with a normal amount of physical effort is fixed in America at 15 mg. per cubic metre of air. In this country, however, it has generally been accepted that a figure of 2 mg. is permissi le. These figures, of course, are always capable of modification when the nature of the work differs from average conditions.

The Eight-Hour Day Movement in the United States, 1888-1891

Journal Article The Eight-Hour Day Movement in the United States, 1888–1891 Get access Sidney Fine Sidney Fine Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 40, Issue 3, December 1953, Pages 441–462, https://doi.org/10.2307/1891871 Published: 01 December 1953

The New Deal: The Progressive Tradition

OOKING BACK from the beginning of the New Deal in 1933, the radical movements preceding it seem to have been pretty mild, usually-deserving the name radical only by courtesy, certainly not by comparison; for nothing like the revolutionary fervor so familiar in most other lands had ever developed here. The nearest thing to genuine radicalism in the United States was the IWW, which at one time may have had as many as ten thousand members. The philosophy of this organization was revolutionary, borrowed from the syndicalism of France, but that part of its activity was always neglected for more practical efforts. Its casual membership consisted largely of bums and blanket stiffs, characteristic of a phase in the progress of industry toward large-scale operations and relationships of a settled sort, but not of the material out of which a disciplined revolution grows. Its energies were mostly spent in such efforts as getting decent food and clean bunks in lumber camps and in fighting for an eight-hour day on construction jobs or in the harvest fields. Its philosophy gradually merged in other labor organizations whose immediate aims were similar.1 Besides the IWW, only communism is worth mentioning. That imported philosophy, like that of the wobblies, had always sounded strange in American mouths and made little appeal to American hearts. Sometimes communism was useful as a bogey with which to scare Babbitts, but it did not possess any vigorous life of its own to justify the fears exhibited by some of our countrymen. Communists existed mostly by imputation. Atrocity stories concerning them were either worked up de novo or were inflated versions of activities of strike leaders or believers in high income taxes. Our own characteristic radicalism had been something else, more accurately called progressivism, for that was the name, however inappropriate, which its leaders always preferred. There had been little agreement about the kind of progress implied in this name or about how to get it. For most Americans of this era, any kind of progress different from revolution was to be admitted. This did

Effects of Small Daily Doses of Fast Neutrons on Mice

The potential danger of overexposure to radium rays and roentgen rays is generally recognized. Likewise, it is known that even low doses of these radiations will, if received at frequent intervals over a long period, eventually produce recognizable damage. The advent of the cyclotron and the nuclear reactor has presented another radiation to be dealt with, namely, the neutron. This radiation is biologically effective, and in some respects is much more dangerous than x-rays or radium. The maximum permissible daily exposure for radium and x-radiation is set at 0.1 r per eight-hour day for a five-and-a-halfday week (1). It is now necessary to establish a safe limit for daily exposures to neutron radiation. It has been the purpose of the present investigation to study the effects of small daily doses of fast neutron radiation to the whole body of laboratory mice. Materials and Methods Animals: In the preliminary experiments, male and female mice of the Swiss strain (Rockland Farms) were used. In the main experiments, animals of the CF1 strain (Carworth Farms) were also used. These animals were from four to six weeks of age at the beginning of the experiments. They were fed on Rockland mouse diet, with water available at all times. The sexes were kept separate. The animals were not crowded, and care was taken to keep the same original groups of males together, as the introduction of a new animal had been found to encourage fighting. Examinations: Blood counts were taken twice a week (in the long-term experiments) on animals of each experimental and control group. Each individual was numbered and animals were taken serially for this examination. Since there were 25 animals in each group, there was a long lapse of time between counts on the same individual, except toward the end of the experiment. Small blood pipettes2 were used (volume about one-quarter that used for human samples) and were found to be reliable. Blood counts consisted of a red cell count, white cell count, hemoglobin determination (photo-electric hemoglobinometer), and a differential blood count made from a smear. The animals were examined closely every day for general condition, for signs of epilation, etc., visible or palpable tumors, infection, and eye defects. Each animal was weighed when its blood count was made, and once a week all were weighed. No animal was sacrificed until over half of the individuals in a particular group had died. Autopsies were done as soon after death as possible and, iftissues were fresh enough, they were preserved and prepared for microscopic examination. Tissues usually saved were bone marrow (sternum), spleen, gonad, lungs, kidney, adrenal, liver, and intestine. If a tumor or inflammatory condition was found in some other organ, it was, of course, added to the tissues to be studied microscopically. Radiation: The neutron radiation employed was produced by the 36-inch cyclotron in the Pupin Laboratories of Columbia University.

Henry George: Haymarket and Tariff Reform*

DURING THE preceding decade grossly unjust labor conditions in the big industrial plants had resulted in a growing group of rebels who might today be designated as leftists, but who were then confusedly and interchangeably called Communists, Socialists.' They were groping for a way out of their economic difficulties but they focussed on immediate demands for the right to organize, to strike and to reduce their ten-hour working day to eight. In the vicinity of Chicago this fight became intensely bitter and to cope with it the powerful industrialists used not only the State militia but private police forces of their own-the Pinkerton Detective Agency or Protective Patrol.2 Bloody riots ensued. With working conditions so cruelly unjust, there developed a group of labor leaders who advocated against force and openly advised, from platform and printed page, the making and using of bombs.3 On the night of May 4th, 1886, a mass meeting was held in the neighborhood of the Haymarket that, although called by a group of avowedly direct-action Anarchists, was devoted solely to advocating the eight-hour day with ten-hour pay. The meeting was held completely within the law, yet, as it was about to end as peaceably as it had begun, a body of policemen suddenly appeared and ordered that it be dispersed. While the speakers were descending from the truck that had been their platform, a bomb hurtled through the air into the police ranks, immediately killing one and wounding scores of others. Swift retaliation followed, resulting in the death of one civilian and the injuring of dozens of others. This horrible tragedy with its toll of eight deaths and at a conservative estimate, eighty-two wounded,4 threw the whole country into a ferment that continued during the long criminal court trial of the eight Anarchists before a jury chosen from nine hundred and eighty-one talesmen.

Eight-hour Day in Hospitals

Eight-hour Day in Hospitals

Eight-Hour Day in Hospitals: February 1942

Eight-Hour Day in Hospitals: February 1942

All Hail the Eight-hour Day!

All Hail the Eight-hour Day!

The Eight-Hour Day: Some Pertinent Questions Asked and Answered

The Eight-Hour Day: Some Pertinent Questions Asked and Answered

The Eight-hour Day

The Eight-hour Day

The Canadian Manufacturers' Association

The Canadian Manufacturers' Association arose to deal with the problems of manufacturers which emerged as a result of the economic expansion and social changes of the twentieth century. The opening of the West and the widening of the market, besides increasing the number and size of manufacturing enterprises, strengthened those groups such as agriculture and labour which were opposed to privileges secured by the manufacturers, or which advanced claims upon the state damaging to manufacturing interests. At the same time, the development of cheap newspapers and the diffusion of the habit of reading made possible the organization of these groups upon a broad basis of popular support. Thus, while economic expansion meant an increase in the number of interests making demands upon governmental authorities, improved means of communication made these interests more vocal in advancing their claims in the wider community. The result was evident in the increasing number of issues such as the tariff, eight-hour day legislation, and workmen's compensation brought to the attention of the electorate, in the greater participation of the state in economic and social life, and in the elaboration of new forms of organization and control on the part of those groups, such as manufacturers, which had to bid for the support of the general voting public.

The Standard of Living in Sweden

DOES Sweden have a high or a low standard of living? The answer to this question is of course entirely dependent on the basis of comparison. On the whole, the standard is high nowadays compared with what it was formerly. To be sure, all classes of society have not had an equal share of the improvement that is now taking place, but many important categories, as for instance the industrial workers, have had their general level very considerably raised. Thus during the period 1913 to 1936 alone, the real wages of fully employed industrial workers rose by 47 per cent-the introduction of the eight-hour day notwithstanding.

The Eight-hour Day

The Eight-hour Day

The Eight-Hour Day: Its Mass Introduction in a Large City Hospital System

The Eight-Hour Day: Its Mass Introduction in a Large City Hospital System

The Eight-hour Day

The Eight-hour Day