What was the effect of the Industrial Revolution on work hours?

by blacktrance

Would the average worker in Industrial Revolution-era Britain or US have a longer or shorter working day than his equivalent in the century preceding it?

poopsymk3

Generally for the middle class, 80% of the people, 14 hours per day, 6 days per week. This was significantly longer than previous generations as the advent of artificial lighting enabled increased work time.

Source: The Overworked American by Juliet Schor http://books.google.com/books?id=E1clEkV_1w8C

splendidid

One of my favorite discussions of time and the industrial revolution is from E.P. Thomson's Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism.

It's a bit of a read, but gives a pretty good background on the construction of time and the construction of the work day. Thompson was a sociologist and this text is cited in media and technology studies all the time.

** To elaborate** Thompson claims that the Industrial Revolution didn't just increase work hours, it invented them. If people were running their own cottage industry business, and they decided to go out drinking the night before, then it was mostly on them if they didn't get any work done the next day. Likewise, if you went out partying with members of your guild, then if you all rolled in late to work together, no one was the wiser. Thompson notes that members of certain guilds had strong reputations for being unreliable, and while this was a sort of "cottage industry problem," it wasn't an issue that required remedy.

But the Industrial Revolution hyperbolized the idiom that 'time equals money.' Thompson talks about each city and town having it's own "local time." Suddenly, with the advent of the train, time had to be synchronized. (In one instance, a railroad was found responsible for a serious collision because one of the conductor's watches was five minutes slow.) These sort if significant technological developments necessitated "time" and gave weight to the idea of "work hours" and the importance of "time management."

Most significantly, with the industrial revolution, we also see the standardization of school hours. For the most part children still get time off in the summer, a tradition stemming back from agricultural communities, but in general, children's schooling schedules echo the schedules of their parents -- they start early in the morning, with set breaks, and finish towards the middle of the afternoon. The idea was, according to Thompson, to teach pupils the principles that drove industry and which would make them successful contributors -- timeliness, attentiveness, and the ability to follow direction.

This relatively new management also disrupted sleep, as researchers now think we slept in segments. Work schedules that emerged during the Industrial Revolution did not accomodate this practice.

So, to answer your question, reiterating Poopsy's answer, yes, people worked longer hours, but also slept less and had less control over their time. And while measured time did exist prior to the Industrial Revolution, the monetization of time made it more important to divide it into smaller and smaller increments.

Thompson is a sociologist, and regarded as seminal throughout media studies, critical theory and sociology. While there's certainly an underlying critique of capitalism in his work, he reminds us that no element of western civilization should be taken for granted, including time.

*edit - elaboration added at the request of the mods.