Why Do We Work 40 Hours a Week?

Why do we work 40 hours a week? The 40-hour work week wasn't discovered by science. It was fought over for more than a century. We compare how hunter-gatherers and farmers worked, step into the 12-hour days of early cotton mills, meet the reformer behind the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest", and follow the fight for the eight-hour day to Chicago, a car company, and the law that set the 40-hour week. Chapters: 0:00 Intro 1:06 Take a guess 1:55 Before the clock 3:18 The mill 4:47 Eight, eight, eight 6:18 The part nobody tells you 7:57 How 40 became the law 9:00 Recap 9:24 The number that stopped moving 10:53 Final thoughts Sources (every claim in this video was fact-checked): HISTORY.com: Ford factory workers get 40-hour week: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-h... Wikipedia: Richard Borshay Lee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard... Wikipedia: Original affluent society: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origina... University of Cambridge: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/f... ScienceDaily 2019: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases... Britannica: Factory Act: https://www.britannica.com/print/arti... The Peel Web: factory legislation: https://historyhome.co.uk/peel/factmi... Whaples, EH.net: Hours of Work in U.S. History: https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-... EBSCO: Factory Act: https://ebsco.com/research-starters/h... HistoryCrunch: Robert Owen: https://historycrunch.com/robert-owen/ World Socialist Movement: https://www.worldsocialism.org/wsm/?p... Scotland Far and Near: New Lanark: https://www.scotlandfarandnear.co.uk/... Wikipedia: Haymarket affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymark... UAW: May Day history: https://solidweb2.uaw.org/node/12165 Chicago History Museum: https://www.chicagohistory.org/?p=136168 EBSCO: Ford announces a five-dollar, eight-hour workday: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starte... Ford Authority: https://fordauthority.com/2024/01/fam... Silicon Canals: https://siliconcanals.com/t-henry-for... TIME: https://content.time.com/time/special... Context Institute / Hunnicutt: https://www.context.org/?p=972 InformationWeek: https://www.informationweek.com/six-h... Anchorage Daily News / WaPo: https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2021... Congressional Record 1933: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/G... VCU Social Welfare History: https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu... Encyclopedia.com: FLSA: https://www.encyclopedia.com/law/lega... Dissent Magazine: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/artic... FRED: AWHAETP: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/CEU0... World Economic Forum: https://weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/fo... New videos regularly. If you enjoyed this, subscribe to Never Knew Till Now and tell us in the comments what surprised you most. #history #work #40hourworkweek