Consumption, Work Hours, and Values in the Writings of John A. Ryan: Is it Possible to Return to the Road Not Taken?

An important dimension of US industrial growth in the 19^th century was a reduction in work hours: early in the century the manufacturing workday extended from sunrise to sunset, but successive waves of labor protest succeeded in bringing it down to 10 and then 9 hours. Work-time reductions are a natural use of a large “productivity dividend”: when a society can produce much more output from its scarce productive resources, a valuable use of the fruits would be to make work less physically and spiritually grueling. However, after figuring into discussions of the 1920s “economy of abundance” and plans for reducing the hardship of the Great Depression, the idea of further scaling back work time went onto the backburner, and the downtrend in average hours stalled.