Protestantism and Labor Reform Movements

This introductory chapter discusses the central issue that generated a movement within the labor movement: overwork and the hours of labor. Shortening the workday and reducing the workweek were umbrella issues for the American labor movement. Reducing the hours of labor linked a host of other industrial reforms and spawned a class-based consciousness among American workers that no other issue had done previously or since. As such, the eight-hour day was salient to native-born and immigrant workers, to labor radicals and conservatives, to the skilled and unskilled, and to men and women, and Chicago's workers were at the center of it all. Indeed, overwork and long hours were the basis for some of the most contentious conflicts between employers and their workers in Chicago, and they forced Protestant clergy, willing or no, to engage the labor question.