Eight Hours

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Eight Hours

"Eight Hours"

Words by I. G. Blanchard; music by Rev. Jesse H. Jones

Originally published in 1878

Reprinted in American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century, 1975

Of the many job-related complaints of industrial workers in the late nineteenth century, the most widespread and passionate was over long working hours. In the early days of industrialization, many Americans had expected the new technology would make jobs easier, leaving more leisure time for all. However, in 1890 laborers in manufacturing companies worked an average of sixty hours per week, and it was not uncommon in some trades for workers to put in as many as 100 hours a week at their jobs. In 1900, 70 percent of the nation's industrial laborers worked ten hours or more each day. Some worked seven days a week. Laborers usually took jobs in their teens and continued working until they died or became too ill to continue. Because they spent so much of their lives at work, they were unable to enjoy time to relax with their families, participate in community activities, or express themselves through arts or other pastimes.

From the time the earliest U.S. factories were established, the issue of shorter working hours was one of the major points addressed by every labor movement. In the 1830s workers called for a ten-hour workday, and by the 1860s they were demanding an eight-hour day. In 1866 delegates from many unions nationwide formed the National Labor Union (NLU) to promote the eight-hour day, and two years later six states and several cities had passed legislation granting the appeal. Unfortunately, these gains were lost when the economy declined steeply in 1873. During this period many businesses collapsed and unemployment rose sharply. Labor leaders again called for shorter working days, but this time as a way to spread the existing jobs among more people.

By the early 1880s there were two national unions. The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor had been founded in 1869. Its platform called for the eight-hour day and workers' compensation (insurance that guaranteed workers injured on the job would receive financial support). The Knights of Labor leadership advocated educating the public as the proper means for workers to achieve their goals. They hoped to gradually create a more cooperative arrangement between the factory owners and laborers and believed workers should use boycotts (the refusal to buy or use something as a means of protest) rather than strikes to reach their goals. Another national union, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, formed in 1881 from a combination of the skilled trade unions for carpenters, cigar makers, printers, merchant seamen, and steelworkers. It, too, sought the eight-hour day, but it did not oppose striking.

In 1884 the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions passed a resolution stating that "8 hours shall constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886." The resolution energized workers in every U.S. industry, and excitement rose as the designated day approached.

The song "Eight Hours," written by I. G. Blanchard with music by Congregational minister Jesse Henry Jones (1836–1904), became the official song of the eight hours working day movement. The lyrics consider long working hours a violation of God's will, which requires that humans have time for personal reflection and communion with nature.

On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of American workers nationwide went on strike, demanding an eight-hour work-day. The strikers' slogan was, "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!," the chorus of the song "Eight Hours." All work stopped for railroads and factories, and by the end of the day an estimated 150,000 workers had earned a guarantee of shorter working hours, including about thirty-five thousand meatpackers in Chicago who were granted an eight-hour day without loss of pay. The strike was a great victory for organized labor, but there was trouble ahead.

Well before May there had been an ongoing strike at Chicago's McCormick Harvester plant, a factory that produced machinery to harvest wheat. Fourteen hundred strikers demanding an eight-hour workday and daily wages of $2 had been replaced with nonunion workers by the company management. On May 3, 1886, two days after the nationwide strike, violence broke out at the Chicago plant and four strikers were killed by police. At a rally the following day at nearby Haymarket Square, an unidentified person tossed a bomb at a group of policemen, killing seven and injuring sixty. Police fired their pistols into the crowd, killing ten people and injuring approximately fifty more.

Eight anarchist (people who advocated the use of force to overthrow all government) labor leaders were indicted for the death of the policemen killed at the square, although most of them had not even been at the rally. After an emotional trial, at which the accused were found guilty based on their political beliefs, seven were sentenced to death and the eighth to fifteen years in prison. In 1887 four of these labor leaders were hanged. Another committed suicide in prison shortly before his execution date. In 1893 the Illinois governor pardoned the three surviving labor leaders, saying there had not been sufficient evidence to convict them.

The Haymarket bombing incident increased antiunion sentiment in the United States. About one-third of the workers who had won the eight-hour day lost it in the month after the incident, and they began to seek leadership that could help regain the shortened hours. In 1888 the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions reorganized as the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The new association pursued basic improvements in pay and working conditions in a practical way, steadily and with determination. Membership in the AFL grew, and the more radical political groups decreased in size.

At its founding convention, the AFL announced that May 1,1890, would be International Labor Day. Workers throughout the world celebrated the day as a holiday to honor the strikers and labor leaders who died in the Haymarket incident and the achievements of the U.S. labor movement, in particular the struggle for the eight-hour workday.

Things to remember while reading "Eight Hours":

The song "Eight Hours" was probably written in the late 1860s, during the early years of the national labor movement. The lyricist, Isaac G. Blanchard, was a printer and newspaper editor who lived and worked in Boston. The composer of the music, Jesse Henry Jones, participated in meetings of the Boston Eight Hour League, a society organized to fight for a shorter workday that was founded in 1863. Little else is known about the song's writers or origins.
"Eight Hours" was published in 1878. It became one of the rallying songs of the great demonstrations of May 1, 1886, when hundreds of thousands of workers across the nation went on strike for the eight-hour workday.

"Eight Hours"

We mean to make things over, we are tired of toil for naught
      [nothing],
With but bare enough to live upon, and never an hour for
      thought;
We want to feel the sunshine, and we want to smell the flowers,
We are sure that God has will'd it, and we mean to have eight
      hours.
We're summoning our forces from the shipyard, shop and mill,
Chorus
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!
The beasts that graze the hillside, and the birds that wander free,
In the life that God has meted [given] have a better lot than we.
Oh! hands and hearts are weary, and homes are heavy with
      dole [grief];
If our life's to be filled with drudgery, what need of a human soul!
Shout, shout the lusty rally from the shipyard, shop and mill,

Chorus
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!
The voice of God within us is calling us to stand
Erect, as is becoming to the work of his right hand,
Should he, to whom the Maker his glorious image gave,
The meanest of his creatures crouch, a bread and butter slave!
Let the shout ring down the valleys and echo from ev'ry hill,
Chorus
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!
Ye deem they're feeble voices that are raised in Labor's cause?
But bethink ye of the torrent [outpouring], and the wild torna-
      do's laws!
We say not Toil's uprising in terror's shape will come,
Yet the world were wise to listen to the monitory [warning]
      hum,
Soon, soon the deep-toned rally shall all the nations thrill,
Chorus
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!
From factories and workshops, in long and weary lines,
From all the sweltering forges, and from out the sunless mines,
Wherever toil is wasting the force of life to live,
There the bent and battered armies come to claim what God
      doth give,
And the blazon [engraving] on their banner [flag] doth with
      hope the nations fill,
Chorus
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!

Hurrah, hurrah, for Labor! for it shall arise in might;
It has filled the world with plenty, it shall fill the world with
      light;
Hurrah, hurrah, for Labor! it is mustering all its powers,
And shall march along to victory with the banner of Eight
      Hours!
Shout, shout the echoing rally till all the welkin [Heavens] thrill,
Chorus
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what
      we will!

What happened next …

The first federal action taken to shorten workdays was for the benefit of women industrial workers. By 1908 about twenty states had laws prohibiting employers from requiring women workers to work more than ten hours a day. An employer charged with violating the law in Oregon appealed, and the case went to the Supreme Court. Attorney Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) defended the state of Oregon in Muller v. Oregon. Brandeis's case rested on the idea that women were different than men and would be more severely damaged, both physically and mentally, by overwork. The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's law, marking the first time the court had been influenced by a presentation of sociological facts regarding workers.

In 1933, nearly fifty years after the strike on May 1, 1886, the first nationwide measure to establish maximum work hours was passed. The National Industrial Recovery Act was an emergency measure put into effect by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) during the major economic downturn known as the Great Depression (1929–39), when many Americans were unemployed. It was designed to improve standards of labor, promote competition, and reduce unemployment, and part of this was to be accomplished by imposing laws governing the wages, prices, and business practices of each industry. The act was ruled unconstitutional and overturned by the Supreme Court in May 1935 on the grounds that the act overstepped the legislative and commercial powers of the federal government. In 1938 Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set the maximum workweek at forty-four hours. Employers were required to pay time-and-a-half (1.5 times the regular wages) to workers who worked more than that amount. In 1940 the maximum workweek was decreased to forty hours.

Did you know …

In 1930 the highly influential English economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) predicted that by 2030 most people would be working a fifteen-hour workweek. Keynes was voicing a widespread belief that industrialization would relieve Americans from the majority of their work, allowing much more leisure time.
The hundreds of thousands of workers who demonstrated on May 1, 1886, were led by a variety of labor leaders. Many of these leaders came from radical political groups that advocated major changes in the economic and/or political system in order to make the business owners and workers more equal. Middle- and upper-class Americans were frightened by these extreme politics, and U.S. courts, police forces, and businesses fought against them. Many American workers, fearing trouble and the loss of their jobs, turned to more moderate labor organizations like the AFL that sought specific goals and remained largely nonpolitical.
After the first celebration of International Workers Day on May 1, 1890, May Day was observed as a labor holiday in many industrial nations such as Europe, Canada, South Africa, China, Japan, and Korea. The largest May Day turnouts were in the communist Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution began in 1917, and in Cuba, after its revolution and adoption of communism in 1959. Interestingly, although May Day began in the United States, it was not widely observed in the country by the early twenty-first century. In 1894 the United States initiated the far less controversial Labor Day holiday, which honored working Americans with parades and festivals on the first Monday of September.

Consider the following …

After reading the lyrics of "Eight Hours," write a paragraph or two describing the complaints of the workers of the song.
The song states that "the world were wise to listen to the monitory hum" of the workers. What is the warning in the song? Do you think the workers are threatening a revolution?

For More Information

Books

Arnesen, Eric. "American Workers and the Labor Movement in the Late Nineteenth Century." In The Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins of Modern America. Edited by Charles W. Calhoun. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1996.

Blanchard, I.G. "Eight Hours," (Lyrics only; music by Rev. Jesse H. Jones). In American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century. Edited by Philip S. Foner. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975.

Smith, Page. The Rise of Industrial America: A People's History of the Post-Reconstruction Era. Vol. VI. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984.

Summers, Mark Wahlgren. The Gilded Age, or, the Hazard of New Functions. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1997.