Les Trois Huits: Labor Movements, International Reform, and the Origins of the Eight-Hour Day, 1919-1924

The trois-huits, the equal distribution of the day between work, rest, and leisure, had been a slogan of a generation of May Days since 1890. It became a reality for many workers only with the eight-hour movements of 1917-19. While Lenin's dream of world revolution failed, the eight-hour day swept across Europe, as governments and employers conceded this major reform to exhausted and sometimes militant peoples. The movement for the eight-hour day spanned the prewar and postwar periods. This demand was an expression of a growing popular desire for time liberated from work and available for new'leisure opportunities and for emerging family-centered values. The radical demand for a reduction from a tenor even twelve-hour workday to a mere eight-hour workday challenged, as could no wage increase, the economic and cultural status quo. Not only had the eight-hour day been a symbol of the Second International, but it had been a transnational goal of labor and reformers in a developing world economy where competition blocked improvements in the labor standard at the national level. The eight-hour day was also a linchpin in a broad economic and social program: it promised not only to reduce unemployment and raise wages, but also to rationalize, even intensify production, and to rejuvenate family and cultural life. Moreover, these objectives bridged class lines, drawing the support of both organized labor and a network of professional reformers. A loose interclass coalition emerged briefly in 1919, winning an international eight-hour day while other reforms and revolutionary goals failed. Labor and social historians of the prewar generation, however, have largely ignored the hours issue, relegating it to the minor status