WORK-A--DAY STATS
President Martin Van Buren, on March 31, 1840 - one day day ahead of April Fools Day - placed his signature on an executive order which established a ten-hour work day for all government employees.
I have no concrete evidence at hand which would tell me that government workers put in more than ten hours per day prior to the ruling by Van Buren but there must have been sufficient reason to set such a limit at the time. Holding a government job has long been associated with the concept of less physical effort than that demanded by other forms of employment.
It might well have been that some folks, when first hearing of the presidential ordered, may well have taken it to be a Fool's Day prank, but it stuck an brought about some endless changes in the structure of our national and state governments.
Iy could have been a reward of a sort handed out by the Presdent to make government work more attractive. Or, it could possibly have been a political do-dad applied to pressure a specific point of that era when the Industrial Revolution was beginning to revolve throughout the land. On thing, for sure, is that one thing, for sure, is that set up a cycle change which has not stopped even today.
People today often take the attitude that to ”get a government job”, is the same thing as retiring with full pay. Holding a government office is often seen as their version of achieving heaven on Earth. A ten hour day in our time is considered to be an imposition. We are seemingly on the verge, quite often these days, of emulating some of our European brethren in setting up a four or five-day work week, with hours per day well below any ten.
If you happen to live on any major highway leading into or out of Washington, DC., you can gauge holiday traffic starting with an early closing time at Federal offices on Friday at afternoon and the rush of traffic returning to the District Tuesday night. Week ends become l-o-ong ones when "sick days" and other special modern innovations are added to official holidays.
Martin Van Buren started tinkering with established work hours work in 1840 and it hasn't stopped changing ever since.
A.L.M. November 29, 2003 [c402wds]
