The agitation, however, to make
the ten-hour day customary throughout the country was not long in
coming back to life. In March, 1840, an executive order of
President Van Buren declaring ten hours to be the working day for
laborers and mechanics in government employ forced the issue upon
private employers. The earliest concerted action, it would seem,
arose in New England, where the New England Workingmen's
Association, later called the Labor Reform League, carried on the
crusade. In 1845 a committee appointed by the Massachusetts
Legislature to investigate labor conditions affords the first
instance on record of an American legislature concerning itself
with the affairs of the labor world to the extent of ordering an
official investigation. The committee examined a number of
factory operatives, both men and women, visited a few of the
mills, gathered some statistics, and made certain neutral and
specious suggestions. They believed the remedy for such evils as
they discovered lay not in legislation but "in the progressive
improvement in art and science, in a higher appreciation of man's
destiny, in a less love for money, and a more ardent love for
social happiness and intellectual superiority."
The first ten-hour law was passed in 1847 by the New Hampshire
Legislature. It provided that "ten hours of actual labor shall be
taken to be a day's work, unless otherwise agreed to by the
parties," and that no minor under fifteen years of age should be
employed more than ten hours a day without the consent of parent
or guardian.
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