¹ Owen, John D., “Workweeks and Leisure: An Analysis of Trends, 1948–75,” Monthly Labor Review 48 (Aug. 1976): 3–8Google Scholar, and Owen, , Working Hours: An Economic Analysis (Lexington, Mass., 1979Google Scholar), passim; Hunnicutt, Benjamin K., “The End of Shorter Hours,” Labor History 25 (Summer 1984): 373–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Roediger, David and Foner, Philip, Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (New York, 1989), xi, 259Google Scholar; Cross, Gary, “Worktime and Industrialization: An Introduction,” in Worktime and Industrialization: An International History, ed. Cross, Gary (Philadelphia, Pa., 1988), 2, 16Google Scholar.

³ For the quotation, see David R. Roediger, “The Limits of Corporate Reform: Fordism, Taylorism, and the Working Week in the United States, 1914–1929,” in Cross, ed., Worktime and Industrialization, 136; see also Roediger and Foner, Our Own Time, 232–42; Hunnicutt, Benjamin Kline, Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (Philadelphia, Pa., 1988), 22, 23Google Scholar. Gary Cross cites Leverhulme's, LordThe Six-Hour Day & Other Industrial Questions (London, 1918Google Scholar), as a British example of industrialists' support of work reduction growing out of industrial welfare and work science movements.

⁴ Juliet B. Schor, “Toil and Trouble: Leisure in a Capitalist Economy,” unpub. MS, dated May 1987, author's copy. In her recent and widely publicized book, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York, 1991Google Scholar), economist Schor argues persuasively that leisure has actually declined since 1976—an argument that Bill Clinton adapted to the 1992 presidential campaign with his slogan, “Americans are working harder for less” now than when Ronald Reagan was elected. The result, according to Schor, is that the average worker works a full month more today. Schor concludes that the historical process of work reduction has not only halted in the United States, but that it has actually reversed, and that Americans are steadily losing leisure. She then joins historians in their attempt to explain the phenomenon, discussing the role of consumerism, the structure of capitalism, and labor's changing positions on the length of the work day.

⁵ Roediger and Foner, Our Own Time, 193, 211, for the first quotation; Roediger, “The Limits of Corporate Reform,” for the second.

⁶ See Hunnicutt, Work Without End, 147–58, for support of this position. By contrast, in more traditional fashion Foner dismisses business work-sharing during the Depression as simply a dodge to cut wages; see Roediger and Foner, Our Own Time, 243–56.

⁷ Several other major industrial firms voluntarily cut weekly hours to forty and then to thirty in 1930 and 1931. Hunnicutt, Work Without End, 148.

⁸ Roediger, “The Limits of Corporate Reform,” 135–37.

⁹ Mortimer, Jeyland T., Changing Attitudes toward Work (Minneapolis, Minn., 1979), 14, 15Google Scholar. See also Daniel Yankelovich, “Work, Values, and the New Breed,” and Kerr, Clark, “Introduction,” both found in Work in America: The Decade Ahead, ed. Kerr, Clark and Rosow, Jerome M. (New York, 1979Google Scholar), and passim.

¹⁰ “Kellogg Company Announces Six-Hour Day and Basic Pay Raise to Aid Employment: Takes World Leadership in Inauguration of New Industrial Work Policy,” Battle Creek Moon-Journal [hereafter Moon-Journal], 24 Nov. 1930. See also memo to Walter C. Hasselhorn from E. H. McKay, 7 Sept. 1933, Local #### 3 of the American Federation of Grain Miller's Archives, Battle Creek, Michigan [hereafter cited as Local # 3 Archives].

¹¹ Moon-Journal, 24 Nov. 1930.

¹² As quoted by Powell, Horace B., The Original Has This Signature—W. K. Kellogg (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1956), 188Google Scholar.

¹³ Moon-Journal, 24 Nov. 1930.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ A survey team from the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau examined Kellogg's payroll books in mid-1932, comparing wages paid before the change to six hours and after hourly wages had been increased a second time. They found that a total of 77 percent of the workers received less weekly pay under the Six-Hour plan. Over 40 percent received between 10 and 20 percent less, nearly a third received between 0 and 10 percent less, and one in eleven over 20 percent less; forty-five workers (23 percent) showed an increase in weekly wages. Best, Ethel L., A Study of a Change from 8 to 6 Hours of Work, Bulletin no. 105 of the Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor (Washington D.C., 1933Google Scholar). Letter to Mary Anderson, director of the Women's Bureau, from W. James McQuiston, dated 20 Jan. 1933, National Archives, U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Raw Data, box 153, 22. Business Week, 27 April 1931, found that even though some workers were being paid less than in 1930, still “more money [was] being distributed to Kellogg workers as a whole.” See also Winant, J. G., “New Hampshire Plan,” Review of Reviews 86 (Nov. 1932): 24Google Scholar; McKee, O. Jr, “New Hampshire Does Her Bit,” National Republic 20 (Oct. 1932): 6Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Moon-Journal, 24 Nov. 1930.

¹⁷ Battle Creek Enquirer, 24 Nov., 6–8 Dec. 1930; Moon-Journal, 1 Dec. 1930; “Cereals: Six-Hour Day Helps Kellogg Co. Do More Work,” Newsweek 9 (16 Jan. 1937): 27Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Moon-Journal, 24 Nov. 1930.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Business Week, 10 Dec. 1930.

²¹ “Kellogg Strikes at Unemployment,” Factory and Industrial Management 80 (Dec. 1930): 1148aGoogle Scholar, b.

²² Ibid.; Battle Creek Enquirer, 24 Nov., 6–8 Dec. 1930.

²³ Battle Creek Enquirer, 26 Nov. 1930; Powell, The Original Has This Signature, 188–97. See also J. M. Carmody to Hugo Black, 9 Dec. 1931, Hugo Black Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. There is evidence that when the AFL executive committee drafted the Six-Hour bill in 1932, they used the existing Six-Hour experiments in Battle Creek and Akron as models.

²⁴ The New York Times, 15 April and 31 Oct. 1931; Powell, The Original Has This Signature, 189. Unemployment still threatened jobs in Battle Creek, and Kellogg continued to look for innovative solutions; see The New York Times, 25 Sept. and 17 Oct. 1931. Still, the Six-Hour day was by far the most visible and successful of Kellogg's employment schemes.

²⁵ Business Week, 27 April 1931.

²⁶ Chapin Hoskins, “Is the Six-Hour Day Feasible?” Forbes, July 1931, 16–18, 28.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Factory and Industrial Management 81 (31 May 1931): 775, 776Google Scholar.

³¹ The most prominent exponent of this theory was Arthur O. Dahlberg. His book, Jobs, Machines, and Capitalism (New York, 1932Google Scholar), presented what Arthur Schlesinger called the “most effective statement” of the position. See Schlesinger, , The Coming of the New Deal (Boston, Mass., 1959), 91Google Scholar. For a full treatment of his work, see Hunnicutt, Work Without End, 69–75.

³² “Six-Hour Day Proves Success,” The Kellogg News, 21 April 1931; Brown, Lewis J., “Operation of 6-Hour Day in Plants of the Kellogg Co.,” Monthly Labor Review 32 (June 1931): 1414–21Google Scholar.

³³ Lewis J. Brown, “What of the Six-Hour Day?” pamphlet dated 1931, Presidential Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa [hereafter, Hoover Papers].

³⁴ Business Week, 27 April 1931, 16. See also Battle Creek Enquirer, 15 April 1931.

³⁵ “A Summary of the Kellogg Company's Experience with the Shorter Working Day (Four Shifts of Six Hours Each) at Battle Creek, Michigan,” pamphlet published by the Kellogg Co. in 1935, copy mailed to the author by the Kellogg Co.

³⁶ Brown, “Operation of 6-Hour Day in Plants of the Kellogg Co., “ 1414–21. See also Brown, “What of the Six-Hour Day?”

³⁷ Battle Creek Enquirer, 15 April 1931.

³⁸ Brown, “Operation of 6-Hour Day in Plants of the Kellogg Co.,” 1414–21.

³⁹ For general developments during the 1920s see Roediger, “The Limits of Corporate Reform,” 135, 136. See also Best, A Study of a Change from 8 to 6 Hours of Work.

⁴⁰ “Cereals: Six-Hour Day Helps Kellogg Co. Do More Work,” 27; Battle Creek Enquirer, 4 Dec. 1930; Hunnicutt, Work Without End, chap. 5.

⁴¹ The New York Times, 2 Aug. 1932, 1, col. 8 for quotation; see also 3 March 1931, 6, col 3. Even before the widespread interest in “The New Leisure” surfaced in 1933–34, the “unemployment or leisure” theme was sounded by prominent people such as Ford, Henry, in Moving Forward (New York, 1930), 16–88Google Scholar, especially chap. 5, entitled “Unemployment or Leisure”; Ford, H. and Crowther, A., “Unemployment or Leisure,” The Saturday Evening Post 203 (2 Aug. 1930): 19Google Scholar; Ida Craven, “Leisure,” Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (1932), 402–6; The New York Times, 30 July, 2 Oct. 1931; 2 Aug. 1932.

⁴² The New York Times, 2 Aug. 1932; letter to President Hoover from Walter S. Gifford, director of the President's Organization on Unemployment Relief, box 319, 1A (3 Aug. 1932), and “Report of the President's Organization on Unemployment Relief” box 339, both in Hoover Papers; E. Dana Durand to W. C. Garner, 12 March 1931; Wesley Mitchell to William C. Garner, member of the President's Emergency Committee for Employment (PECE), 12 March 1931; “Statement on Spreading Work by the President's Organization on Unemployment Relief,” 1 Aug. 1932, all in Hoover Papers.

⁴³ The New York Times, 9, 10 Dec. 1932; 15 Jan. 1933; “Job Sharing. 5 Million Helped by Work-Spreading, Teagle Committee Estimates,” Business Week 14 (1 Feb. 1933Google Scholar); “Spread-Work Plans Gain Ground on the Employment Front,” ibid. 11 (3 Aug. 1932): 7.

⁴⁴ The New York Times, 16, 21, 26 May; 30 June; 30 July; 22 Sept.; 5 Oct. 1932; Graf, W., Platforms of the Two Great Political Parties: 1932 to 1944 (Washington, D.C., comp. 1944), 336, 354Google Scholar; Himmelberg, Robert F., The Great Depression and American Capitalism (Boston, Mass., 1968), 41Google Scholar; Walker, L. C., “The Share-the-Work Movement,” Annals of the American Academy 165 (Jan. 1933): 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁵ Miller, S. Jr, “Labor and the Challenge of the New Leisure,” Harvard Business Review 11 (1933): 462–67Google Scholar; The New York Times, 7 Oct., 4 Dec. 1932; 26 Jan. 1933; “Labor's Ultimatum to Industry: Thirty-Hour Week,” Literary Digest 114 (10 Dec. 1932): 3–4Google Scholar; “Labor Will Fight,” Business Week 14–15 (14 Dec. 1932): 32Google Scholar; “The Labor Army Takes The Field: A Shorter Work Week to Make Jobs,” Literary Digest 115 (15 April 1933): 6Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ “Kellogg Raises Wages,” Literary Digest 120 (Nov. 1935): 40Google Scholar. See also “Moral: Fatter Wages: Kellogg Goes Back to 1930 Pay Scales, Retains 6-Hour Day; Other Industries Advised to Study Plan,” Business Week, 16 Nov. 1939, 9. In Oct. 1935, the company announced another raise, increasing the minimum wage to $4.50 a day and the average worker's hourly pay by five cents.

⁴⁷ “A Summary of the Kellogg Company's Experience with the Shorter Working Day”; Business Week, 16 Nov. 1939, 9.

⁴⁸ “A Summary of the Kellogg Company's Experience with the Shorter Working Day.” See also “The Proof of the Pudding: Kellogg's 15 Month Experience with the 6-Hour Day,” Factory and Industrial Management 82 (March 1932): 111, 112, 157–58Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Letter excerpts quoted in Powell, The Original Has This Signature, 203. The Kellogg Co. published a slick biography of W. K. Kellogg in 1979 in which his trade-mark phrase, “I never learned to play,” was interpreted as an endorsement of a life of total work—turning W.K.'s plaintive remark on its head. In reality his familiar saying was full of regret and repeated with the hope that others would not have to experience life as he had, as total work and toil. “The Proof of the Pudding,” Factory and Industrial Management, 157–58.

⁵⁰ Interview with Howard Roe, union official of the American Federation of Grain Millers, 4 June 1990; Powell, The Original Has This Signature, 269–76, 310–25.

⁵¹ Brody, David, Workers in Industrial America (Madison, Wise, 1975), 63–78, 134Google Scholar, chap. 6; Bernstein, Irving, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920–1933 (Boston, Mass., 1960), 184–88Google Scholar.

⁵² The New York Times, 29 May 1957. The first meeting between the union and management was held on 18 May 1937, at which W. K. Kellogg expressed his disappointment. A variety of evidence exists that Kellogg was extremely disturbed and not in control of the situation, weeping several times during the meeting, repeating “If only they had come to me, I would have given them what they wanted.” The union records show, however, that once the union was inevitable, W. K. Kellogg was “in sympathy” with the Local. See typescript (no date), “Early Beginnings,” Local #3 Archives; see also Moon-Journal, 8 June 1937. Nevertheless, after telling his tearful story to the workers, W. K. Kellogg turned over actual negotiation to experienced, savvy negotiators.

⁵³ Battle Creek Enquirer, 16 and 17 June 1937.

⁵⁴ “1937 Contract between Kellogg and Local #20,388,” dated 23 June 1937, Local # 3 Archives; Moon-Journal, 18 June 1937.

⁵⁵ The union feared that management was planning to eliminate the Six-Hour day. See “Minutes of a special meeting of the executive board,” 7 June 1938, and “Minutes added May 3 1938,” both in Minute Book of Local #20,388 dated “From Nov. 15th 1937 to Dec. 31, 1938,” held by Local # 3 Archives.

⁵⁶ The Kellogg News, Jan./Feb. 1943; “Agreement between Kellogg and Local 20,388, including amendments,” 1 March 1943, and “Temporary Amendments to Contract” (1943), held by Local #3 Archives.

⁵⁷ Memorandum, 8 Feb. 1946 and letter from Ed Pilsworth to William Green dated 2 March 1946, in file folder “1946–1947,” Local #3 Archives.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Ibid.; see also letter from William Green to Ed Pilsworth dated 12 March 1946 in file folder “1946–1947,” held by Local #3 Archives.

⁶⁰ The union reported that 619 women and 858 men voted against eight hours, 93 women and 347 men voted for it. See letter from J. N. Cummings to William Green, 17 April 1946, in file folder “1946–1947,” Local #3 Archives. Cummings wrote that “during our negotiations it was brought out that particularly the women like the Six-Hour day because a great number of them were married, and that they could work at the plant six hours and then go home…. The company said that they would be willing to continue on a Six-Hour day for the women, if they so desired.”

⁶¹ “Memorandum of Minutes of 1st Meeting Regarding Contract Amendments Thursday, June 12,” “Tuesday, July 8,” “June 18,” “July 2,” “Thursday July 10,” “Tuesday July 17, 1947”; “Memorandum from the company to negotiations committee of union,” dated 19 July 1947 in Negotiations Minutes 1947–1948, notebook held by Local #3 Archives.

⁶² “Minutes of Contract Negotiations Meeting July 16, 1947,” in Negotiations Minutes 1947–1948 notebook and “Amended Contract Between Kellogg's and Local #20,388,” dated Aug. 1943; see also “1947 Amendments to the 1941 Contract Between Kellogg's and Local #20,388,” dated 24 July 1947; “1948 Amended Contract Between Kellogg's and Local #20,388,” dated 1 Aug. 1948, all in Local #3 Archives.

⁶³ The 1941 contract called for management to find “suitable work” for disabled workers. Increasingly after 1947, the company interpreted this provision to mean “light work” at six hours. The result was the segregation of older men, disabled workers, and women in the Six-Hour departments. The union supported these developments, accepting them as fulfilling the union contract. The vote initiation procedure was usually led by senior workers intent on gaining more hours for more pay and opposed, often violently, by women and newly hired workers.

⁶⁴ See section 709 in the 1969, 1966, 1964 Kellogg union contract, as well as section 710 in the 1959, 1957, and 1948 contract. See the “Contracts Between Kellogg Company and the American Federation of Grain Millers (AFL-CIO) and Local No. 3,” held at Local #3 Archives. In 1941, the union had won a contract provision to lay off employees with less than five years' service “before reducing the hours of work for the balance of the employees in that division to less than 30 hours.” See “Agreement Between Kellogg and Local 20, 388, Including Amendments Effective March 1, 1943.”

⁶⁵ Letter from retired Kellogg worker in author's collection, letter no. 44.

⁶⁶ Minutes of 31 Jan., 1, 3, and 10 Feb. union meetings, in Minute Book of Local #20,388 dated “From November 15th 1937 to December 31, 1938,” Local #3 Archives.

⁶⁷ Ibid., and “Agreement Between Kellogg and Local 20,388, Including Amendments Effective March 1, 1943,” Article VII, paragraph g, Local #3 Archives. For the elimination of the bonus in the mechanical department, see memorandum dated 17 July 1946, “To the Body of Local #20,388” in Local #3 Archives.

⁶⁸ “1948 Amended Contract Between Kellogg's and Local #20,388” dated 1 Aug. 1948. Memo from R. S. Poole to “Kellogg Men and Women,” dated 21 Feb. 1947, and “Notes of Meeting on Contract Negotiations June 18, 1947” in Negotiations Minutes 1947–1948, Local #3 Archives.

⁶⁹ “Minutes of 1st Meeting Regarding Contract Amendments, June 12, 1947,” “July 19, 1947”; “Minutes of Contract Negotiations Committee Meeting, July 10,” “July 14 1947”; “Suggestions Committee for Productivity Improvement”; “Production Incentive Plan, Aug. 29, 1947,” “Art—Wages” dated 10 July 1947 in Negotiations Minutes 1947–1948, Local #3 Archives.

⁷⁰ “Memorandum of Meeting with Negotiating Committee, Sept. 9, 1947,” in Negotiations Minutes 1947–1948.

⁷¹ “Suggestions Committee for Productivity Improvement”; “Minutes of Meeting With Union Negotiations Committee, Dec. 3, 1948”; letter from AFGM Local #3 to P. D. Custer dated 9 Dec. 1948, in Negotiations Minutes 1947–1948, Local #3 Archives.

⁷² Author's interview with Howard Roe, executive vice-president, American Federation of Grain Millers, 9 Oct. 1990; author's interview with Robert Willis, general president of the American Federation of Grain Millers, 28 June 1990; author's interview with Jack Curtis, vice-president and personnel manager at Kellogg's during the 1950s, on 22 Aug. 1990. See also Battle Creek Enquirer, 21 May 1951.

⁷³ The mid-1940s to mid-1960s were the heyday of “human relations management.” Building on the famous Hawthorne experiments of the late 1920s and 1930s, writers such as M. S. Viteles accepted the view that workers were motivated primarily by irrational emotions at work and emphasized “worker attitudes” and “leadership styles” rather than wage or hours incentives. See Locke, Edwin, “Job Attitudes In Historical Perspective,” in Papers Dedicated to the Development of Modern Management, ed. Wren, Daniel and Pearce, John (New York, 1986Google Scholar), passim. The classic book of the human relations school was McGregor's, DouglasThe Human Side of Enterprise (New York, 1960Google Scholar).

⁷⁴ Kellogg's encouraged management and foremen and -women to keep on hand a copy of Neuner, John and Haynes's, Benjamin book, Office Management: Principles and Practices (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1953Google Scholar). Neuner and Haynes's book was a human relations textbook, one of many turned out during the period, and provided a summary of human relations principles as good as most.

⁷⁵ “Leadership in the Kellogg Manner.”

⁷⁶ Locke, , “Job Attitudes in Historical Perspective,” iv, 7, 301Google Scholar; “Leadership in the Kellogg Manner”; “Code for Good Leadership,” passim.

⁷⁷ “Leadership in the Kellogg Manner.“

⁷⁸ Ibid.; “Code for Good Leadership.” Jacoby, Sanford M., Employing Bureaucracy: Managers Unions, and the Transformation of Work, 1900–1945 (New York, 1985Google Scholar). Jacoby argues that industrial labor was “transformed” through a “historical process … of bureaucratization” and the rise of personnel management as a profession. “Good jobs” were the result, jobs with “stability, internal promotion, and impersonal, rule bound procedures” (p. 2). But Kellogg's personnel managers were not content with mere changes in work's form, and putting more faith on the intangibles, attitudes and morale, tried to redeem work at the plant by convincing workers that work done with the proper devotion was better than leisure—a “good job” was largely attitude, and a right attitude to work was a precondition to the enjoyment of life.

⁷⁹ Author's interview with W. James McQuiston, assistant to the vice-president in charge of production until 1973.

⁸⁰ Battle Creek Enquirer, 10 Dec. 1979; 3, 4 Nov. 1982; Fortune 106 (29 Nov. 1982Google Scholar); letter from Christopher McNaughton, senior vice-president at Kellogg's to Jim Allen and Joe Sessions of AFGM, dated 5 Nov. 1982, in “1980s Notebook,” Local #3 Archives. Battle Creek Enquirer, 23, 25 May, 15 June 1983.

⁸¹ Battle Creek Enquirer, 23, 25 May, 15 June 1983.

⁸² “Memo” from Joe Sessions, AFGM business agent, to Local #3. In “1980s Note-book” held by Local #3, Archives; Battle Creek Enquirer, 16 Dec. 1984. “Memo to All Members of Local 3 from Kellogg Management, Incentive Package Applicable In Event of Successful Vote for Eight Hours,” in “1980s Notebook,” Local #3 Archives.

⁸³ “Inter-union Correspondence, AFGM” from Joe Sessions, business agent for the AFGM to Local #3, headed, “Six Hour Representatives,” 26 Oct. 1984. Local #20,388 was affiliated with the National Council of Grain Processors until July 1948, when the AFL issued the local a charter in affiliation with the American Federation of Grain Millers. Subsequently, the group was known as Local #3 of the AFGM.

⁸⁴ Battle Creek Enquirer, 13, 16 Dec. 1984; “Memo” to All Members of Local 3 from Kellogg Management, “Incentive Package Applicable In Event of Successful Vote for Eight Hours” in “1980s Notebook,” Local #3 Archives.

⁸⁵ See, for example, “Less Snap, A Little Crackle—Any Pop?” Forbes 122 (4 Sept. 1978Google Scholar); Jack Willoughby, “The Snap, Crackle, Pop Defense,” ibid.: 135 (25 March 1985).

⁸⁶ According to Louis Harris and Associates, the average American works 20 percent more today than in 1973. Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, “No Time for God or Family,” The Wall Street Journal, 4 Jan. 1990, Op Ed page.

⁸⁷ Gorz, André, Paths to Paradise: On the Liberation from Work (Boston, Mass., 1985), 35Google Scholar; translation of Les chemins du paradis (1983). See also Marcuse, Herbert, Eros and Civilization (New York, 1962Google Scholar), preface.

⁸⁸ Gorz, Paths to Paradise, 59; Gorz, , Critique of Economic Reason (London, 1989Google Scholar); translation of Metamorphoses du travail (1988).

⁸⁹ Ibid., 77. Cf. Miller, “Labor and the Challenge of the New Leisure,” 462–67.