Working Hours

Read the original guide to living life to the full and making every hour count in this classic twentieth-century self-help style volume. As you look back on the year that has just past, do you feel as though you spent another twelve months merely existing instead of truly living? Do you often go to bed at night with an anxious, sinking feeling that you wasted away another precious day?

The post-war period witnessed dramatic changes in the lives of working-class families. Wages rose, working hours were reduced, pension plans and state social security measures offered greater protection against unemployment, illness, and old age, the standard of living improved, and women and members of immigrant communities entered the labour market in growing numbers. Existing studies of the post-war period have focused above all on unions at the national and international levels, on the “post-war settlement,” including the impact of Fordism, and on the chiefly economic issues surrounding collective bargaining, while relatively scant attention has been paid to the role of the union local in daily working-class experience.