[1] Rooney, D. (2021). About time: A history of civilization in twelve clocks (1st American ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. “But many (probably most, now) refute his claim that the rise of industrial capitalism forced workers into new forms of bondage disciplined by the clock as far back as we care to look, and in places besides Britain or the industrial West.” (p. 162)
[2] Rooney, D. (2021). About time: A history of civilization in twelve clocks (1st American ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. “As late as the nineteenth century, a Dundee textile factory worker was able to claim that: The clocks at the factories were often put forward in the morning and back at night, and instead of being instruments for the measurement of time, they were used as cloaks for cheatery and oppression . . . it was no uncommon event to dismiss any one who presumed to know too much about the science of horology.” (p. 163)
[3] Rooney, D. (2021). About time: A history of civilization in twelve clocks (1st American ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. “The textile industry was one of the most oppressive in its use of clocks to discipline the lives of its workers, and the most blatant in the way its owners and managers cheated their workforce out of time, and therefore money. Knowledge is power, and workers in the earliest factories and mills were forbidden from carrying watches, for fear they would know how long they were working beyond their paid hours. The time on the factory clock was routinely changed over the course of a day. But some managers went further by collaborating with clockmakers to construct ever more ingenious mechanisms and technical modifications to cheat workers out of the true time and lengthen their days. In 1832, the British Parliament was debating the so-called Ten Hours Bill on textile factory reform. Members were shocked to be told by Michael Thomas Sadler, MP for Newark, social reformer and promoter of the Bill, that: a practice is known to exist in certain mills or factories of using two or more different clocks or timepieces, one being a common or Time Clock, and the other a clock regulated by the velocity of the steam engine or other machinery, and often called a Speed Clock, by which the daily labour, though nominally limited to a certain duration, is often increased much beyond that limitation.” (p. 163)
[4] Rooney, D. (2021). About time: A history of civilization in twelve clocks (1st American ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. “The standardization of time and space is all about maintaining order, controlling people’s behavior, making money, securing political power, building empires and waging war. It is authoritarian and it is nationalistic. ” (p. 167)
[5] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “The time squeeze surfaced with the young urban professional. These high achievers had jobs that required sixty, eighty, even a hundred hours a week. OnWall Street, they would regularly stay at the office until midnight or go months without a single day off. Workconsumedtheir lives. And if they weren't working, they were networking.” (p. 18)
[6] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “That happened on Wall Street was replicated throughout the country in one high-income occupation after another. Associates in law firms compete over who could log more billable hours. Work-aholics set new standards of survival. ” (p. 19)
[7] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “At cutting-edge corporations, which emphasize commitment, initiative, and flexibility, the time demands are often the greatest. "People who work for me should have phones in their bathrooms," says the CEO from one aggressive American company. ” (p. 19)
[8] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “This combination of retrenchment, economic competition, and innovative business management has raised hours substantially. One poll of senior executives found that weekly hours rose during the 1980s, and vacation time fell. Other surveys have yielded simi- lar results. By the end of the decade, overwork at the upper eche- lons of the labor market had become endemic—and its scale was virtually unprecedented in living memory.” (p. 19)
[9] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “The number of people who work eighty hours a week and bring home— if they ever get there— a six-figure income is very small. But while the incomes of these rarefied individuals were out of reach, their schedules turned out to be downright common. As Wall Street waxed industrious, the longer schedules penetrated far down the corporate ladder, through middle management, into the secretarial pool, and even onto the factory floor itself.8 Millions of ordinary Americans fell victim to the shortage of time.” (p. 19-20)
[10] ****Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “By my calculations, the total working time of employed mothers now averages about 65 hours a week. Of course, many do far more than the average—such as mothers with young children, women in professional positions, or those whose wages are so low that they must hold down two jobs just to scrape by. These women will be working 70 to 80 hours a week. And my figures are extremely conservative: they are the lowest among existing studies. ABoston study found that employed mothers average over 80 hours of housework, child care, and employment. Two nationwide studies of white, married couples are comparable: in the first, the average weekwas87 hours; in the second, it ranged from 76 to 89, depending on the age of the oldest child. ” (p. 20-21)
[11] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “According to my estimates, the average employed person is now on the job an additional 163 hours, or the equivalent of an extra month a year (see table 2.1). Hours have been increasing throughout the twenty-year period for which we have data. The breakdown for men and women shows lengthening hours for both groups, but there is a "gender gap" in the size of the increase. Men are working nearly one hundred (98) more hours per year, or two and a half extra weeks. Women are doing about three hundred (305) additional hours, which translates to seven and a half weeks, or 38 added days of work each year. The research shows that hours have risen across a wide spectrum of Americans and in all income cate- gories—low, middle, and high. The Increase is common to a variety of family patterns—people with and without children, those who are married, and those who are not. And it has been general across industries and, most probably, occupations. 25 The extra month of work is attributable to both longer weekly schedules and more weeks of work, as table 2.2 indicates.” (p. 29)
[12] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counter- part in the nineteenth century. The implicit—but rarely ar- ticulated—assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has pre- vailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night.1 These images are backward projections of modern work pat- terns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time.2 Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind.” (p. 43-44)
[13] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “Despite these shortcomings, the available evidence indicates that working hours under capitalism, at their peak, increased by more than 50 percent over what they had been in medieval times” (p. 44)
[14] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “The pace of work was also far below modern standards—in part, because the general pace of life in medieval society was leisurely. The French historian Jacques LeGoff has described precapitalist labor time "as still the time of an economy dominated by agrarian rhythms, free of haste, careless of exactitude, unconcerned by pro- ductivity—and of a society created in the image of that economy, sober and modest, without enormous appetites, undemanding, and incapable of quantitative efforts." Consciousness of time was radially different. Temporal units we take for granted today—such as the hour, or the minute—did not exist. There was little idea of time saving, punctuality, or even a clear perception of past and future. Consciousness of time was much looser—and time had much less economic value.” (p. 46)
[15] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “The contrast between capitalist and precapitalist work patterns is most striking in respect to the working year. The medieval calendar was filled with holidays. Official—that is, church—holidays included not only long "vacations" at Christmas, Easter, and midsummer but also numerous saints' and rest days. Thesewere spent both in sober churchgoing and in feasting, drinking, and merrymaking. In addition to official celebrations, there were often weeks' worth of ales—to mark important life events (bride ales or wake ales) as well as less momentous occasions (scot ale, lamb ale, and hock ale). All told, holiday leisure time in medieval England took up probably about one-third of the year. And the English were appar- endy working harder than their neighbors. The ancient regime in France is reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holi- days totaled five months per year.” (p. 46-47)
[16] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “The short work year reveals an important feature of precapitalist society: the absence of a culture of consumption and accumulation. There was far less interest in and opportunity for earning or saving money. Material success was not yet invested with the overriding significance it would assume. And consumerism was limited both by the unavailability of goods and by the absence of a middle class with discretionary income. Under these circumstances, the lack of compulsion to work is understandable. ” (p. 47)
[17] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “As capitalism grew, it steadily lengthened work time. The change was felt in earnest by the eighteenth century. The workday rose in the cottage industries which sprang up throughout the English countryside. Rural people, especially women, took on spinning, weaving, lacemaking, and other handicrafts, in their own cottages, in order to earn a little cash to survive. The time commitment ranged from a few hours a day for the better-off, to eight, ten, or twelve hours a day for those who were poor. And this was in addition to regular domestic responsibilities” (p. 50)
[18] Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. BasicBooks. “Specific features of the emerging labor markets also exacerbated pressures toward long hours. For example, capi- talists followed the centuries-old custom of fixing wages by the day, the week, or even the month—in contrast to the modern practice of payment by the hour, which had not been introduced. The daily wage was largely invariant to hours or intensity of labor, a worker earning neither more nor less as the working day expanded or contracted. This flexibility of working hours was a departure from past practice. ” (p. 53-54)