All I have no desire to rain on anyone's parade but the standard 40 hour week was a comparatively recent invention. Normal working hours were 45 hours plus any overtime that the factory worker could manage to enable them to survive... usually worked out at a 6 day week. The remarked on 70 hour week... as a standard pure phantasy... Most of the claims to be working these excessive hours may well be phantasy and I would like to see the evidence and most critically i would like to see where they got the idea that that my father and his father were working less hours than we are. regards sdv Ian Pitchford wrote: > NEW STATESMAN > Book Reviews - Weeping in a Rolls-Royce > > Book Reviews > Christopher Gasson Monday 28th May 2001 > > Blood, Sweat and Tears: the evolution of work > Richard Donkin Texere, 400pp, £18.99 > ISBN 1587990768 > > It is difficult not to feel a sense of betrayal about technological progress. > We have invented machines to do work for us, but the more ingenious our > inventions, the harder we find ourselves working. We have exchanged 40 hours of > slavery in a soot-covered factory for a 70-hour week chained within the > granite-faced confines of the giants of the new global service economy. The > average American now works one month a year longer than he or she did in the > 1960s. Britons, similarly, seem to be increasingly choosing work over leisure. > > As Richard Donkin makes clear in his broad history of work, Blood, Sweat and > Tears, we have only ourselves to blame for so readily giving up our lives to > our employers. It is a combination of our desires always staying one step ahead > of our ability to afford them, our psychological need to define ourselves by > our work, and an immutable work ethic, that continues to drive us long after > the religion that spawned it ceased to be relevant. > > Full text: > http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/200105280050.htm > > To view archive/subscribe/unsubscribe/select DIGEST go to > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/radical-science > > Read The Human Nature Daily Review every day > http://human-nature.com/nibbs > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/