It's Sunday night and you can already feel it: five days on, forty hours, two days off. But who decided forty? In 1914, thousands of men crowded Henry Ford's factory gate for five dollars a day. In 1926 he gave his workers Saturday off, and he said out loud why. In 1933 the Senate passed a 30-hour week. And a bill Frances Perkins kept in her desk drawer turned forty into law.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Why 40 hours?
0:20 Five dollars at the gate
0:52 Before the weekend existed
1:42 Ford's $5 day
2:44 Why Ford gave you Saturday
3:49 Was Ford the hero?
4:10 The 30-hour week that almost happened
5:01 The bill in the drawer
6:00 So why 40?
6:22 The 15-hour week we were promised
6:57 Where 40 isn't real
7:55 So who started this?

Watch next, who decided your credit score: [paste the link to Video 3]

SOURCES
1. Robert Whaples, "Hours of Work in U.S. History", EH.net Encyclopedia (Economic History Association)
2. The Henry Ford, "Ford's Five-Dollar Day"
3. HISTORY, "Ford factory workers get 40-hour week" (May 1, 1926)
4. Library of Congress, Inside Adams blog, "40 Hours, 5 Days" (2024)
5. Assembly Magazine, "The Moving Assembly Line Turns 100" (2013)
6. HISTORY, "Ford signs first contract with autoworkers union" (June 20, 1941)
7. U.S. Department of Labor, "Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage"
8. InformationWeek, "Six-Hour Shifts Satisfied Kellogg's Appetite For Productivity"
9. John Maynard Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" (1930)
10. Gallup, "The '40-Hour' Workweek Is Actually Longer — by Seven Hours" (2014)
11. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Economics Daily, American Time Use Survey 2024
12. U.S. General Accounting Office, "Fair Labor Standards Act: White-Collar Exemptions in the Modern Work Place" (1999)

Illustrations created with the help of AI tools.
Music: Icelandic Arpeggios – DivKid (YouTube Audio Library)

#40hourworkweek #history #americanhistory