https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html

from The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, by Juliet B. Schor

See also: Productivity and the Workweek

and: Eight centuries of annual hours

The labouring man will take his rest long in the morning; a good piece of the day is spent afore he come at his work; then he must have his breakfast, though he have not earned it at his accustomed hour, or else there is grudging and murmuring; when the clock smiteth, he will cast down his burden in the midway, and whatsoever he is in hand with, he will leave it as it is, though many times it is marred afore he come again; he may not lose his meat, what danger soever the work is in. At noon he must have his sleeping time, then his bever in the afternoon, which spendeth a great part of the day; and when his hour cometh at night, at the first stroke of the clock he casteth down his tools, leaveth his work, in what need or case soever the work standeth.

-James Pilkington, Bishop of Durham, ca. 1570

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 counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed 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.

These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. 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. 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.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4703404&forum_id=2#41474820)

https://www.uidaho.edu/-/media/UIdaho-Responsive/Files/law/law-review/articles/volume-50/50-1-pardau-stuart.pdf

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4703404&forum_id=2#41474902)

Most white collar corporate jobs are 9-5 and incredibly easy.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4703404&forum_id=2#41475024)