A good illustration is furnished by
the attempt to get a workable eight-hour law on government work.
In the main the leaders of the Federation placed slight reliance upon
efforts to shorten the working day through legislation. The movement for
shorter hours by law for women, which first attained importance in the
nineties, was not the work of organized labor but of humanitarians and
social workers. To be sure, the Federation has supported such laws for
women and children workers, but so far as adult male labor was
concerned, it has always preferred to leave the field clear for the
trade unions. The exception to the rule was the working day on public
work.
The Federal eight-hour day law began to receive attention from the
Federation towards the end of the eighties. By that time the status of
the law of 1868 which decreed the eight-hour day on Federal government
work[71] had been greatly altered. In a decision rendered in 1887 the
Supreme Court held that the eight-hour day law of 1868 was merely
directory to the officials of the Federal government, but did not
invalidate contracts made by them not containing an eight-hour clause.
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