Prosaic Realities of the Work Time Dream

Abstract

This essay re-examines the story of the arrival of the eight-hour day in New Zealand in the 1840s and provides some insight into three other aspects of our work time history. These aspects are the extent to which workers worked long hours in the nineteenth century, the contest between those who sought shorter hours and those who resisted, and the political progress towards shorter hours that began in the 1890s.