The working day

1880–1929

The system's true size was measured in hours: The Thirteenth Census took evidence on the point for the whole state and printed its finding in the Indiana chapter: for the great majority of wage-earners in Indiana's manufacturing industries, "the usual hours of labor ranged from 54 to 60 a week," only 13.1 per cent worked in establishments where the week was less than 54 hours, and only 7.7 per cent where it ran over 60. The industries named are South Bend's own: "The prevailing hours of labor in the foundries and machine shops, which employed a larger number of wage earners than any other single industry, were from 54 to 60 a week, inclusive," and "the furniture factories and lumber mills operated mainly on a 60-hour basis." A ten-hour day, six days a week, was the factory city's standard measure in 1909 — itself a shortening from the trade day the industry's founders had known.

The Studebaker family's memory of the wagon trade's earlier generation, preserved in the 1880 county history, has the patriarch at forge and bench "from four o'clock in the morning until nine at night," and the youngest brother's verdict: "there was no ten or eight hour system then; it was work, work, for as many hours each day as thews of iron could stand the strain." The working force was never only men. The Businesses section records the condition attached to Wilson Brothers' land purchase of 1887 — that 1,000 women be employed within ten years — and the shirt works' later scale, 2,200 employees in 1929 and a capacity of 72,000 shirts in an eight-and-a-half-hour day; the Stephenson underwear mill on the East Race ran with about 300 garment workers, most of them women.

And it was never only adults. Chapman, in the 1880 history's schools chapter, sets the city's school enumeration at 4,267 children against 1,936 enrolled, and explains the gap in one sentence: many of the rest are in the denominational schools, "and in the factories and manufacturing establishments are to be found many more" — adding that in a manufacturing city the bulk of the population is of necessity laboring people, whose children "have to be content with the merest rudiments of learning." The eight-and-a-half-hour capacity day at Wilson's belongs to a later regime than the sixty-hour census week, and the distance between those two numbers is one of the things the twentieth century did to this system; but the census's Indiana finding, printed in 1909, is the working day this section is charged to state, and it states it without softening: ten hours at the foundry cupola and the machine bench, six days a week, was the ordinary lot of the people who made South Bend second in the state.

Sources:

1. Thirteenth Census of the United States, Vol. IX, Manufactures 1909, Indiana chapter, p. 310 — the prevailing hours of labor in Indiana manufactures: 54 to 60 a week for the great majority; foundries and machine shops at 54 to 60; furniture factories and lumber mills mainly on a 60-hour basis. A state finding, printed as such, in the industries that were this city's core.
2. Chapman, History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880) — the wagon trade's founding generation at work from four in the morning until nine at night, and the schools chapter's enumeration of 4,267 children against 1,936 enrolled, with the factories named among the places the rest were to be found.
3. This build's Businesses section — Wilson Brothers' 1887 condition of 1,000 women employed within ten years, its 2,200 employees in 1929 and 72,000 shirts in an eight-and-a-half-hour day at capacity; the Stephenson mill's about 300 garment workers, most of them women; cross-referenced.