Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:07:12.635Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Shorter Hours and the Protestant Sabbath: Religious Framing and Movement Alliances in Late-Nineteenth-Century Chicago

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

William A. Mirola
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the grand scope of American labor history, the fight to abolish Sunday work has been left on the margins of most historical accounts of the more universal fight to shorten the workday. For good reason, some may argue. The Sunday-closing, or Sabbatarian, movement hardly seems comparable in either its scope, its effects, or its long-term significance to the eighthour movement or to an even better known Protestant reform movement: temperance. Nevertheless, the fight to abolish Sunday work represents a significant case study for exploring how cultural influences, particularly religious ones, shaped the late-nineteenth-century industrial landscape. The cultural significance of Sundays drew clergy, labor activists, and employers into a social struggle that was a simultaneous struggle over the meaning of Sundays and how best to put this meaning into industrial and legislative practice.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , Fall 1999 , pp. 395 - 433
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Babb, S. (1996) “‘A true American system of finance’: Frame resonance in the U.S. labor movement, 1866 to 1886.” American Sociological Review 61: 1033–52.Google Scholar
Badger, R. (1979) The Great American Fair: The World’s Columbian Exposition and American Culture. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.Google Scholar
Bancroft, H. H. (1894) The Book of the Fair. Vol. 1. New York: Bounty Books.Google Scholar
Beckner, E. (1929) A History of Labor Legislation in Illinois. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Beisel, N. (1990) “Class, culture, and campaigns against vice in three American cities, 1872–1892.” American Sociological Review 55: 44–62.Google Scholar
Beisel, N.(1997) Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Burrell, Dr. (n.d.) “A plea for Sunday rest at the Columbian fair.” Pamphlet. Chicago Historical Society.Google Scholar
Chicago Sabbath Association Records (1880–89) Chicago Historical Society.Google Scholar
Crafts, W. (1885) The Sabbath for Man: A Study of the Origin, Obligation, History, Advantages, and Present State of Sabbath Observance with Special Reference to the Rights of Workingmen. New York: Funk and Wagnall.Google Scholar
Craig, R. H. (1992) Religion and Radical Politics: An Alternative Christian Tradition in the United States. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Fink, L. (1985) Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Fones-Wolf, K. (1989) Trade Union Gospel: Christianity and Labor in Industrial Philadelphia, 1865–1915. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Forbath, W. E. (1991) Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Form, W., and Miller, D. (1960) Industry, Labor, and Community. New York: Harper Publishing.Google Scholar
Ginger, R. (1958) Altgeld’s America: The Lincoln Ideal versus Changing Realities. New York: Funk and Wagnall.Google Scholar
Gutman, H. (1966) “Protestantism and the American labor movement: The Christian spirit in the gilded age.” American Historical Review 72: 74–101.Google Scholar
Hobgood, M. E. (1991) Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Hunnicutt, B. (1988a) “The New Deal: The salvation of work and the end of the shorter hour movement,” in Cross, G. (ed.) Worktime and Industrialization: An International History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 217–43.Google Scholar
Hunnicutt, B.(1988b) Work without End. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Johns, W. (1967) Dateline Sunday, U.S.A.: The Story of the Three and a Half Centuries of Sunday Law Battles in America. Omaha, NE: Pacific Press Publishing.Google Scholar
Jones, S. (1871) The Sunday Question and Self-Contradictions of the Bible. Chicago: Religio-Philosophical Publishing House.Google Scholar
Kinney, H. C. (1892) “Why the Columbian Exposition should be opened on Sunday.” Pamphlet. Chicago Historical Society.Google Scholar
Laurie, B. (1980) Working People of Philadelphia, 1880-1850. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
May, H. (1963) Protestant Churches and Industrial America. New York: Octagon Books.Google Scholar
McTighe, M. J. (1994) A Measure of Success: Protestants and Public Culture in Antebellum Cleveland. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Ownby, T. (1990) Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Pierce, B. (1940) A History of Chicago. 3 vols. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Retail Clerks’ National Protective Association of America (1891) “Declaration of principles.” Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Rock River Annual Conference Register (1867–1912) Chicago: Methodist Book Depository, Garrett Theological Seminary Library.Google Scholar
Rodgers, D. (1978) The Work Ethic and Industrial America, 1850-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Roediger, D., and Foner, (1989) Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, R. (1983) Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Seager, R. H. (1995) The World’s Parliament of Religions. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, C. (1996) Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social Movement Activism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Snow, D, and Benford, R. (1992) “Master frames and cycles of protest,” in Morris, A. and Mueller, C. (eds.) Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press: 133–55.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. (1966) The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
White, R.C, and Hopkins, C. H. (1976) The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar