I.

Introduction

Hours of Labor, length of the working day and the working week. Determining standard hours of work constitutes one of the principal issues in labor-management relations and is a major subject for social legislation in virtually all countries. Before the development of factories and the factory system of production in Europe in the 19th century, most industrial work consisted of handicrafts and was conducted by artisans in small shops. The number of daily and weekly hours that artisans worked was regulated by the guilds in the interests of the guildmasters and was regarded as a matter to be determined exclusively by the guild. Serfs, peasants, farmers, and agricultural laborers normally worked from dawn to dusk.