Kellogg's Six-Hour Day

In 1930, W. K. Kellogg, the famed breakfast cereal magnate from Battle Creek, Michigan, established a six-hour workday for his laborers. In the depths of the Depression, this policy provided more labor for more workers, and the experiment continued until the mid-1980s. Paradoxically, the six-hour workday was ended not because of poor productivity, but because workers wanted more hours so they could consume more. Hunnicutt's book mostly succeeds in balancing sound scholarship and interviews with the workers and managers that participated in this 55-year experiment in a reduced workday--the kind of workday envisioned by futurists since the mid-1800s, but repeatedly eschewed by wage earners. An interesting examination of how Americans place more value on income than leisure.