The Great Depression put further downward pressure on working hours as companies cut production. This process spurred an embryonic “shorter hours movement,” and very nearly persuaded the Roosevelt administration to introduce the thirty-hour workweek into law in the form of the Black-Connery 30-Hours Bill, which sailed through the Senate in 1932 with a fifty-three to thirty majority. Pulled at the last minute when President Roosevelt got cold feet, the bill was abandoned, and as the worst of the Depression passed, hours crept steadily upward again. By the time Hitler’s panzers rolled into
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