What was changing, along with agriculture and industry, was how modern Americans perceived the time available to them to in an increasingly busy society. And not all American workers were blessed with an 8-hour workday; many worked 10, 12, even 14 hour shifts in the oppressive factories. Time off meant time to be with family and friends, and it meant time to build the dream house out in the country. One of the groups that promoted the idea of an 8-hour day was the Knights of Labor, the largest labor organization of that period and the most open of all national organizations (they welcomed women and African-Americans). The Knights of Labor, McCormick writes (114).

             In the Library of Congress (Rise of Industrial America 1876-1900) an article is published called "the impact on Machinery of Making Shoes."2 The mechanization introduced to the United States in the 19th Century meant that machines "had replaced highly skilled craftspeople in one industry after another. By the 1870s, machines were "knitting stockings and stitching shirts and dresses, cutting and stitching leather for shoes, and producing nails by the millions"; and all these mechanical advances "reduced manufacturing costs" as well as lowered prices that manufacturers charged their customers.

             This was the good news, the article reports. The bad news was "machines changed the way people worked." Whereas skilled craftsmen took their time to fine-finish their work, and saw each item through from start to finish - which gave them a tremendous sense of satisfaction - machines, on the other hand, "tended to subdivide production down into many small repetitive tasks with workers often doing only a single task.".

             The time factor entered into this equation as well, in a big way: The pace of work "usually became faster and faster. [and] factory managers began to enforce an industrial discipline, forcing workers to work set - and often very long - hours.