When Labor Questions Split the Pew
A historical look at how the ten-hour work day movement ignited industrial conflict within the sanctuary of a local church.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A bill had been introduced in the state legislature limiting the hours of factory labor to ten a day, and agitation in favor of its adoption ran high. On the farm, the day began at no particular hour nor was there any stated time when work was ended, and a man was paid for a day's labor without regard to the length of it. Some, however, saw a distinction between farm and factory labor, and among those was the minister of the Baptist church. One Sunday, at the hour of service, the congregation, in which mill owners and operatives sat side by side, was thrown into great excitement by the pastor, who preached a sermon advocating the ten-hour bill, and when his hearers left the meeting house that morning they were no longer a settled body. The man who sold labor continued to listen to the preaching of the ten-hour parson, but the man who bought labor built for himself another meeting house, and soon afterward the first labor union was formed. The same causes which for years had been at work silently to create discord in the Baptist flock had at the same time been in operation in the factory, gradually separating the employer and employee in their personal relations until at last it seemed that their interests were no longer common and the future success of each must be to the disadvantage of the other.
“So industrial warfare took the place of mutual good will, and more than half a century passed before the contending factions began to see the folly of their antagonism.”
This piece highlights the deep-seated tension between capital and labor that defined Everett’s industrial era. Modern Everett continues to grapple with these class-based frictions, often seeing echoes of this historic divide in contemporary labor organizing and debates over workers' rights in a rapidly gentrifying city.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.