Eight Hours for What We Will
Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920

In the first comprehensive study of American working-class recreation, Professor Rosenzweig takes us to the saloons, the ethnic and church picnics, the parks and playgrounds, the amusement parks, and the movie houses where industrial workers spent their leisure hours. Focusing on the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, he describes the profound changes that popular leisure underwent. Explaining what these pastimes and amusements tell us about the nature of working-class culture and class relations in this era, he demonstrates that in order fully to understand the working class experience it is necessary to explore the realm of leisure. For what workers did in the corner saloon, the neighbourhood park, the fraternal lodge hall, the amusement park, and the nickelodeon had a good deal of bearing on what happened inside the factories, the union halls, and the voting booths of America's industrial communities.

Reviews & endorsements

'In the proliferating scholarship on American working-class history, leisure has been among the last themes to be taken up. Thus, the appearance of Roy Rosenzweig's book is especially to be welcomed. It is an admirable study on several counts. For one thing, it fully exploits the advantages of local history … His exhaustive research has yielded rich materials, anabling him, for example, to show the changing composition of Worcester's saloonkeepers and to chart the opening history of the city's movie houses … especially impressive is his subtle assessment of the impact of the movies on Worcester's working people.' David Brody, Journal of American History

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Product details

• Date Published: October 1985
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521313971
• length: 320 pages

• dimensions: 228 x 134 x 23 mm
• weight: 0.479kg
• availability: Available