Rest in the Rest of the World

The European laws generally. . .are much more free than the Ameri can States in legislating as to the length o f daily labor perm itted. . . to men and women o f full age ....But the more free the form o f government according to the American point o f view, the less auto cratic it is; and the more progressive and democratic in form, the more we find the American tendency to avoid legislating as to the liberty o f labor o f competent male citizens.Thus we find at the one extreme Russia, where the laws make practically no mention o f the age o f persons to whom they apply. U.S. House of Representatives, Report o f the Industrial Commission: On the Condition o f Foreign Legislation upon Matters Affecting Gen eral Labor (1901).Men are not the physical giants that failure to give them legal protec tion would seem to assume. Elizabeth Baker, Protective Labor Legislation (1925).As in so many other areas of state intervention into en trepreneurial control, rest-period legislation in the United States has lagged far behind that enacted in western Europe.This national gap is in some respects even wider at the end of the twentieth century than it was in the nineteenth century.Whereas most European countries (with the notable exception of Britain) that initially reserved mandatory rest periods for women ultimately extended them to men, not only has the United States failed to enact national norms for workplace rest, but most state governments that had established gen der-biased restrictions on continuous work hours earlier in the twenti eth century repealed them altogether rather than apply them to male workers.1This chapter provides an overview of the history of statu tory rest periods in Europe.