How Some Things From the Past Never Change

At the World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893, a presenter named Mary E. Lease made a bold prediction about the future. Her statement was, "3 hours will constitute a long day's work by the end of the next century. And this work will liberally furnish more infinitely more of the benefits of civilization and the comforts of life than 16 hours' slavish toil will today".

To some degree she was true, in that many of the items we now take for granted as being staples, would have been considered as luxuries not that long ago, and certainly unfathomable during her times. Now ubiquitous electronic items such as GPS, home theatre systems and cell phones were out of the reach of mainstream consumers when they were first introduced to market. In fact, cellphones were never designed with the average consumer in mind, but businesspeople and the military. Most of the above-mentioned consumer items are now manufactured in low-cost developing countries and then sold widely and inexpensively through retailers such as Wal-Mart. This has led to increased buying power, but also contributed to rampant consumerism.

On the other hand, Mary E. Lease and others after her, were way off the mark when they predicted that technology would allow workers to toil fewer hours at their jobs and have more free time. In fact, the opposite has been true, with the majority of North Americans not taking the full allotment of their paltry (on average) two-week vacation time. Mobile technology (think e-mail, laptops, cellphones, Blackberry) that was once the purview of the executive ranks, has now enslaved even the levels of middle manager. The pressure to respond immediately to e-mail on a mobile device has helped to cloud the boundaries of what constitutes the number of hours of a typical workday.
A friend and previous colleague of mine was a reporter, and she observed an interesting distinction between the North American and European attitudes to work and their boundaries. When she was doing a story and was seeking a quote or an interview from a specific American spokesperson or source, the organization would inform her that the person was on vacation, but would be willing to take the call to give an interview or quote, if a specific time was set up. When she requested something similar from a European organization, she was politely told that the person was on vacation and therefore unavailable, and to please call back upon their return from holidays. Even more surprising is that attitude exists even when European companies give far more (if not double the amount of) vacation time to their employees than their North American counterparts receive from their companies. You would think that the response would have been the exact opposite for both parties.

So, I guess you could say that Mary E. Lease was right about the 16 hours of slavish toil - she just didn't think it would still exist 105 years after her prediction.