Crediting the 40 hour week to Henry Ford's business acumen is a common mistake.
The call for eight hour workdays was over a century old by the time Henry Ford implemented it. It was a major point of discussion for Karl Marx. Forty years before Henry Ford's supposedly brilliant insight, in the Bay View Labor Riot of 1886, the Wisconsin state militia opened fire on labor activists protesting for an eight hour workday, killing seven.
None of this is new. This is a battle labor has been fighting for two centuries now.
The call for eight hour workdays was over a century old by the time Henry Ford implemented it. It was a major point of discussion for Karl Marx. Forty years before Henry Ford's supposedly brilliant insight, in the Bay View Labor Riot of 1886, the Wisconsin state militia opened fire on labor activists protesting for an eight hour workday, killing seven.
None of this is new. This is a battle labor has been fighting for two centuries now.