Adamson Act Establishes Eight-Hour Workday for Railroad Workers

Congress passed the Adamson Act on September 2, 1916, and President Woodrow Wilson signed it the following day, establishing a standard eight-hour workday with additional pay for overtime for interstate railroad workers. Named for Georgia Representative William C. Adamson, this was the first federal law that regulated the hours of workers in private companies. The terms embodied in the act were negotiated by a committee of the four railroad labor brotherhoods—engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors—chaired by Austin B. Garretson. Congress passed the Act specifically to avoid a nationwide strike that would have stalled war production during World War I preparations.

The railroads challenged the law before the Supreme Court, claiming it raised wages rather than regulated hours. However, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Act in Wilson v. New (243 U.S. 332) in 1917, one day after the settlement was announced. After over a hundred years of strikes and protests, the working man’s efforts to create an eight-hour workday finally achieved federal recognition only after the Railroad Brotherhood threatened a strike that would cripple war production. The movement for an eight-hour day gained momentum in following decades, culminating in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which instituted a 40-hour work week and extended standardized working hours far beyond railroads, requiring employers to pay most employees time and a half for hours worked beyond 40.

The Adamson Act represents a rare Progressive Era victory for labor, achieved through the credible threat of a strike during wartime when worker leverage was maximized. However, the fact that it took the threat of crippling war production to achieve this basic protection reveals the limited power of democratic reform absent extraordinary circumstances. The pattern established here—that significant labor gains require either crisis conditions or exceptional worker solidarity and leverage—would characterize the entire history of American labor law, with corporate interests systematically rolling back protections whenever worker power waned.