Congress, by reducing the hours of labor in government work, had forced
upon the department of the Navy the employment of a larger number of men
in order to accomplish the necessary work; and that at the same time
Congress had reduced the appropriation for that department. This had
rendered unavoidable a twenty percent reduction in wages paid employes
in the Navy Yard. Such a state of uncertainty continued four years
longer. At last on May 13, 1872, President Grant prohibited by
proclamation any wage reductions in the execution of the law. On May 18,
1872, Congress passed a law for the restitution of back pay.

The expectations of the workingmen that the Federal law would blaze the
way for the eight-hour system in private employment failed to
materialize. The depression during the seventies took up all the impetus
in that direction which the law may have generated. Even as far as
government work is concerned forty years had to elapse before its
application could be rounded out by extending it to contract work done
for the government by private employers.

We have dealt at length with this subject because it marked an important
landmark. It demonstrated to the wage earners that, provided they
concentrated on a modest object and kept up a steady pressure, their
prospects for success were not entirely hopeless, hard as the road may
seem to travel. The other and far more ambitious object of the
workingman of the sixties, that of enacting general eight-hour laws in
the several States, at first appeared to be within easy reach--so
yielding political parties and State legislatures seemed to be to the
demands of the organized workmen. Yet before long these successes proved
to be entirely illusory.

The year 1867 was the banner year for such State legislation. Eight-hour