Adamson Act

Adamson Act, enacted on 3 September 1916 at President Woodrow Wilson's behest in response to a pending strike by the major brotherhoods of railway workers. It established an eight-hour day for interstate railway workers and time and a half for overtime. The railroads challenged the law before the Supreme Court, claiming that it raised wages rather than regulated hours. In March 1917, impatient with the Court's inaction, the brotherhoods demanded immediate institution of the eight-hour day and scheduled a strike. Wilson again intervened, postponing the strike and then securing from the railroads a promise to grant the eight-hour day regardless of the Court's decision. One day after the settlement was announced, the Court upheld the law in Wilson v. New, 243 U.S. 332 (1917).

Bibliography

Kerr, K. Austin. American Railroad Politics, 1914–1920: Rates, Wages, and Efficiency. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968.

Kolko, Gabriel. Railroads and Regulation. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976.

Link, Arthur Stanley. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917. New York: Harper Collins, 1963.

—James D. Magee/T. M.

The Adamson Act was a United States federal law passed in 1916 that established an eight-hour workday, with additional pay for overtime work, 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 United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Act in Wilson v. New, 243 U.S. 332 (1917).

Congress passed the Act in order to avoid a nationwide strike. When the railroads refused to abide by the law while their court challenge to its constitutionality was pending, the railway unions began preparing again to strike. The Supreme Court's decision brought the employers around, however, and they entered into settlement discussions concerning implementation of the law.

The unions' success spurred other railway employees not covered by the Act to press similar demands. Their negotiations were leading to a strike when President Wilson, exercising the authority granted by the Army Appropriations Act of 1916, took over operation of the railroads.

With the emergence of the Red Scare, they feared that the unemployed people would start supporting communism and then communism would develop in the US. As a result, the 8 hour work day (Adamson Act) was repealed.^{[citation needed]}

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