Background

Ira was born on March 10, 1831 in New London, Connecticut, United States.

Career

At nineteen he went from Boston to Providence, Rhod Island, and served an apprenticeship as a machinist under the twelve-hour system. Within a year he was agitating for shorter hours and was finally dismissed by the Draper Machine Company, for which he worked, because of "his peculiar views. "

In the fall of 1863, as a delegate to the convention of the International Union of Machinists and Blacksmiths in Boston, he secured the passage of a resolution that for the first time demanded an eight-hour labor law; he also secured large appropriations from his own union and the Boston Trades' Assembly for legislative lobbying.

Henceforth, Steward and the eight-hour movement were one. His insistence upon legislation in contrast to purely economic action by the unions sprang from his wish to reach the masses of the unskilled, whose low living standard constantly threatened the more advanced. He proposed to work through the existing political parties and to begin by endeavoring to secure an eight-hour day upon all government work. Largely at its instance, Massachusetts in 1874 passed the first effective ten-hour law for women and children. Meanwhile, with the disbanding of the army after the Civil War, a number of eight-hour laws of the all-inclusive Steward type were pushed through various legislatures--six of them by 1867; but their opponents had so hedged them about with restrictions that they proved unenforceable.

Steward opposed Greenbackism, as well as the formation of a separate labor party, but believed in the solidarity of labor and an ultimate socialistic state.

In 1878 Steward's wife died and he was "completely unnerved. " For a number of years he had been planning a book to be entitled "The Political Economy of Eight Hours. " Abandoning the post he had held since the early seventies as inspector at the Boston custom-house, he began to live upon the kindness of friends, ostensibly to write, but the book never materialized.

In March of 1883 he died there, aged only fifty-two. He left his unfinished notes to George Gunton who, finding them too fragmentary to put into shape for the press, published instead his own first book, Wealth and Progress (1887). For this action he was bitterly blamed by Steward's disciples. The original Steward manuscript is now in the library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Like all Steward's writings, the fragments are keen and epigrammatic.

Of published work, aside from articles in the Daily Evening Voice (Boston), the Labor Standard, and other papers, Steward left only one pamphlet, A Reduction of Hours an Increase of Wages (1865). It was republished together with the longest fragment from the manuscript collection, "The Power of the Cheaper over the Dearer, " in A Documentary History of American Industrial Society (vol. IX, 1910), edited by J. R. Commons and others. Steward's philosophy was strikingly novel for his day.

He held that shorter hours develop leisure-time wants, hence a demand for higher wages; higher wages force the introduction of labor-saving machinery and better technique; these make possible mass production, which, to be stabilized, requires mass purchasing power. Mass purchasing power must be protected against the down drag of the unemployed by progressively shortening hours of labor in accordance with an index of unemployment. In the long run, effective regulation requires the cooperation of the leading industrial nations, which, in the 1860's, Steward considered ripe for an eight-hour limit.

Ultimately, the working class would be able to buy the capitalist out and thus inaugurate socialism. It was at this point that George Gunton broke away from his master and developed his own conclusion of a happy ending for capitalism, contending that higher wages would indeed result but also greater concentration of business and permanently increasing profits to present owners. Steward died in 1883.

Achievements

• Ira Steward was a major advocate for an Eight-hour work day. He labored indefatigably, appearing before every session of the Massachusetts legislature, contributing constantly to reform papers, making innumerable speeches, and organizing state and local eight-hour leagues. At the time of his death he was president of both the Boston Eight-Hour League and the National Ten-Hour League.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Eight Hour Movement: A Reduction Of Hours Is An Increase Of Wages (1865)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Wealth And Progress: A Critical Examination Of The Labor Problem

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Connections

In 1880 he moved to Plano, Illinois, and married his cousin, Jane (Steward) Henning, a woman of considerable means.

follower:

George Gunton

Friend:

George E. McNeill

Wife:

Jane (Steward) Henning