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by their own situation and their uncertainty of orders, were tending to get their payroll reduced as rapidly as possible. Therefore, they planned deliberately to have a lot of overtime - fire everybody except the core to reduce the payroll and then use this core if you have a big order to work overtime. We were drifting towards seven days and ten hours, instead of eight hours work because of the fact that at the moment there were not enough people on the payroll and yet the manufacturer didn't want to crowd his payroll with people that next week he'd have to lay off.

We tried to say, “Instead of laying them off, reduce your working time flat to five days. You only pay them anyhow by the days they work or piece work, so you're only paying for what you get. But keep everybody on the payroll and reduce the hours per day and per week.” We recommended the five day week. We used that phrase because it seemed a practical use. If you said a four day week, people couldn't understand that. They could understand five days. You already pretty universally worked five and a half, although you didn't have to. A great many people had begun to let employees off on Saturday afternoon in the manufacturing trades, although originally they hadn't done that. I asked one manufacturer in New York State why he had gone into the Saturday half holiday a long time before this and he said,