Jan. 5, 1914: Ford Motor Co. announces that it will pay its assembly line workers a minimum of $5 a day and institute an eight-hour workday. The move was revolutionary at the time and earned the enmity of other business leaders who realized that they might one day be forced to pay their own workers amounts preceded by dollar signs. Today, of course, $5 a day seems a ludicrously low sum, except in certain regions of China, Guatemala and North Dakota. On the other hand, the notion of an eight-hour workday also seems quaint in an age when professionals such as lawyers, bankers, accountants and financial journalists routinely put in soul-crushing 18-hour days and serve at the whim of corporate masters who make Henry Ford look like Mr. Rogers. And whenever a modern-day wage slave complains about his workload, he is told that he can always put in for a transfer to the North Dakota office. What century is this? —Jeffrey Kanige
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