The more things change...

[tomustang]

<snip>. but there are several things that did change and for the better, like safety because of standards like OSHA, MSHA, etc..

I think safety/lawsuits/lawyers have as much to do with the shorter working day. Doesn't FRA require 12 hour maximum shift for all railroad personnel? I don't think I would want an engineer driving a train through my town who was on the clock for longer than 12 hours. In fact, I don't know if I would want one who has been on the shift for 10 hours. same goes with the person flying my plane or driving my taxi. I've worked a 12 hour shift before, and that became a 15-16 hour shift with travel time. Work those shifts for 10 or more days in a row, and the lack of sleep catches up with you. I wound up getting yelled at for falling asleep on the job, getting a traffic ticket for sleeping while driving, and making (or not making) a few jobsite decisions that could have been costly. I argued with my employer that they need to have some kind of hours of service policy before they get sued. They thought that was not possible, so I quit.

Lawsuits and lawyers weren't common like they are in today's standards, the govt stood in and made the changes, equality and such, minimum wage, hours, OT, child laboring

Unions are very different and don't hold the same as non unions. So is transportation, if you look at truck driving the have more paperwork than an office does they also have time limits on how much mileage/hours they can run.