Kellogg's Silly Girls, Sissy Men, and the God of Work
A Sermon by Rev. John E. Gibbons

I have news for you from Transylvania. Last week a group from Concord visited our partner village of Abasfalva. They told a sweet story about hearing the sound of a kazoo playing "Spirit of Life" wafting over the parsonage gate at dusk. It was Boglarka, the minister's daughter! The minister and his family have, as you know, accepted our invitation to visit Bedford sometime this year; but our friends from Concord report that their acceptance did not come easily. Indeed, our invitation posed a dilemma for the Transylvanians: why should one family receive this privilege when so many others who had been equally hospitable to us were not so favored? Indeed, three months passed between our invitation and their acceptance because - we now learn - the Abasfalvans had two village meetings to collectively decide their response. The minister and his family may now come here with a clear conscience, affirmed that this decision is not a selfish privilege but is blessed by the will of the entire community.

I don't expect that I'll submit my next request for a Sunday off to a community vote but, as you shall see, community values figure prominently in this morning's topic of time.

Time is a basic religious issue. When I conduct a wedding, I frequently begin by saying, "Our time together comes to us as a precious gift, a gift that comes with choices and responsibilities for how it is to be used. And when out of all the universe two people meet and choose to share their gift of time, it is a special occasion for celebration." Religion is about the twin mysteries of life, being alive and having to die - and what we do with the limited time in between.

Traditional religions ritualize time. "You shall observe the Sabbath and keep it holy," says the fourth commandment and Jewish Torah and Christian Bible prescribe what should and should not be done on the Sabbath. In Judaism, we are now in the midst of Succoth - the harvest festival, a "happy season" - and observant Jews will build an open air sukkah, a hut of leaves and branches, alongside their homes and there eat every meal for seven days - mindful of our utter dependence upon the grace of the earth's fruits. (Some of the children in our church school are building a model of a sukkah today.)

For Roman Catholics, today October 2nd is Guardian Angels Day, and tomorrow celebrates St. Theresa who found God in the most ordinary things ("To pick up a pin for love," she said, "can convert a soul.") and Tuesday honors St. Francis, the happy saint who was brother to people and animals and birds. And likewise Buddhism and Islam and most traditions mark time with fasts and feasts and festivals; and though our tradition is far less ritualized, I think that we too are recognizing the importance of rites and rituals - because without them life does become a treadmill, a succession not of holidays and holy days but of one-damn-thing-after-another.

For most of us, the primary ordering of our lives comes not from the natural realm of seasons nor the sacred dimension of religion but from the economic demands of work. All-powerful, judging, commanding, demanding obedience and sacrifice, work is our culture's god - and by our relation to the god of work we rank our success and our self-esteem; and all too often, despite our best efforts to bow and scrape, we cannot work enough and we are not worthy.

In my own life and as I look out on this congregation, I see a lot of us flirting with over-commitment and exhaustion: never having enough time, forever trying to "get things under control." We make lists and lists of lists. We put post-it notes everywhere. We surround ourselves with messages screaming "DO ME! DO ME!" We attend time management workshops (Cynthia went to a SEVEN PRINCIPLES seminar on Tuesday. I am a graduate of TIME POWER, INC. where I learned that if I stand when one of you unexpectedly comes into my office, I decrease the chance that you will sit down and increase the chance that I can spin you right back out the door. Now, planning and prioritizing and clarifying one's purpose is truly helpful; but there is also something totally nuts about the way many of us relate to time.

This morning I want to suggest that there is another dimension to time management, at least as important as our levels of individual organization, effectiveness or purposefulness - and that is the dimension of community expectations.

At the national level, I am reminded of something which the futurist Robert Theobald said a couple of years ago from this pulpit. Do you remember? He said he was confounded when politicians go around promoting full employment. Nonsense! he said. Full unemployment should be our goal! And, of course, national and local policies - from child-care to housing - should be driven by a consideration of whether they allow people to actually be home with their family once in a while. Time is a basic religious issue and it is sacrilegious that the housing in our community is so increasingly upscale that people have to work two and three jobs to pay the mortgage. Already the gulf between this nation's economic classes is yawning. As a nation and as a town, when will we say enough!?

It is tempting to say that these things are beyond our control. Most economists assume that the reason working hours have not gotten shorter for 50 years and that we are overworked is because we can't afford to work less. But I am intrigued by the possibility that the "necessity" to work so much comes not from "on high" but is instead the product of changes in community beliefs, values, and culture. Beliefs, values and culture are what a church is about; and it just might be that we have more ability to say what amount of work is acceptable - and what is not - than we generally assume.

This is the thesis of a recent study of what happened in Battle Creek, Michigan during the Depression. It's worth our pondering. In 1930, W.K. Kellogg replaced the traditional three daily 8-hour shifts in his cereal factory with four 6-hour shifts. Cornflakes and Shredded Wheat, he declared, would be produced by a company with a conscience. By adding one entire shift, 30% more jobs would be added - jobs desperately needed by the unemployed.

But this was not just an economic scheme. Kellogg was a progressive visionary, and he believed that the 6-hour day would revolutionize industry by shifting workers' concerns from money to freedom. By expanding leisure, people would have more time for family, for community, and - Kellogg said, "for the pursuit of happiness."

Now to understand this story you have to understand that most industrialists of that time were worried. People were beginning to have their basic needs for food and shelter met. If people felt they had enough, they wouldn't work so hard and they'd buy less. One captain of industry said, "It's perfectly clear that the middle class American already buys more than he needs, but unless we have a greater outlet for our goods, there will be larger groups with too much leisure." The idea is that it's easy to get people to work for food and shelter, but it's more difficult to get people to work harder for more optional goods and services - automobiles, appliances, amusements.

And so in the 20's and 30's the American economic emphasis shifted from production to consumption - how do you get people to feel unsatisfied? - the captains of industry asked. If people feel they never have enough, they'll be willing to work endlessly - work without end, amen. And so at that time we had the birth of mass consumerism: investing! marketing! advertising!

But that's not what Kellogg did. He did the opposite. If people's basic needs are met, then let them work less. Their pay will be slightly less, but their freedom will be more.

In fact, reducing hours had precisely the effect which Kellogg intended: people valued freedom more than work. It was immensely popular. Listen to some of their voices: One woman, Susan Smith, said the extra hours allowed her to do what was most important, "to read, to walk, to write." There was a rebirth of household activities like gardening, sewing and canning. Another woman, Josephine Isley, said that the time enabled her family to be together. She had some difficulty getting her sons to help with the canning, but once they did, her sons "opened up to talk freely." George Howard said the 6-hour shift let him "be with four boys" and "be a better parent."

Amateur sports, bars, clubs, libraries, community service - even churches - thrived. And people tried new things: a woman learned to fly, people took classes, studied arts, went to the city. There was excitement that Kellogg's experiment was an opportunity to create something new.

Most important, the 6-hour day was seen as a moral act, a symbol of peoples' willingness to share their good fortune with others. Work was not god. On the contrary, those few who criticized the six-hour policy were called "money hungry work hogs." More work and more money might be nice, the community attitude seemed to be, but if it meant giving up freedom, it wasn't worth it.

In the years following the Second World War, first management and then the unions soured on the 6-hour day. W.K. Kellogg stepped down and was replaced by a banker who didn't share his philosophy, who wanted his workers to work more, not less. Unions, too, realized that ever-increasing demands could only be met by a smaller work force that worked ever-more.

As a strategy to defeat the 6-hour workers, it was first made optional to work more hours. Efforts were made to convince employees that work was the center of life, "The Job" was most important. Six-hour workers were called "silly girls" and "sissy men," "weak," "housewives." Workers were divided along class and gender lines, and the issue was feminized. Work was the manly thing to do. You see, those whose status depended upon work and money were threatened by those who emphasized leisure, family and community. And because women have traditionally had more power in the home and the community, it became a struggle between men and women.

Kellogg's managers and senior male workers promoted work, trivialized leisure and associated shorter hours with feminine values.

The six-hour mavericks hung in and insisted that it was possible to make enough on the short-shift to live reasonably, but their days were numbered. After the 50's, mass amusements, radio and TV came to dominate leisure time. Passive culture consumption replaced the active practice and creation of culture. Why go see the women play baseball when you can watch the pros, the Detroit Tigers on TV? Why do your own canning when you can buy canned goods at the supermarket? Why do anything in leisure time when you can pay someone else to do it?

In the early 80's, Kellogg's threatened to leave Battle Creek unless all 6-hour shifts went to 8-hours. In 1984, the last of the 6-hour mavericks - predominantly women - were finally outvoted. The experiment came to an end. The god of work was returned to his treadmill in the factory, and to his beer and easy chair in front of the TV.

We don't live in a factory town; few of us work a shift of any length. And yet the moral of the Kellogg's story has to do with community values - deciding together what's most important. That's why I began with the story from Transylvania. The community together decided whether it was appropriate for one man and his family to visit the U.S. It's a bit like the bank in Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegone - "at the sign of the sock," he used to say. When someone came to make a withdrawal, the teller would ask, "What do you need it for? Are you sure you need so much?"

We're not going to subject our vacations or our bank withdrawals to community sanction, but can we question why housing costs are so high - and advocate for lower income housing, possibly even for ourselves? Can we doubt this or that medical procedure simply because it costs too much? Can we in some way reward those who choose some voluntary simplicity - whether that means driving a beat-up old car or canning their vegetables or working fewer hours or choosing to volunteer at church instead of going to work or choosing to stay at home instead of going to one more committee meeting at church? Can we re-invent our holidays and holy days, pause to ponder our relationship with what is ultimate and savor what is holy? Can we label the workaholics among us as "money hungry work hogs"? Can we form a union of silly girls and sissy men?

Time is a basic religious issue. "Times such as these remind us that our time together comes to us as a precious gift, a gift that comes with choices and responsibilities for how it is to be used." What is the best use of your time right now? "What's most important to you right now? What is life asking of you right now? What is the right thing to do right now?" Gandhi said, "We must become the change we seek in the world." Emerson said, "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." Hillel said, "If not now, when? If not you, who?" What do you say?

I have good news! Four hours have been added to your day. What will you choose to do with them? I have bad news! The day has been reduced by four hours. What will you choose not to do?

What now?

© Rev. John E. Gibbons, October 2, 1994
First Parish in Bedford
On the Common
75 The Great Road
Bedford, MA 01730
(781) 275-7994