Steward’s doctrine is well expressed by a couplet which was very popular with the eight-hour speakers of that period:  “Whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay.”  Steward believed that the amount of wages is determined by no other factor than the worker’s standard of living.  He held that wages cannot fall below the standard of living not because, as the classical economists said, it would cause late marriages and a reduction in the supply of labor, but solely because the wage earner will refuse to work for less than enough to maintain his standard of living.  Steward possessed such abundant faith in this purely psychological check on the employer that he made it the cornerstone of his theory of social progress.  Raise the worker’s standard of living, he said, and the employer will be immediately forced to raise wages; no more can wages fall below the level of the worker’s standard of living than New England can be ruled against her will.  The lever for raising the standard of living was the eight-hour day.  Increase the worker’s leisure and you will increase his wants; increase his wants and you will immediately raise his wages.  Although he occasionally tried to soften his doctrine by the argument that a shorter work-day not only does not decrease but may actually increase output, his was a distinctly revolutionary doctrine; he aimed at the total abolition of profits through their absorption into wages.  But the instrument was nothing more radical than a progressive universal shortening the hours.

So much for the general policy.  To bring it to pass two alternatives were possible:  trade unionism or legislation.  Steward chose the latter as the more hopeful and speedy one.  Steward knew that appeals to the humanity of the employers had largely failed; efforts to secure the reform by cooperation had failed; the early trade unions had failed; and there seemed to be no recourse left now but to accomplish the reduction of hours by legislative enactment.

In 1866 Steward organized the Grand Eight-Hour League of Massachusetts as a special propagandist organization of the eight-hour philosophy.  The League was a secret organization with pass words and obligations, intended as the central organization of a chain of subordinate leagues in the State, afterwards to be created.  Of a total of about eighty local leagues in existence from 1865 to 1877, about twenty were in Massachusetts, eight elsewhere in New England, at least twenty-five in Michigan, four or five in Pennsylvania, about seven in Illinois, as many in Wisconsin, and smaller numbers in Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, and California.  Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Pennsylvania had each a Grand Eight-Hour League.  Practically all of these organizations disappeared soon after the panic of 1873.