Dangerously Sleepy

Dangerously Sleepy Plot Summary

Introduction

In 1914, Thomas Edison proudly declared to a newspaper reporter: "Sleep is an absurdity, a bad habit. We can't suddenly find ourselves with a new habit, but we shall gradually work toward such a goal." This statement, from one of America's most celebrated inventors, captures a profound and troubling aspect of American culture that has shaped generations of workers' lives. The battle for adequate rest stands at the intersection of labor history, public health, and social justice, revealing how deeply our economic systems have demanded biological sacrifices from those who keep the country running. Throughout American history, sleep deprivation has functioned as both a tool of control and a focal point for resistance. From steel mills operating around the clock to truckers navigating highways through the night to corporate offices expecting 24/7 availability, workers across diverse industries have fought for the basic human right to adequate rest. This book illuminates how sleep became politicized, how certain groups bore disproportionate burdens of fatigue, and how scientific knowledge about sleep's importance repeatedly collided with economic imperatives demanding maximum productivity. For anyone seeking to understand the hidden costs of America's relentless work culture or the ongoing struggles for workplace dignity, this historical journey offers essential insights into battles that continue today.

Chapter 1: Edison's Legacy: Sleep as Weakness in Industrial America (1880-1920)

The late nineteenth century marked a transformative period in Americans' relationship with sleep. As the nation rapidly industrialized after the Civil War, new technologies and economic pressures began reshaping age-old patterns of rest and activity. At the forefront of this transformation stood Thomas Edison, whose electric lighting systems literally turned night into day, enabling factories to operate around the clock. But Edison's influence extended beyond his inventions - he actively promoted a cultural ideal that would shape American attitudes toward sleep for generations. Edison cultivated a public image as a tireless inventor who required minimal sleep, telling journalists he slept only four hours nightly and worked through the night in his laboratory. "The man who sleeps eight or ten hours a night is never fully asleep and never fully awake," Edison claimed, suggesting that excessive rest dulled the mind. This carefully crafted persona resonated with the emerging industrial ethos that valued constant productivity above all else. Newspapers celebrated his supposed ability to work for days with minimal rest, creating a template for the ideal American worker and entrepreneur. By 1914, Edison had become so confident in his sleep philosophy that he predicted humans would eventually evolve beyond the need for extended rest periods. This glorification of sleeplessness coincided with broader cultural shifts in American conceptions of masculinity and success. Sleep became increasingly portrayed as a weakness, particularly for men seeking to prove their worth in the competitive industrial economy. Popular magazines and success manuals advised ambitious young men that "the sleeping fox catches no poultry" and that greatness required sacrificing comfort for achievement. This messaging particularly targeted male identity, suggesting that "real men" needed little sleep while portraying adequate rest as an effeminate indulgence. The cultural ideal that emerged celebrated what one historian has called "manly wakefulness" - the ability to push through fatigue as a demonstration of willpower and character. For working-class Americans, however, sleep sacrifice was rarely voluntary. As industrialization accelerated, millions found themselves working in continuous-process industries that operated 24 hours daily. Steel mills, railroads, chemical plants, and other vital sectors required constant staffing, creating new patterns of shift work that disrupted natural sleep cycles. Workers in these industries frequently endured twelve-hour shifts that rotated between days and nights, a schedule that modern sleep science recognizes as profoundly disruptive to human biology. While cultural narratives celebrated the voluntary sleep restriction of figures like Edison, countless workers experienced involuntary sleep deprivation as a condition of employment. The economic consequences of this cultural shift were profound. By redefining sleep as wasteful and unnecessary, business leaders effectively expanded the available labor hours without technological innovation. This cultural devaluation of rest helped American industry achieve remarkable productivity gains, but at tremendous human cost. Workers suffered accidents, chronic health problems, and shortened lifespans due to sleep deprivation. Yet these consequences remained largely invisible, overshadowed by the glorification of sleepless productivity that Edison had helped establish. By 1920, the foundation had been laid for a society that would continue to sacrifice sleep on the altar of productivity for generations to come.

Chapter 2: Regulating Exhaustion: New Deal Reforms and Their Limitations

The devastating economic collapse of the Great Depression forced a reconsideration of America's laissez-faire approach to labor conditions, including the problem of worker exhaustion. As unemployment soared to unprecedented levels in the early 1930s, the Roosevelt administration implemented sweeping reforms to stabilize the economy and protect workers. The National Recovery Administration (NRA) established industry-specific codes that included provisions for maximum working hours, while the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) created the first nationwide floor for wages and ceiling on hours. However, these landmark reforms proved remarkably limited in addressing sleep deprivation. The FLSA established a 40-hour standard workweek but did so primarily to spread available work among more employees during the Depression, not to ensure adequate rest. More critically, the law relied on overtime pay rather than absolute prohibitions on excessive hours. This approach created a perverse incentive system - employers were discouraged from imposing long hours by financial penalties, while workers were simultaneously enticed to sacrifice sleep for extra income. As labor historian David Roediger has observed, the FLSA "established the right to be overworked" rather than the right to adequate rest. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, whose perspective had been shaped during the Progressive Era, pushed for more substantive protections. In congressional testimony, she boldly called for eliminating most night work, arguing it was "not unduly limiting the productivity of machinery to prohibit night work except in those industries which are necessarily continuous." But her vision was rejected. The final version of the FLSA dropped all provisions restricting night work, focusing exclusively on overtime pay for hours beyond forty per week. This compromise reflected the political reality that business interests strongly opposed any absolute limitations on their ability to schedule workers around the clock. The regulatory framework that emerged from the New Deal era reflected a fundamental contradiction in American policy. While acknowledging that excessive hours posed dangers, lawmakers refused to establish meaningful limits for most workers. Instead, they created a narrow exception - regulations would only protect those whose sleepiness endangered the general public. Train engineers received federal limits on consecutive hours of service, as did airline pilots and a few other transportation workers. But for the vast majority of the workforce, including those in dangerous manufacturing jobs, no such protections existed. This selective approach revealed deep assumptions about whose safety mattered and whose did not. World War II further undermined sleep protections as patriotic demands for maximum production took precedence over worker health. Surgeon General Thomas Parran warned employers in 1942 about the dangers of shift rotation and excessive hours, but his guidance remained merely advisory. The war normalized extreme schedules and established patterns that would persist long after the conflict ended. As one labor historian noted, "The war effort created a laboratory for experimenting with human endurance," pushing workers to accept schedules that disrupted their sleep patterns in unprecedented ways. By the late 1960s, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that protective labor laws for women violated anti-discrimination provisions, America had completed its transition to a system where virtually all workers could be legally deprived of adequate sleep. The New Deal's limited protections had established important principles but failed to create a comprehensive framework for ensuring that America's workforce could meet their basic biological need for rest. This regulatory gap would have profound consequences as the economy increasingly moved toward 24/7 operations in subsequent decades.

Chapter 3: Steel and Sleep: Workers' Fight Against the Long Turn

The American steel industry epitomized the brutal working conditions that characterized early industrial capitalism. From the 1880s through the 1920s, steelworkers endured what became known as "the long turn" - a punishing schedule built around twelve-hour shifts that formed the backbone of the industry's continuous operations. This system forced workers to alternate between day and night shifts every two weeks, creating a perpetual state of sleep deprivation that devastated their health and family lives. Andrew Carnegie and other steel magnates instituted the twelve-hour shift and seven-day workweek to maximize the productivity of their expensive equipment. As Carnegie bluntly stated, "Machinery never tires, and the men must work to keep pace with it." The economics were compelling: continuous operation meant blast furnaces and other equipment never cooled down, avoiding costly restarts. Workers paid the price for this efficiency through chronic exhaustion. One steelworker described the relentless schedule: "You work twelve hours, you sleep eight hours, and you have four hours for yourself. And in them four hours, you have to travel back and forth to work, you have to eat, and everything else." The most dreaded aspect of this system was the "long turn" that occurred during shift changes. Every two weeks, when workers rotated from day shift to night shift, they would work a grueling 24-hour continuous shift. As journalist John Fitch documented in his landmark 1910 study "The Steel Workers," this practice left men "dazed from loss of sleep" and created dangerous conditions in mills filled with molten metal and heavy machinery. Crystal Eastman's investigation of workplace accidents found numerous fatalities linked to worker fatigue, describing men who "fall asleep at their posts" with deadly consequences. One worker told investigators that after twelve hours in the intense heat, "a man is all in—he's liable to go to sleep any minute." Living conditions exacerbated sleep problems for many steelworkers. Immigrant laborers often lived in crowded boarding houses where they shared beds in rotation with other workers on different shifts - a practice known as the "hot bed" system. As one observer noted, "The bed is never cold" because as soon as one exhausted worker rose for his shift, another would take his place. Housing near the mills was frequently plagued by industrial noise, making uninterrupted sleep virtually impossible. African American workers faced additional barriers, often relegated to the worst housing in segregated neighborhoods near the most polluting facilities. Reform efforts targeting the long turn gained momentum after World War I. The Interchurch World Movement's influential 1920 report on the steel industry concluded that the twelve-hour day was "a barbarous practice" that destroyed workers' health and family life. Progressive reformers documented the human cost of sleep deprivation, while industrial researchers like Horace Drury published studies showing that shorter shifts actually increased productivity. These efforts culminated in President Warren Harding's 1922 appeal to the industry to abandon the twelve-hour day, which he called "a reproach to our industrial leadership." U.S. Steel finally eliminated the twelve-hour shift in 1923, adopting the three-shift, eight-hour day system that became standard across the industry. This hard-won victory came after decades of struggle and represented a significant improvement in steelworkers' lives. However, the new system maintained the practice of rotating shifts, which continued to disrupt workers' circadian rhythms. Not until the rise of industrial unions in the 1930s would steelworkers gain more control over their schedules through collective bargaining. The battle against the long turn demonstrated how sleep deprivation became a central issue in labor struggles, connecting workplace conditions directly to workers' health and dignity.

Chapter 4: Asleep While Awake: Pullman Porters' Struggle for Dignity

African American Pullman porters faced a uniquely challenging form of sleep deprivation from the 1870s through the mid-20th century. These men staffed the luxury sleeping cars of America's passenger rail system, responsible for the comfort and safety of travelers while being systematically denied adequate rest themselves. Their struggle against sleep deprivation became intertwined with their fight for racial dignity and economic justice, making the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) one of the most significant civil rights organizations of the pre-war era. The Pullman Company's labor system was built on racial exploitation. George Pullman exclusively hired Black men as porters, paying them minimal wages while expecting them to earn most of their income from passenger tips. This arrangement created a fundamental contradiction: porters needed to remain constantly available to passengers to maximize tips, yet they were required to work runs lasting up to 400 hours monthly with minimal opportunities for uninterrupted sleep. As porter Ashley Totten later observed, they were expected to be "asleep and awake at the same time." This paradoxical state - remaining vigilant while desperately needing rest - defined the porters' working lives. Sleep arrangements for porters were deliberately inadequate. Company rules prohibited porters from using passenger berths even when vacant, forcing them to attempt rest on uncomfortable "jump seats" or in the men's smoking room on a narrow couch barely five feet long. Many reported developing permanent physical problems from contorting their bodies to fit these spaces. Racial segregation compounded these difficulties, as Black porters were barred from most hotels in the Jim Crow era. Even when officially off duty between runs, porters often had nowhere to sleep except in segregated "colored" waiting rooms or dormitory cars with poor conditions. Meanwhile, the white conductors who supervised them enjoyed proper berths or hotel accommodations during layovers. When A. Philip Randolph began organizing the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925, sleep deprivation emerged as a central grievance. The union's newspaper, The Messenger, highlighted how inadequate rest undermined porters' health, dignity, and manhood. Randolph argued that "a porter cannot be a man" under conditions that denied him basic human needs like sufficient sleep. The BSCP framed excessive hours and sleep deprivation not just as labor issues but as civil rights concerns, connecting them to broader patterns of racial exploitation. As one organizer put it, porters had been taught "how to protect other people" but "never been taught how to live and how to procure some of the better things of life." The porters' campaign gained momentum through the Great Depression, culminating in their first contract victory in 1937. This agreement established a monthly maximum of 240 working hours (later reduced to 205), guaranteed at least one night at home weekly, and improved sleeping accommodations on the road. While still demanding long hours, these changes represented significant progress. The contract also established a revolutionary principle: porters would be paid for time spent in sleeper berths when they remained responsible for passengers, acknowledging that this was not true rest. The BSCP's struggle against sleep deprivation had implications beyond the railroad industry. By connecting issues of rest, health, and racial dignity, the union helped establish that adequate sleep was a fundamental right rather than a privilege. Their organizing model influenced later civil rights activism, demonstrating how workplace conditions could become effective rallying points for broader social justice movements. As Randolph noted in 1937, "The fight for adequate rest is inseparable from the fight for full citizenship." The porters' experience illuminates how sleep deprivation functioned as both a mechanism of control and a site of resistance in America's racial and economic hierarchies.

Chapter 5: Six Days on the Road: Truckers and the Economics of Fatigue

The emergence of long-haul trucking after World War I created an entirely new category of sleep-deprived workers. Unlike factory employees or railroad porters, truck drivers operated largely beyond direct supervision, navigating highways alone for days or weeks at a time. This relative independence attracted men seeking freedom from conventional workplace discipline, but it came with a dangerous trade-off: the constant battle against drowsiness while piloting multi-ton vehicles at high speeds. The economic structure of the industry virtually guaranteed sleep deprivation. From the beginning, trucking was characterized by intense competition and minimal barriers to entry. During the Great Depression, thousands of desperate men acquired trucks on installment plans and entered the business as owner-operators. As Teamsters president Daniel Tobin observed in 1931, these individuals "worked twenty-four hours a day if necessary" to make payments on their vehicles. Even after federal regulation began in the late 1930s, economic pressures continued to push drivers toward excessive hours and inadequate rest. When the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) finally established hours-of-service regulations for truckers in 1937, the rules reflected a remarkably permissive approach to sleep deprivation. Drivers could legally work up to fifteen hours per day, with only eight hours off between shifts. The commission explicitly distinguished between "mere drowsiness," which it deemed acceptable, and "fatigue of a type which requires considerable periods of rest." This distinction allowed regulators to ignore the growing scientific evidence that even moderate sleep loss significantly impaired driving performance. Truckers developed various strategies to cope with sleep deprivation. Many resorted to amphetamines, which became widely available at truck stops by the 1950s. As journalist Harry Henderson reported, thirty-six-hour driving stints were "only accomplished with the help of Benzedrine, which nearly all drivers carry." Others relied on coffee, cold air, and various painful stimuli to stay awake. When these methods failed, drivers caught brief naps in their vehicles, often in dangerous roadside locations. The 1963 country music hit "Six Days on the Road" captured this lifestyle with its reference to "taking little white pills and my eyes are open wide." The International Brotherhood of Teamsters initially fought against these conditions. In organizing campaigns during the 1930s and 1940s, the union demanded shorter hours, overtime pay, and proper accommodations for drivers on the road. It won significant improvements for employees of major carriers, including guaranteed hotel rooms during layovers and limits on consecutive driving hours. However, the union's effectiveness was undermined by the large contingent of owner-operators who remained outside its jurisdiction and often viewed regulations as threats to their livelihood rather than protections. The deregulation of trucking in 1980 dramatically worsened conditions. As competition intensified and union influence declined, economic pressures forced both employed and self-employed drivers to push themselves to dangerous extremes. By the 1990s, studies showed that nearly one in five long-haul drivers admitted falling asleep at the wheel in the previous month. Despite mounting evidence of the dangers, federal regulators maintained a permissive approach, focusing narrowly on preventing accidents rather than protecting drivers' health. Not until 2003, after years of litigation by safety advocates, would the government implement modest reforms to hours-of-service regulations. The truckers' predicament reveals the limitations of both market forces and government regulation in ensuring adequate sleep. In an industry where economic survival often depends on maximizing driving time, many drivers have resisted the very protections that might save their lives. This paradox - workers fighting for the "freedom" to deprive themselves of sleep - illustrates how deeply economic insecurity and masculine ideals of endurance have shaped American attitudes toward rest.

Chapter 6: From Factory Floor to Corner Office: Sleep Deprivation's Expansion

By the late 20th century, sleep deprivation had transcended its blue-collar origins to become a defining feature of white-collar and professional work. The rise of global competition in the 1970s and 1980s triggered a fundamental shift in corporate culture, with flexibility emerging as the central organizing principle. Employees at all levels were increasingly expected to adapt to unpredictable schedules, respond to communications at any hour, and demonstrate their commitment through visible displays of sleeplessness. Wall Street led this transformation. In 1978, Citibank launched an advertising campaign with the theme "Citi Never Sleeps," celebrating round-the-clock operations as a competitive advantage. Investment bankers and corporate lawyers began routinely working hundred-hour weeks, with sleep deprivation becoming a badge of honor. As one observer noted in 1988, "On Wall Street, mergers and acquisitions specialists boast of working 18-hour days. Small wonder that cocaine, a hyperstimulant, has become the drug of choice among Wall Street types and fast-track executives. The message: Real men don't sleep, and to be tired is to be a wimp." Technology accelerated this trend. The introduction of fax machines, cell phones, and eventually email and smartphones progressively eroded the boundaries between work and rest. By the 1990s, executives were expected to remain accessible during vacations and family events. The advent of global business operations further complicated sleep patterns, as conference calls and meetings were scheduled across multiple time zones with little regard for local sleeping hours. As management theorist Rosabeth Moss Kanter observed, the ideal executive was increasingly portrayed as someone who could "work 20 hours a day and not need sleep." Corporate leaders like Donald Trump actively promoted sleep deprivation as essential to success. In his 2004 book "Think Like a Billionaire," Trump claimed to sleep only four hours nightly and advised aspiring entrepreneurs, "Don't sleep any more than you have to.... No matter how brilliant you are, there's not enough time in the day." This messaging reinforced the notion that sleep was for "losers" who lacked sufficient ambition or drive. Similar attitudes permeated Silicon Valley, where startup culture celebrated the "all-nighter" as a rite of passage and venture capitalists explicitly favored founders willing to work around the clock. Women entering competitive professional fields found themselves particularly disadvantaged by these expectations. The masculine standard of sleepless dedication had evolved in an era when executives had wives managing their households. Working mothers faced the impossible task of meeting workplace demands for constant availability while still handling the majority of domestic responsibilities. As work-family scholar Joan Williams observed, the problem wasn't women's "differences" but rather "the masculine norms that make those differences seem so important." The health consequences of this culture became increasingly evident. Studies linked sleep deprivation to elevated rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and depression among professionals and managers. The National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research concluded in 1993 that Americans were getting 20 percent less sleep than a century earlier, with serious implications for public health. Yet corporate America remained resistant to acknowledging these costs, viewing fatigue as an acceptable pledge of commitment. By the early 21st century, sleep deprivation had become thoroughly normalized in American work culture. The economic insecurity following the 2008 financial crisis only intensified pressure on workers to demonstrate their indispensability through constant availability. Even as scientific evidence mounted about the cognitive and health impacts of inadequate sleep, American employers continued to celebrate and reward those willing to sacrifice rest for work. The ideal of flexibility had evolved into a system of "flexploitation" that demanded superhuman adaptability while disregarding basic human needs.

Chapter 7: Scientific Recognition and Regulatory Failure (1975-2010)

The final quarter of the 20th century witnessed a transformation in scientific understanding of sleep deprivation's effects on workers, yet translating this knowledge into effective policy proved remarkably difficult. This period saw the emergence of sleep medicine as a recognized specialty, growing recognition of shift work sleep disorder as a distinct medical condition, and halting progress toward regulatory reforms in various industries. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) played a pioneering role in establishing workplace sleep deprivation as a legitimate area for scientific inquiry. Its 1976 symposium "Shift Work and Health" brought together experts from multiple disciplines to examine the physiological and psychological effects of nonstandard schedules. As NIOSH researcher Austin Henschel noted, "The worker on night shift is fighting his biological clock," leading to both acute performance impairments and chronic health problems. This event marked the beginning of sustained federal research interest in workplace sleep issues. Several high-profile disasters in the 1970s and 1980s focused public attention on the dangers of sleep-deprived workers in critical positions. The nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, and other catastrophes were linked to fatigue-impaired decision-making by workers on irregular schedules. These events prompted congressional hearings and led to the formation of the National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research, which issued a landmark 1993 report characterizing sleep deprivation as "an unmet public health problem" with enormous economic and human costs. The medical profession itself became a battleground over working hours following the 1984 death of Libby Zion, an 18-year-old patient at a New York hospital. The subsequent investigation revealed that sleep-deprived medical residents working 36-hour shifts had made critical errors in her care. New York State implemented the first restrictions on resident work hours in 1989, limiting shifts to 24 consecutive hours and 80 hours weekly. National standards followed in 2003 when the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education adopted similar limitations, though enforcement remained problematic. Nurses emerged as effective advocates for limiting mandatory overtime, which frequently disrupted their sleep patterns and endangered patient safety. Beginning in 2000, their unions successfully lobbied for state laws prohibiting forced overtime except in genuine emergencies. As the American Nurses Association argued, "No nurse should be forced to work when fatigue might compromise patient care." By 2010, sixteen states had enacted such protections, establishing an important precedent that workers could legally refuse assignments that would require dangerous levels of sleep deprivation. Despite growing scientific evidence about the health consequences of sleep disruption, regulatory agencies often remained reluctant to intervene. When the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration finally revised trucking hours-of-service rules in 2003, it explicitly focused only on preventing accidents while ignoring the broader health impacts of sleep deprivation. This narrow approach prompted a successful legal challenge from Public Citizen and other advocacy groups, with Judge David Sentelle ruling that the agency had failed to consider "the statutorily mandated factor of drivers' health in the slightest." The period from 1975-2010 thus represented a paradoxical era in which scientific understanding of sleep deprivation advanced dramatically while policy responses remained fragmented and inadequate. Sleep medicine established itself as a recognized specialty with dedicated research journals and clinical protocols, yet this knowledge frequently failed to translate into workplace protections. As chronobiologist Charles Czeisler observed in 2005, "We have created a vast sleep experiment with millions of unwitting subjects," as 24/7 operations expanded across the economy without adequate safeguards for workers' sleep needs.

Summary

Throughout American labor history, sleep deprivation has functioned as both a mechanism of control and a focal point for worker resistance. From the steel mills of the early industrial era to the digital workplaces of the twenty-first century, employers have consistently demanded that workers sacrifice sleep in service of productivity and profit. This pattern transcended industries and eras, creating what might be called a "sleep divide" in American society - with adequate rest becoming increasingly a privilege of class rather than a universal right. The cultural valorization of sleeplessness, exemplified by figures from Thomas Edison to modern tech entrepreneurs, provided ideological cover for workplace practices that systematically deprived workers of necessary rest. The historical struggle for adequate sleep offers crucial lessons for our contemporary moment. First, it demonstrates that sleep is inherently political - access to sufficient rest reflects and reinforces broader social inequalities. Second, it reveals how scientific knowledge alone is insufficient to protect workers without corresponding political will and regulatory enforcement. Finally, it suggests that genuine progress requires challenging the fundamental logic of flexibility that places all burden of adaptation on human bodies rather than economic systems. As work increasingly transcends traditional boundaries of time and space, the right to disconnect and rest becomes ever more essential. The history of sleep in American labor relations reminds us that what appears as a private biological necessity is in fact a deeply social experience shaped by power relations, cultural values, and economic imperatives.

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Alan Derickson

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