The eight-hour day came off the front burner. A major restructuring of the workweek didn't occur until 1914, when Henry Ford shocked the nation's industrial establishment by instituting a $5 daily wage at his factories — along with a cut in the workday to eight hours from nine.

Employee turnover fell and factory productivity soared, in part because Ford could now run three shifts instead of two, which enabled him to fill more orders for his popular mass-market Model T.

It's true that a shift to a four-day, 32-hour week will cause some disruption in the employment world; Sanders' bill would provide for a four-year transition period.

Among the important but often overlooked considerations yet to be worked out, Loomis says, is the impact on service workers. As white-collar and industrial workers receive an extra day of leisure, demand for services will obviously increase.

"It makes a ton of sense for the white-collar class and traditional factory workers," he told me. "But what needs to be worked out is how it will affect the service sector, where there's already a shortage of workers. Where do those workers come from? Do they get a 32-hour week?" Increased pay would be likely, Loomis says — "they would have even more power to fight for higher wages."

Another source would be immigrants by reopening the border. That's impossible just now, because border politics have lost any semblance of sanity.

"Even today, the service economy is an afterthought," Loomis says. "That doesn't make a lot of sense, given the reality of what the labor market actually looks like today." If the advent of a four-day week prompts policymakers to pay attention to this all-important sector, that wouldn't be a bad thing.

It looks as if the American labor movement is beginning to take on the four-day workweek as its cause for the present day.

"When my members look back on their lives," United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain told Sanders' committee, "they never say 'I wish I had worked more.'" They never say, 'I wish I'd made more money.' They say, 'I wish I had more time.'"

Paying for it means directing more of the productivity gains that have fattened top executives and Wall Street financiers to the working class.

Fain is right to cast the goal of a four-day workweek in the context of economic inequality. "We know with technology, we can do more with less," he said. "It is the mantra we hear from management every day, and yet it never benefits the worker."

He concluded, "Those who profit off of the labor of others have all the time in the world. While those who make this country run, who build the products and contribute the labor, have less and less time for themselves, for their families, and for their lives."

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