Under great pressure from President Woodrow Wilson, Congress passed the Adamson Act in September 1916. The act established an eight-hour workday for interstate railroad workers. Under the law, railroad owners who employed workers for more than eight hours had to pay their workers time and a half for overtime. Owners opposed the legislation, but Wilson supported it in hopes of avoiding a major railroad strike. The Adamson Act was the first federal law in support of an eight-hour workday. Its passage also helped Wilson win re-election in 1916. In 1917 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law’s constitutionality.
