A little quick research on my part comes up with a different story.
From my source:
"Our hunter-gatherer ancestors almost certainly did not endure 'nasty, brutish, and short' lives," he writes of seminal studies of the Ju/'hoansi, a hunter-gatherer group living in southern Africa. "The Ju/'hoansi were revealed to be well fed, content, and longer-lived than people in many agricultural societies, and by rarely having to work more than 15 hours per week had plenty of time and energy to devote to leisure."
It was not the Industrial Revolution that brought the burden of long work weeks on the people it was the beginning of civilization and agrarian economies.
"Suzman argues that looking at the long sweep of history is important because it reveals our obsession with hard work arose in a very specific context, namely the early days of agriculture. At that time, the land could barely support the population, and a single unlucky event, like a drought or a flood, could lead to mass starvation. Hard work was essential to survival."
The people doing a lot of that hard work were slaves. I don't think the "Masters" worked an hour a week.
TEK
