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The article presents an extract from a private diary kept by an intelligent and scholarly young carpenter living in New England and New York from September 1820 to May 1827. Carpenters having frequently discussed upon the impropriety of working so many hours during the longest days in summer, for a day's work and on the necessity and expediency of limiting the number of hours for a day's work, thereby reducing it to a regular system whereby every mechanick might be enabled to work the exact specified time for his employer and yet have some leisure time to regulate and make such arrangements in his affairs as are indispensably necessary. The first step taken to effect this was notice given in the public papers that a meeting of the journeymen carpenters would be held at Concert Hall, on April 12, 1825 and solicited punctual attendance. This notice was given about ten days previous to the proposed meeting. Five or six days before the meeting about sixty or seventy of the above named met to consult what measures to adopt at the general meeting and make such arrangements for the same as might be thought proper.