LONDON -- Five years ago, France joined Europe's largest nations in a radical experiment: to try to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and improve the quality of life by having existing employees work shorter hours. This week, that bold project began to derail: France's legislature voted to crack open the 35-hour workweek and allow people in the private sector to work as many as 48 hours a week. At the same time, Germany lengthened the workweek for some public employees, while allowing the largest corporations to negotiate longer working hours. What happened? Did the experiment fail? European governments,...