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Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

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Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#51

Post by Dumblydorr »

I can speak to Irish history. Long considered one of the most poor and wretched places for common folk, the rural poor had numerous issues in Ireland. While they had dance and a lovely folk music, they also had starvation, disease, lack of political representation, and a lack of basic economic ladders. They did have plentiful turf to warm themselves, in contrast to many other poor folk in other areas of Europe. They also had the gulf stream, like Iceland and the UK, which kept their climate relatively warm for it's northerly location.

There's no better demonstration of the decimation of the rural Irish than the potato famine of the 1840s. It wasn't just one year, multiple years, their monocrop of the Irish Lumper potato, which had led the widespread growth in population, failed them due to fungal blight. It's estimate 5% or even 10% died of starvation in some rural areas. Moreover, millions more left in droves for the UK and USA, recognizing the crushing poverty and lack of food vastly outweighed their love of the land and culture.

In my estimation, the rural Irish had leisure time for the arts despite their poverty and destitution. The abundance of time didn't help, they were too poor to own many games and objects. Yet, through music and dance and writing, they kept their spirits alive and, by some cheer, were able to Banish Misfortune.

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#52

Post by [deleted] »

legitster wrote: post #26

This analysis is solely focused on the "job" aspects of pre-industrial life and includes almost none of the domestic considerations. I'm not sure if it would be fair to call all non-wage time "leisure". Once work was still over there were still things to clean, fix, prepare, butcher, etc. Although, I think it goes without saying that before affordable lighting and heating, we all underestimate how lazy winters were f…

[deleted]

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#53

Post by [deleted] »

varjag wrote: post #41
grawprog wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://about-history.com/what-did-peasants-do-for-entertain... >Music and dance Music and dance is as old as humanity itself. The peasantry could not afford to pay professional musicians but plenty of people knew how to dance and sing and enough people knew how to play instruments to have a jolly good time. Occasionally, actors might come to town and put on plays and dramas. >Decorative Arts Decorative arts were app…

> Embroidery, pottery, basket weaving, carpentry, leatherwork and woodcarving were common skills, often with division of labor by sex. Sounds more like work tbh. Basket weaving may be a hobby now, but unlikely it was in 16th century.

[deleted]

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#54

Post by dang »

The submitted title ("Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure") broke the site guidelines. Please don't do that. The rule is:

"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#55

Post by Ericson2314 »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #51

I can speak to Irish history. Long considered one of the most poor and wretched places for common folk, the rural poor had numerous issues in Ireland. While they had dance and a lovely folk music, they also had starvation, disease, lack of political representation, and a lack of basic economic ladders. They did have plentiful turf to warm themselves, in contrast to many other poor folk in other areas of Europe. They…

If it weren't for English colonization they wouldn't have been forced into such risky monocrop behavior.

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#56

Post by emodendroket »

hogFeast wrote: post #33
SavantIdiot wrote: post #6

> And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall). This goes against everything I've been taught, that the plebian class basically toiled endlessly, from Feudal Times to I…

Where were you taught that? Fairly basic logic should indicate to you that it wouldn't have been possible for people to work as much. There was no manufacturing. The vast majority of people who worked, worked in agriculture. You cannot work in the middle of winter, you cannot work at night. I don't know how it would have been possible...and that is why people then lived in crushing poverty (it isn't comparable to any…

I doubt anyone would really be happy returning to feudalism, but I imagine the goal of highlighting this stuff is to expand the sense of what is possible. It's easy to start thinking of the current state of affairs as some kind of immutable law of the universe and not a carefully negotiated political arrangement that can be altered as we see fit.

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#58

Post by legitster »

mc32 wrote: post #42
legitster wrote: post #26

This analysis is solely focused on the "job" aspects of pre-industrial life and includes almost none of the domestic considerations. I'm not sure if it would be fair to call all non-wage time "leisure". Once work was still over there were still things to clean, fix, prepare, butcher, etc. Although, I think it goes without saying that before affordable lighting and heating, we all underestimate how lazy winters were f…

In temperate zones winters were times of diminished activity probably because things were centered around agriculture and some hunting. In winter though you got to chores you didn’t have time for in the plant and husbandry productive months: fence mending, spinning, textiles, fixing thatch, cleaning house, making preserves, storing grain and other produce, etc. In the tropics it was midday when activities ceased beca…

It's worth noting that for all the festival days, they did not have our modern idea of a "weekend" either.

When the French revolutionary government created a secular approximation of the church calendar, they only gave off 1 out of every 10 days.

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#59

Post by hogFeast »

legitster wrote: post #26

This analysis is solely focused on the "job" aspects of pre-industrial life and includes almost none of the domestic considerations. I'm not sure if it would be fair to call all non-wage time "leisure". Once work was still over there were still things to clean, fix, prepare, butcher, etc. Although, I think it goes without saying that before affordable lighting and heating, we all underestimate how lazy winters were f…

Quite right.

I think we are seeing proof of what you are saying with the childcare cost crisis in most developed nations. A good proportion of early years childcare (and often later) was "free". Now that it is being transferred into wage labour in many countries with growing labour force participation amongst women, we are learning that this stuff was very costly. Similarly, all the household tasks then would take a full working day.

Also, they did have sports and games. Many of the games we play today have their origins in that period, but they weren't of the formal nature that we have today (and there were far more bloodsports). They had culture of a sort: theatre, singing, music. And they had more mass social events like festivals and market days (life today is far more atomized, back then this was a way for everyone to gather in a place and get business done). The rich didn't do organized sports either (as we conceive)...hunting of course was a huge pasttime.

The "innovations" of that period passed into irrelevance when the world changed. Our "innovations" will also pass into irrelevance too.

EDIT: btw, someone else has said that only the activities of the rich are recorded...this isn't right, there are lots of social history books which cover the leisure activities of workers in this period (if you Google social history or leisure history, you will find the period you are interested in).

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#60

Post by [deleted] »

agumonkey wrote: post #31
Swizec wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a great talk about clothes washing. https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_mac... Hans Rosling argues that washing machines are magic because clothes go in and books come out. Women education, literacy rates, workplace participation etc directly correlates with automation in the home. The less time it takes to keep a family running, the more empowered women get in a society.

That's the TED talk I had in mind, I just forgot Hans' name. I understand his argument but I think it's a biased view, we assume modern leisure is better but I'm not sold on this.

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