Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991) • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by monocasa » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

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 was taught that as well, in what retrospectively was blatant capitalist propaganda. That the only thing that has given us leisure was the efficiencies of capitalism, and the benevolence of capitalists.

Albeit my school district was really into right wing propaganda in general, describing the civil war as "the war of northern aggression" in its text books.

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

#82

Post by heavyset_go » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #55

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.

It was the economic system that was imposed upon the Irish that forced them into relying on a monoculture, too, and forced them to starve.

The Irish working class were forced into smaller and smaller subdivisions by English landlords[1], to the point that they could only rely on a potato monoculture[2] to sustain themselves. During the famine, those landlords evicted over half of a million poor and starving Irish people[3].

Those same Irish tenant farmers harvested crops during the famine that were then shipped and sold on the English market[4], while those that harvested them starved.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Tenants...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Potato_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Evictio...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Food_ex...

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

#83

Post by coldtea » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

hogFeast wrote: post #59

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…

>Similarly, all the household tasks then would take a full working day.

Not even close.

Try visiting a rural place that still lives in pre-20th century standards (not as hard as it sounds in Central Asia, Africa, etc. Heck, even in most of Europe it was the norm up around the 1950s in almost all rural areas, and in many places in Southern Europe it was quite the same up to the 1970s -- electricity and cars didn't come to lots of rural areas until that decade).

In any case, household tasks were an insignificant amount of the day.

(Also, contrary to the modern myth, both men and women worked. "Women not working" was a thing for richer families, in poor and rural households women worked just fine, in the same fields and tasks as men - and of course this continued in the industrial era, poor women working in factories was standard. Women "not allowed to work" was a rich-household's problem).

As for the kids, aside from school (where that was compulsory, since I include here the 20th century European rural experience), after quite a small age, like 3-4 they mostly roamed around playing and were taken care for by the whole community - not many struggling "parents without nunnies" or helicopter parenting there. And after getting around 10 or so they'd start helping with some chores too.

Kids in industrialized nations had it worse. In the 19th century to about 1930, from Paris and London to New York, there were 8-10-12 year old kids working in the chimneys, the factories, even the mines:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/child-miners

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

#84

Post by californical » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #35

ren_engineer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

article basically ignores quality of life in exchange for "leisure". I could build a crude shelter and be homeless and basically achieve the same thing, turns out most people don't want that. Fact is most people voluntarily opt in to capitalism because life is better, if you want something close to what the article talks about you can pretty easily move to an Amish community or try creating your own commune and try t…

> most people voluntarily opt in to capitalism because life is better I think this takes a good point too far. The society around you is not opt-in, it's a very difficult opt-out. People generally follow the religion of their parents, the career path of their neighborhood, etc. Opting out of the current economy would be a major, radical sacrifice (of status, friends, family, resources, opportunity) that would require…

Isn’t that their point? You can opt-out and give up the healthcare, education, ease of raising kids, grocery stores, etc, living life similarly to people of the past before all of those modern inventions. It would just be a horrible life, so nobody does it.

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

#85

Post by legitster » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #43

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…

> Common people had almost no sports, no games (beyond precursors to Bocce or backgammon), no literature! The activities of the historical poor and working class are rarely recorded except in fiction written by the wealthy that contains poor or working class characters. Also, your best evidence is a lack of evidence.

Fair enough! But I think it would also be fair to say that if we shouldn't assume peasants had idyllic lives just because we compare their medieval timecards to our own.

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

#86

Post by Jensson » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

the-dude wrote: post #76

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…

I clean, cook, fix & do the dishes in 2021. Once in a while, I prepare something. My father had a 40 hr work week and did not do sports, neither did my mother.

> I clean, cook, fix & do the dishes in 2021. Once in a while, I prepare something.

You don't think that cleaning, cooking, fixing and doing dishes is a bit less work today than in pre industrial era?

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

#87

Post by dantheman » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #81

hogFeast wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 was taught that as well, in what retrospectively was blatant capitalist propaganda. That the only thing that has given us leisure was the efficiencies of capitalism, and the benevolence of capitalists. Albeit my school district was really into right wing propaganda in general, describing the civil war as "the war of northern aggression" in its text books.

The benevolence of technical progress and productivity increase and the successful allocation of resources.

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

#88

Post by ineedasername » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

Not quite: the workweek described still sounds like at least 40 hours.

What the article says is that they had a shorter work week than many people did during the early/middle years of the industrial revolution. Modern day capitalism, while significantly flawed, seems to have moved on from that early horror: I have ancestors from ~100 years ago that died of black lung after spending decades of 60-70 hours/week in coal mines.

The author also ignores the time outside of "work" necessary to keep a household going. Time spent outside of the fields wasn't just idle time: everything from cooking to home maintenance was added labor that would eat away at those off hours more so than similar tasks today.

And sure, today some people still have no choice but to work long hours, and some people choose to do so, but I imagine that was the case in the supposedly more idyllic workers' environment described by the author as well.

Other aspects of these claims of a more leisurely life are refuted here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulati...

We also shouldn't forget the conditions of work & life for the average person. Peasantry was certainly a big step above out & out slavery but freedom was still significantly curtailed. There was not for example universal freedom of movement. Absent approval by the local lord, a person was bound to the land they were born on. The quality of low/middle justice for what rights people did have was highly variable & subject to capricious whims at times. (Which isn't to say that's a completely solved problem today though)

All of which is to say that workday hours, even granting the author's central thesis (which I don't), are not the yardstick to use when measuring quality of life. At best it's just one data point in the constellation of factors involved.

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

#89

Post by grawprog » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

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.

Why would something people find fun enough to do as a hobby now not have been fun 500 years ago?

Compare it to say a modern profession like software engineering. Despite it being work, there's plenty of programmers who also enjoy programming and do it for fun on their own time as well as work.

Why would it have been any different back then?

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

#90

Post by enzino » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #13

I disagree it's because of capitalism. Capitalism was also people working in the fields and trading their produce, after paying their tax to their lord, not unlike to our income tax. There are definitely many trends that led us to work more and more. There are increasingly more and more people in the few places people with ambitions want to live in. That's more competition which gradually drives the cost down. If the…

100%. good thing is the tide is changing, the main way they control society is through fiat money, and its going down