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> If you tried to pass a 40 hour work week in 1790 you would have been laughed out of the statehouse because it would have caused mass starvation since people h

> If you tried to pass a 40 hour work week in 1790 you would have been laughed out of the statehouse because it would have caused mass starvation since people had to work longer hours than that just to grow enough food to feed everyone This theory that in history the conditions for survival were so much worse as to require much longer working hours is a great myth. Long working hours came mostly at the time of industrial revolution. https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_... From the article: ... the medieval workday was not more than eight hours. The worker participating in the eight-hour movements of the late nineteenth century was "simply striving to recover what his ancestor worked by four or five centuries ago."

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
This is somewhat apples and oranges when you go that far back. It's not that they weren't working for most of the day, it's that everything was more laborious. You would work several straight days for your "employer" and then need several for yourself, not to sit on your butt and have a beer but because there was no such thing as a washing machine or a refrigerator and all repairs and maintenance on your dwelling were things you were expected to do for yourself rather than hire out. It's tempting to think of a "feast" as a party, but even now, and especially back then, it was laborious. Everyone travels to gather in the same location (without cars), butcher the animals, clean them, prepare vegetables that started off as whole plants, chop wood to build a fire to cook with etc. A feast is not a vacation, it's just more working. Post-industrialization brought specialization, so that instead of working a day for the local land owner and then a day for yourself, you would work both days for the factory and then use your wages to buy appliances and hire a roofer and eat in a restaurant. And then, as automation got better, you got to work for eight hours rather than sixteen and then come home and watch TV and argue with people on the internet instead of needing that time to carry your clothes to the river and then ride a horse several miles to the general store to buy lamp oil and gunpowder.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

This is somewhat apples and oranges when you go that far back. It's not that they weren't working for most of the day, it's that everything was more laborious. You would work several straight days for your "employer" and then need several for yourself, not to sit on your butt and have a beer but because there was no such thing as a washing machine or a refrigerator and all repairs and maintenance on your dwelling were things you were expected to do for yourself rather than hire out. It's tempting to think of a "feast" as a party, but even now, and especially back then, it was laborious. Everyone travels to gather in the same location (without cars), butcher the animals, clean them, prepare vegetables that started off as whole plants, chop wood to build a fire to cook with etc. A feast is not a vacation, it's just more working. Post-industrialization brought specialization, so that instead of working a day for the local land owner and then a day for yourself, you would work both days for the factory and then use your wages to buy appliances and hire a roofer and eat in a restaurant. And then, as automation got better, you got to work for eight hours rather than sixteen and then come home and watch TV and argue with people on the internet instead of needing that time to carry your clothes to the river and then ride a horse several miles to the general store to buy lamp oil and gunpowder.