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80% of the population spent their lives in extreme poverty, toiling in the fields from sunup to sundown.
by cwp 7y ago
80% of the population spent their lives in extreme poverty, toiling in the fields from sunup to sundown.
- ocschwar 7y agoYou can thank the McCormick Reaper for putting that to an end. No need for Roundup.
- wnevets 7y agoI had no idea roundup was that old and revolutionary
- strainer 7y agoThis common outlook of pre-industrial farming is actually contested, eg. [1] > One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night. These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false... [1]https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...