HOW HARD DO PEOPLE WORK? Dick Weisfelder commented on March 28 on how much more vacation time Swedes get than the typical American. I think that Swedes as well as Americans work harder today than our ancestors did. Herman Kahn said that although we all think of preindustrial farmers working terribly hard, the hard work was only for short periods. He said that they probably worked as hard as it was possible to work during planting and harvest seasons, but that at other times, especially during the winter season, there was not that much that had to be done. He speculated that the leisure time during the winter enabled early man to think and innovate. I was told that the great economist Joseph Schumpeter said that the increase in production from the Industrial Revolution did not come from the machines themselves. The real increase came because the worker was required to work as fast and as unrelentingly as the machine.
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Meta
I noticed this topic (how hard preindustrial farmers must have worked) being discussed on Something Awful just yesterday. One user made the argument that the farmers only had to work really hard during plowing and harvesting season. Another user countered with the argument that the fruits and vegetables these farmers were working with lacked the robustness, size, and protection from insects that modern crops have thanks to selective breeding and pesticides. The farmers were working hard and getting a scantier yield. I don’t know enough to add my own opinion, but I thought the mention of the crops’ quality was significant.
As for having the winter off, I just can’t imagine! I remember back in high school you’d get me up before the sun rose and you’d get back from work around 7 in the evening most times. You really weren’t outside to see the sunlight at all or feel its warmth. We weren’t required to chop down trees for fuel, but winter was hard all the same.
Annalisa’s comment shows how good the Something Awful site is. I suppose that Herman Kahn may have forgotten how much weeding was needed in the old days.
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