Arthur Young traveled throughout England observing rural industries and reporting on wages, prices, and methods of improving economic prosperity. In one report, he describes various rural proto-industries that provided employment for women and children, such as spinning, lace-making, and silk-milling. Young notes the weekly wages these rural workers earned, which were generally much lower than those of men but still helped alleviate poverty. He viewed proto-industries as one means of helping rural communities.
Presentation by Andreas Schleicher Tackling the School Absenteeism Crisis 30 ...
206 Chapter 6 Early Modern Social and Economic Developments.docx
1. 206 Chapter 6 Early Modern Social and Economic
Developments
76. Arthur Young
Report on Rural Industry from Six-Months
Tour Through the North of England
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rulers,
government officials,
and well-educated private individuals became increasingly
concerned with de-
veloping methods of improving the economic prosperity of their
countries. They
began to travel around their own and foreign countries
observing agricultural
and manufacturing techniques, measuring productivity, and
suggesting ways of
improvement. One of the most prolific of these commentators
was Arthur
Young (1741-1820), who became widely known as an
agricultural expert, with a
reputation that extended from Russia to America. (Young
corresponded with
George Washington, who was very concerned about the state of
American farm-
ing.) On his travels, Young often found examples of rural proto-
industry as well
as farming, which he appears to have viewed as one means of
helping to allevi-
ate rural poverty, one of his great concerns. Young's analysis of
English rural life
has been criticized as overly biased toward his own interests in
agricultural im-
2. provements, but his reports on wages and prices have not been
disputed .
. . .From thence to Boynton, the seat of Sir George
Strickland. Sir George was so obliging as to shew
me his woollen manufactory; a noble undertak-
ing, which deserves the greatest praise. In this
country, the poor have no other employment
than what results from a most imperfect agri-
culture; consequently three-fourths of the
women and children were idle. It was this in-
duced Sir George to found a building large
enough to contain on one side a row of looms of
different sorts, and on the other a large space
for women and children to spin. The undertak-
ing was once carried so far as to employ 150
hands, who made very sufficient earnings for
their maintenance; but the decay of the woollen
exportation reduced them so much, that now
those employed are, I believe, under a dozen....
The town of Bedford is noted for nothing but
its lace manufactory, which employs above 500
women and girls. They make it of various sorts
up to 25 s. a yard; women that are very good
hands, earn 1 s. a day, but in common only 8 a.
9 d. and 10 d.1 Girls from eight to fifteen, earn
6 d. 8 d. 9 d. a day. This manufacture is of infi-
nite use to the town, employing advantageously
those who otherwise would have no employ-
ment at all.
Sheffield contains about 30,000 inhabitants,
the chief of which are employed in the manu-
facture of hard-ware: The great branches are the
4. different ones, until many thousand wheels and
powers are set at work from the original simple
one. They use Bengal, China, Turkey, Piedmont,
and American raw silk; the Italian costs them 35
J. a pound, but the American only 20 s. It is a good
silk, though not equal to the Piedmont. This mill
works up 150 lb. of raw silk a week all the year
round, or 7800 per annum. The erection, of the
whole building, with all the mechanism it con-
rains, cost about 7000 I....
Upon the whole, the manufacturers of Sheffield
:nake immense earnings: There are men who are
employed in more laborious works, that do not
earn above 6 or 7 s. a week, but their number is
very small; in general they get from 9 s. to 20 s. a
.-eek; and the women and children are all em-
?loyed in various branches, and earn very good
-zges, much more than by spinning wool in any
:::--';:t: of the kingdom.
Leeds cloth market is well known, and has
zeen often described. They make chiefly broad
-- s from 1 s. 8 d. a yard to 12 s. but mostly of
-e - 6 d. and 5 s. Good hands at this branch,
d earn about 10 s. 6 d. a week the year
end, if they were fully employed; but as it is,
-"--:lOt make above 8 s. This difference of 2 s.
- is a melancholy consideration. A boy of 13
::.4. about 4 s. a week, some women earn by
--:. ing as much as the men. The men, at what
_ call offal work, which is the inferior
- es, such as picking, rinting, &c. are paid
5. - an hour. Besides broad cloths, there are
- shaloons, and many stuffs made at Leeds,
Work 207
particularly Scotch carnblets, grograms, burdies,
some callimancoes, &c.2 The weavers earn from
5 s. to 12 s. a week; upon an average 7 s. Boys of
13 or 14, 5 s. a week. But they are all thrown
out in bad weather; men in general at an average
the year round, about 6 s. or 6 s. 6 d. a week.
They never want work at weaving. Dressers earn
from 1 s. to 3 s. a day, but are much thrown out
by want of work. The women by weaving stuffs,
earn 3 s. 6 d. or 4 s. a week. Wool-combers, 6 s.
to 12 s. a week. The spinning trade is constant,
women earn abour 2 s. 6 d. or 3 s. a week. Girls
of 13 or 14, earn 1 s. 8 d. a week. A boy of 8 or 9
at ditto 2~d. a day; of six years old, 1 d. a day.
The business of this town flourished greatly
during the war,3 but sunk much at the peace,
and continued very languid till within these
two years, when it began to rise again.
PROVISIONS, &c.
Much oat bread eat, 10 or 11 ounces for 1 d.
Butter, 8 d. per lb. 18 or 19 ounces.
Cheese, 4 Pork 4 d.
Murton, 4 Bacon, 7
Beef, 4 Veal, 2~
Milk, a pint in summer ~, in winter 1~ d.
6. and 1 d.
Manufacturer's house rent, 40 s.
Their firing," 20 s.
From Asgarth returning by Crakehill, I took
the road once more to Richmond; and from thence
to Darlington, in the county of Durham. At that
town is a considerable manufacture of Huckerback
cloths, in which the workmen earn from 10 d. to
2 s. 6 d. a day, and women and children propor-
tionably. One master manufacturer employs
above 50 looms, and asserts, that he could easily
set many more at work, and employ numerous
women and children, if the idle part of the poor
of the town could be persuaded to turn industri-
2These are all different types of cloth.
3The Seven Years War (1756-1763).
4Piring: heating.
•
208 Chapter 6 Early Modern Social and Economic
Developments
ous; but numbers of hands, capable of working,
remain in total indolence; and that in general,
there need never be an unemployed person in
Darlington .... The poor women and children in
total idleness. They do not drink tea, but smoke
tobacco unconscionably ....
7. Kendal is a well built and well paved town,
pleasantly situated, in the midst of the beauti-
ful country just described. It is famous for sev-
eral manufactories; the chief of which is that of
knit stockings, employing near five thousand
hands by computation. They reckon one hun-
dred and twenty wool-combers, each employ-
ing five spinners, and each spinner four or five
knitters; if four, the amount is two thousand
four hundred; this is the full work, supposing
them all to be industrious; but the number is
probably much greater. They make five hun-
dred and fifty dozen a week the year round, or
twenty-eight thousand six hundred dozen an-
nually: The price per pair is from 22 d. to 6 s.
but in general from 22 d. to 4 s. some boys at
10 d. If we suppose the average 3 s. or 36 s. a
dozen, the amount is 51,480 l.
The wool they use is chiefly Leicestershire,
Warwickshire, and Durham: They generally mix
Leicestershire and Durham together. The price
8 d. 9 d. and 10 d. per lb. They send all the
manufactures to London by land carriage, which
is said to be the longest, for broad wheel wag-
gons, of any stage in England. The earnings of
the manufacturers in this branch are as follow:
s. d.
The combers, per week, - 10 6
The spinners, women, - 3 0
Ditto, children of ten or twelve
years, - - - 2 0
The knitters, - - 2 6
All the work-people may have constant em-
8. ployment if they please.
During the late war business was exceed-
ingly brisk, very dull after the peace, but now
as good as ever known.
The making of cottons is likewise a consider-
able manufacture in this town. They are called
Kendal cottons, chiefly for exportation, or
sailors jackets, about 10 d. or 1 s. a yard, mace
of Westmoreland wool, which is very coarse, se[-
ing only at 3 d. or 4 d. per lb. This branch ern-
ploys three or four hundred hands, particulariy
shearmen, weavers, and spinners.
The shearmen earn per week,
The weavers, (chiefly women,)
The spinners,
r, d.
10 6
4 3
3 3
All have constant employment. During the
war this manufacture was more brisk than ever
very dull after the peace, and has continued but
indifferent ever since.
Their third branch of manufacture is the
linsey woolsey, made chiefly for home con-
sumption, of Westmoreland, Lancashire, and Cum-
berland wool; the hands are chiefly weavers and
spinners. The first earn 9 s. or 10 s. a week; the
9. second (women) 4 s. 6 d. or 5 s.
The farmers and labourers spin their own
wool, and bring the yarn to market every week:
There are about five hundred weavers employed,
and from a thousand to thirteen hundred spin-
ners in town and country. The business during
the war was better than it has been since, but is
now better than after the peace.
Their fourth manufacture is the tannery,
which employs near a hundred hands, who earn
from 7 s. to 7 s. 6 d. a week. They tan many
hides from Ireland.
They have likewise a small manufactory of
cards, for carding cloth. Another also of silk:
They receive the waste silk from London, boil it
in soap, which they call scowering, then it is
combed by women (there are about thirty or
forty of them,) and spun, which article employs
about an hundred hands; after this it is doubled
and dressed, and sent back again to London.
This branch is upon the increase.
PROVISIONS, &c.
Bread-oatmeal baked in thin hard cakes,
called clap-bread, costs 1 d. per lb.
Cheese,3!d.
Butter, 6!d. to 16 oz.
Mutton, 2 d. to 2! d.
10. l. The Renaissance notion of the artist as an individual creative
genius stood in sharp
contrast ro ideals for women that emphasized modesty and
silence. How does
Artemisia Gentileschi balance these two in the letters ro her
patron? In what other
ways is her situation shaped by her gender?
2. What kinds of activities do Glickl and her mother undertake
and invest in? How is
Glickl's business affected by her son's actions?
3. Why does Catharina Schrader become a midwife, and why
does she decide to write
up her cases? How would you compare her attitude toward her
work and her sense
of self with that of Glickl and Gentileschi?
4. According to Young's report, what types of work did proto-
industry provide for
women in England? How did their wages compare with those of
men and with
prices for basic commodities such as food and rent?
5. Based on these four sources, what factors most shaped the
working life of women in
early modern Europe?
Beef, 2~d. to 3 d.
Veal,2!d.
Pork,4!d.
Bacon,6!d.
Milk,! d. a pint.
11. Potatoes, 10 d. four gallons.
Poors house-rent, 30 s.
----firing, 45 s. to 50 s ...
At Warrington the manufactures of sail-cloth
and sacking are very considerable. The first is
spun by women and girls, who earn about 2 d. a
day. It is then bleached, which is done by men,
who earn 10 s. a week; after bleaching it is
wound by women, whose earnings are 2 s. 6 d. a
week; next it is warped by men, who earn 7 s. a
week; and then starched, the earnings, 10 s. 6 d.
a week. The last operation is the weaving, in
which the men earn 9 s. the women 5 s. and
boys 3 s. 6 d. a week.
The spinners in the sacking branch earn 6 s.
a week, women; then it is wound on bobbins by
women and children, whose earnings are 4 d. a
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Work 209
day; then the starchers take it, they earn 6 s. a
week; after which it is wove by men, at 9 s. a
week. The sail-cloth employs about three hun-
dred weavers, and the sacking an hundred and
fifty; and they reckon twenty spinners and two
or three other hands to every weaver.
During the war the sail-cloth branch was
very brisk, grew a little faint upon the peace,
but is now, and has been for some time, pretty
12. well recovered, though not to be so good as in
the war. The sacking manufacture was also bet-
ter in the war; but is always brisk.
The spinners never stand still for want of
work; they always have it if they please; but
weavers sometimes are idle for want of yarn,
which, considering the number of poor within
reach, (the spinners of the sacking live chiefly
in Cheshire,) is melancholy to think of.
Here is likewise a small pin-manufactory,
which employs two or three hundred children,
who earn from 1 s. to 2 s. a week.
Another of shoes for exportation, that em-
ploys four or five hundred hands, (rnen.) who
earn 9 s. a week.
276 Chapter 8 The French Revolution, Industrialization, and
Midcentury Working-Class Movements
100. Julie- Victoire Daubie
Women Workers in France
Julie-Victoire Daubie (1824-1874) was the first woman in
France to receive the
baccalaureat. In her activism and writings, she focused on the
interrelated
themes of women's education, work, and suffrage. In Du progres
dans l'enseigne-
ment primaire. Justice et Liberte! (1862; On the Progressof
Primary Education.
Justice and Liberty!), Daubie advocated for women's equality in
education both
13. as students and as women in the teaching profession. She
regarded educational
opportunities as the key to improving women's economic status
and to securing
their independence from men. Women's public schooling at this
time was lim-
ited to primary education and not until 1880 did the government
legislate sec-
ondary education for women. Daubie also argued for women's
right to vote as
essential for improving their social and economic status,
although she believed
that the franchise should be limited to men and women who
were literate.
Women's work, education, and moral condition are the subjects
of Daubie's
three-volume study, La femme pauvre aux xix siecle (1866-
1870; The Poor
Woman in the Nineteenth Century). Here, she uses the term
femme pauvre in an
expansive way to mean not only indigent women, but all women
who had to
work for a living. Unmarried herself, Daubie was especially
concerned with the
plight of single women who, along with widows, comprised
nearly half of all
adult women in midcentury France. In the first volume of La
femme pauvre, she
examines women's factory, domestic, and professional work. In
these excerpts
from the section "Quels moyens des subsistence ant les
femmes?" ("HoV'Do
Women Earn a Living?"), Daubie discusses how
industrialization transformed
women's lives at work and at home with particular reference to
women workers
14. in the silk industry in Lyon.
If we turn to industry in the region of Lyon,
we see that the single arondissement of Saint-Eti-
enne employs more than thirty thousand work-
ers of both sexes: one third of the 72,000
weaving looms of Lyon and two-thirds of those
in the suburbs are occupied by women
suspended fourteen hours a day from a strap
so that they may simultaneously maneuver
the looms with their feet and hands. According
to Blanqui's study,' in 1848 they earned
less than 300 francs per year. Moreover, the
majority of Lyon's women workers are paid by
1Des classes ouurieres en France.
Translated by Lisa DiCaprio.
piecework. Their low wages are due to com-
mercial crises and to the status of working
women in our society. Conditions are better for
women with sufficient skill to weave cloth of
high quality, but those who prepare the
looms and work thirteen hours a day earn very
little.
The city of Lyon, this second capital of
France, embodies for the Midi, as Paris does for
the Nord, all the sorrows of the worker's exis-
tence. Lyon's commerce is based on silk, of
which five-sixths is sold abroad; therefore, it is
especially vulnerable to industrial fluctuations
which sometimes diminish production by 30 to
50 million francs per year. I do not know if free
15. rrade" has ameliorated the situation of the
workers of Lyon, but that of the female workers
will certainly worsen if motherhood and child-
hood do not, at last, gain the protection that
they deserve. Certain employers, for whom
women workers are an easy prey, seduce and
abandon them. One has even seen factory own-
ers who, after hurling insults at women workers
and debasing the value of their work, boast
about these crimes with impuniry.'
The supervisors of the workshops who are
not seducers in theit own right, remain indif-
ferent and do not condescend to protect the
girls for whom they alone are guardians.4
This neglect of women, excluded from pro-
fessional schools and overwhelmed by the re-
sponsibilities and sorrows of motherhood, has
led large numbers of women workers to vice or
to suicide. To cite only a few examples, one
woman threw herself our of a window because,
in her profound destitution, she could not pay
her rent; another poisoned herself, as she de-
spaired from not finding work; a third asphyxi-
ated herself after an illness of fifteen days which
exhausted all of her financial resources.5
One orphan with a festering finger infection
at the end of her finger which prevented her
from earning a living, became completely desti-
tute. She attempted to enter a hospital, but was
refused admission. Returning home in total de-
spair, she killed herself by drinking a glass of
16. vinegar mixed with pepper.
A poor girl worked day and night to support
an aged mother, infirm and mentally unsound;
but her own health weakened, her wages be-
came insufficient, and she lacked work. Sue-
2Here and later when she speaks of a treaty of commerce,
Daubie is referring ro the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty signed
between England and France in 1860. This free trade
treaty lowered the high tariffs that had protected French
manufacture from international competition, especially
from British facrories.-Ed.
3E. Buret, De la misere des classes laborieuses en France et an
Angleterre.
4Louis Reynaud, Etudes sur le regime des manufactures, Paris,
1859.
5Prme du 2 octobre 1856, Siecle du 17 avril 1857.
Womenand Industrialization 277
cumbing under the weight of her heavy bur-
dens, she killed herself, saying: "Since my life is
useless, at least my death will enable my
mother to enter a charitable institurion.,,6
It is noteworthy that almost all suicides
carried out by women are motivated by desti-
tution or social immorality. I will provide
only two additional examples, citing again
M. Brierre de Boismont who has sctupulously
studied this sad situation in Paris. At the mo-
ment of killing herself, he relates, one of the
women wrote: "I have taken a thousand steps to
17. find work; I have only found hearts of stone, or
the debauched from whom I did not want to
hear insulting propositions."
A young girl of great beauty, at the point of
ending her life, left a note in which she an-
nounced that, after having exhausted her re-
sources, she had pawned all of her possessions at
the Mont-de-Piete. "It was only up to me; I
could have had a storehouse of riches, but I
would rather die with integrity than live in
sin."
Before seeking the rational remedies to such
serious wrongs, it remains for us to examine the
conditions of the workers who, numbering
more than 300,000 in our manufactures, earn
an average wage of one franc per day.
Many of the manufacturers require workers
to travel long distances and separate mothers
from their families for fifteen hours each day.
Different economists have observed that it is
the women workers who work harder than
slaves. The boiling water of the basins is also
painful to the fingers of the spinners who pull
thread from the silk cocoons. The putrid ema-
nations from the chrysalis cause various ill-
nesses, called illnesses of the silkworm or of the
basin, which lead to long periods of unemploy-
ment.
From the carding and preparation of cotton,
the women often contract a terrible pulmonary
tuberculosis which is called cotton consump-
tion in the creative idiom of the workshop. One
18. 6Brierre de Boismont, De fa folie-suicide.
might believe that the constitutions of women,
who are generally employed in these deadly
forms of work, were especially suited to resist-
ing their pernicious effects if the statistics of
medical science and the reports of hygiene and
public health councils did not show the con-
trary, that for a given number of workers,
women are more likely than men to contract
this lung disease. A similar observation has
been made concerning the manufacture of
white lead, the processes requiring the use
of mercury and arsenic, and the making of
phosphate matches which cause necrosis of the
jawbone, designated as a chemical illness. The
industry, however, employs the weak and
the strong without distinction for this work.
The department of the Seine alone employs
1,500 men, women, and children in the match
factories.
In the workshops for the printing of calico
cloth, male workers have the best-paying jobs
which require skill. The women workers em-
, played at Scottish finishing or stiffening of fab-
rics spend their twelve hour workdays in
temperatures which range from 26 to 40,de-
grees and suffer greatly from the frequent shifts
of temperature from hot to cold. These are
manufactures where the women work in-all sea-
sons, for twelve hours a day, with their feet in
19. water.
This, then, explains the mortality rates
which strike the children of working women.
According to doctor Villerme,7 the children of
the factory managers and other employers typi-
cally reach the age of twenty-nine, while those
of women workers in spinning, deprived of
their mother's affection and milk, often suc-
cumb before they are two years old. The death
rate is generally two and three times higher
among children of workers of all kinds as com-
pared to those of the well-to-do families." This
appalling level of mortality is also attributed to
the very young mother's custom of providing
their infants with the milk of cows or goats,
and of making them fall asleep with the assis-
tance of drugs." When required to work to earn
their daily bread, they silence their excessive
crying with this slow poison.l"
The children of these workers who do sur-
vive, already weakened by the deprivation of
maternal care, are so sickly that in our manu-
facturing towns two-thirds of them are unfit for
military service.
We have seen that the causes of the injustices
which reduce the wages of the woman worker
are to be found in her ignorance and in the ab-
sence of legislation that protects children.
Lacking the knowledge required for the in-
telligent exercise of their occupations, these
women often do not know how to read or write.
20. In our manufactures and provincial industries,
the proportion of women workers who are illit-
erate is much higher than that of male workers.
In addition, there is an excess of work for the
woman in mechanized industry who does not
know how to darn stockings, mend clothing,
keep accounts of expenses, calculate savings,
prepare meals; who has lost, along with the ti-
tles of housewife and mother, the knowledge of
the thousand productive tasks which, at every
turn, contribute to the prosperity of the indi-
vidual household and the national wealth.
278 Chapter 8 The French Revolution, Industrialization, and
Midcentury Working-Class Movements
7Daubie is referring here ro the studies of facrory condi-
tions in the cotton, wool, and silk industries carried Out by
louis Rene Villerrne, such as the Tableau de /'etat physique
et moral des ouvriers employes dans les manufactures de eaton,
de
laine, et de soie (Paris, 1840).-Ed.
BAccording ro information provided ro me by Dr. Devil-
liers at the Academy of Medicine, children of weavers suf-
fer a mortality rate of 35 percent in their first year, as
compared ro the rate of 10 percent or 5 percent experi-
enced by children of agricultural workers and the well-off.
9Most likely, this was laudanum, a form of liquid opium,
which was also commonly given by British women work-
ers ro their children-Ed.
10M.Jean Dollfus, [a facrory owner] known for his philan-
thropy, has saved thirteen out of every hundred children
from death by allowing their mothers ro remain at home
21. for six weeks after childbirth and paying them the daily
equivalent of their wages at the facrory.
It is easy to convince oneself that this decline
of the woman worker is also related to the de-
cline of motherhood. In speaking of the iso-
lated, individual, single worker, I have shown
some of the effects of our social immorality
which is more prevalent in manufacture than
elsewhere.
The conditions of modern society, the exten-
sion of the factory system has appreciably al-
tered women's fate; her appearance on the
battlefield of industry has brought an anxious, I
will say almost maternal, concern from the leg-
islators for the safeguarding of the moral dig-
nity of man, the principle of the family, and
even of civilization itself. By an inexplicable
aberration, the day when manufacture tore
away the women from the household, French
law allowed it to develop at full speed with an
unbridled freedom and made the daughter of
the people the target of greed freed from all so-
cial obligations.
The reports of all the observers and writers
are unanimous on this sad question ....
Men who are distressed by the dissolution of
family bonds have made fruitless attempts, in
the manufacturing towns like Lyon and Lille,
to urge the [male] weavers to transport their
looms to the countryside; they obstinately
22. refuse to do so; even when they have the cer-
tainty of receiving the same amount of payment
due to the reduction of their expenses. It is
worth taking the trouble to figure out the mo-
tives for their preference for the city. In the
countryside, they say, one is often compelled to
enter into formal marriages in which the hus-
band is responsible for his wife and child, while
the moral laxity of the city allows for more free-
dom ....
In effect, debauchery gives privileges to men
which are rightfully revolting to morality. In-
vestigations have shown that in prosperous in-
dustries which offer a daily wage of seven francs
{to the male workers] one finds ten free unions
for everyone legal marriage, and that earnings
are consumed by personal and harmful expendi-
tures. This explains why our workers are ex-
Womenand Industrialization 279
pelled from European workshops when they
also attempt to convert other people to our an-
archic principles and lack of moral doctrine.
This license, in corrupting the man, devas-
tates motherhood and childhood: young girls
who are weakened at age ten and mothers at rif-
teen, having neither maternal feelings nor
obligations, abandon their infants or deliver
their young girls themselves to the promiscuity
of the factory owners and male employees.
One speaks a great deal of the vices of the
people, but it is easy to convince oneself that
23. these vices are borrowed from the ruling
classes; as long as a single industrialist can ex-
ploit a single worker in the name of his egoism,
and a single woman worker in the name of his
passions, the social order will be badly consti-
tuted. Our opulent bourgeoisie, unacquainted
with industry, offers no more morality than
certain leading manufacturers and one knows
the habits of our celebrated dandies whose irre-
sponsible immorality in bringing immense rav-
. ages to the popular ranks troubles the economic
order at the same time as the moral order.
Freedom of trade, then, requires a prelimi-
nary uniformity of the European code on a host
of industrial questions, such as the rights of the
factory owner concerning holidays, child labor
in the manufactures, the rights of illegitimate
children to financial assistance from their fa-
thers, the obligations of the owners towards
disabled workers, etc. So far, we have only
known how to rupture the ties which bind the
economic order to the civil and moral order,
and one could attribute the suffering caused by
the treaty of commerce at least, in part, to our
lack of principles.
When the law prevents the industrialist
from committing injustice, it will look after
those who accomplish good; it will invite him
to combat drunkenness, to promote the econ-
omy with savings banks and family values; to
cultivate intelligence and reason with schools,
courses, lectures, and libraries, ete.
24. From the investigations and the reports which
will certify the progress achieved, this individual
280 Chapter 8 The French Revolution, Industrialization, and
Midcentury Working-Class Movements
[the industrialist}, however humble he may be,
with his life in his hands, will demand the recog-
nition due to him forhis morally uplifting activ-
ities. These immediate means of …
History 281--Handout for First Essay Assignment
Answer one of the questions below in a typed, double-spaced, 3-
4 page essay.
Writing Objectives (or, What I’m Looking for in Every Essay)
Please be sure that your essay includes a thesis (a main
argument or statement of
opinion) in the introductory paragraph. The introduction should
also include the main
points (at least three!) that you’re going to develop in the body
of the essay (so, it has a
sort of “road map” of the main points that you’re going to
cover). Each of those main
points should be supported and developed using quotations or
examples from the
readings.
25. Essays should be a minimum of five paragraphs, including the
introduction and
conclusion, but your essay can certainly include more body
paragraphs.
This essay will be graded on its clarity, its arguments and its
organization. I will look for
a thesis statement in the introduction, a topic sentence in every
paragraph and a strong
conclusion that draws on the points you present in the body.
The conclusion should be
a separate paragraph that restates the thesis and drives your
main arguments home.
In those paragraphs, after you give me the topic sentence (the
main point or idea of the
paragraph) then flesh out that idea by offering reasons,
examples, supporting
quotations from the lecture or readings, etc. Each paragraph
should contain information
and evidence that supports your idea.
You will use examples and quotations from the readings (your
sources). Be sure to cite
ALL of your primary and secondary sources and to use the
correct MLA format
for the Works Cited list (the bibliography) on an additional
page at the end of your
essay (that Works Cited page comes in addition to the 3-4 pages
of the essay itself).
So every time you have a quotation or example from the
readings, follow that with a
citation that shows me where you got that information. For a
26. short essay, you don’t
need to give citations in footnotes or endnotes, but can simply
include a parenthetical
citation.
If you’re not sure how to use MLA formatting, you can find an
easy guide for it online.
The guide for how to format the Works Cited (bibliography) is
here:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/05/
Their guide for how to format parenthetical citations (where you
show me the source
you used for the quotation or example you gave in the paper) is
here:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/ Be sure
to include a citation
(inside parentheses as shown in this online guide) for EVERY
quotation you use
in the paper, and for any specific examples, statistics/numbers,
etc.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/05/
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/
Be sure to build your answer using evidence (material from both
the lectures and
reading assignments) to support a thesis, or argument, which
should be presented at
the beginning of the essay. Be careful also to keep careful
control over your grammar
and choice of language.
You should draw upon the readings in particular, and use quotes
27. and examples from
the readings to build your discussion. When you quote from a
reading assignment,
please note the source in parentheses; for example, you could
quote from page 110 of
Family Fortunes and then write “(Family Fortunes, 110).”
This essay is due by 11:59 p.m. on June 18th. You should
submit it using the TurnItIn
link in the Assignments area that says “First Essay
Assignment.” You may not use any
outside texts in writing this paper, other than the readings
posted in the course unit
folders. Although you are welcome to share notes and discuss
the questions with
classmates, you must develop your outline working alone, and
write the paper without
outside help.
OK, OK. But WHAT is the Essay Question?
Here you go. Pick one of the questions below:
Essay Questions
1. Using the materials for units 2 and 3, please contrast and
compare how gender
shaped the formation of both the European bourgeoisie and the
working class
during the period of industrialization. You may want to
include a discussion of
how notions of gender shaped paid labor roles in each class; the
distribution of
power and work within the household; and how gender
28. influenced aspects of
lifestyle and habits in each class (you have more from “Family
Fortunes” to work
with on this last part, I realize); and contrast women’s work and
roles in each
class. Before you start writing, make sure that you understand
what the
bourgeoisie was (hint: NOT the working class!); you might want
to review the
definition at the start of Lecture 2.
2. Using materials from units 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, please discuss
how European
notions of gender changed between 1500 and 1850. In other
words, how did
ideas about gender change between the period we discussed in
Unit 1, and how
gender was seen by the period discussed in Unit 4.
How did idealized notions of masculinity and femininity alter
during this period?
What changes over time do you see here in expectations
regarding men’s vs.
women’s work both inside and outside the household; their
relative legal
positions; their education and professional opportunities, and
social or religious
stereotypes about men and women. How did rationalizations for
women’s
subordination also change during this period?
29. Industrialization, Gender, and the Working Class
Historians tell stories. That’s what we do. Sometimes the
stories are rambling, long, and boring (if you have the wrong
teacher ☺). Sometimes (in the hands of a good practitioner)
they sparkle and captivate. But the truth is, they’re all stories.
That’s why “history” and “story” are the same word in several
European languages. They are true stories, as far as the
historian can make them accurate, depending on the sources and
information available to him or her about the period and
subjects in question.
Like authors of fiction, historians have to select the incidents
and characters they want to include in their retelling, create
some kind of plot line or narrative, provide a climax to the story
(that is, what important thing happened here? Why is this worth
knowing or studying?), and then some sort of resolution (often
with a moral to the story–we call that part analysis).
Of course, there are important differences between historians
and fiction writers, too. Historians are bound to the facts, at
least as far as they can be discovered from incomplete historical
records. We are not allowed to alter those facts, or omit the
ones that are inconvenient for our analysis. And although we
are trying to create a coherent story out of a mass of sometimes
contradictory facts and records, at the same time, we are trying
to make a true story, a story that captures some aspect of
historical societies and past realities. A true story is in some
ways an oxymoron---a contradiction in terms--- an unattainable
goal that all historians strive towards, knowing that they can
never completely succeed.
The Industrial Revolution and the Working Class: the Old Story
Before the rise of women’s history, there was an exciting story
about industrialization and the rise of the working class, which
I learned as an undergraduate during the 1970s and 1980s from
30. such famous and classic “his-stories” as Edward Thompson’s
Making of the English Working Class. Thompson was a labor
historian, the term used for those who study the history of the
workplace (esp. during industrialization) and the history of the
working class. In many ways, industrialization is depicted in
these stories as a terrible process, in which workers lost control
over the work process. It involved a transition from producing
goods in small artisanal shops, where the guild members set the
pace and owned the tools–to the factory, where workers were
subjected to harsh work rules, incredibly long hours, brutal and
dangerous working conditions, and very low pay, on the very
borders of survival). And while it’s important not to idealize
the workplaces of the Early Modern period (before
industrialization), it’s also true the that the Industrial
Revolution did entail serious social and health costs for
workers: it brought a loss of workers’ autonomy, breaking the
workers to factory discipline, forcing them to live amidst rapid
urbanization and terrible living conditions in the mushrooming
European cities.
The workers in the stories I learned as an undergraduate, which
described the process of industrialization, were almost all male
workers. Women hardly appear in Making of the English
Working Class, except in religious organizations, or as the
wives of certain men. The stories I learned about
industrialization focused almost exclusively on factory work of
various kinds, and with the important exception of textile
factories (where the work force was heavily female) most of the
industries created in the early phases of industrialization were
largely populated by men (industries such as steel production,
coal mining, and the railroads).
Then, in the second part of the story I was told, the workers
strike back. Subjected to terrible working conditions, low
wages, and political repression, the men in these stories roused
themselves during the second half of the nineteenth century,
31. particularly. They began to band together into labor unions and
working class political groups. They developed what Marxists
(and later, all historians) came to call class consciousness, an
awareness of themselves as a group, and a strong desire to
organize in order to improve their situation. They began to
organize strikes, lobby for greater political representation (such
as the right to vote, regardless of income, for all men), and
created their own working-class political parties in almost every
European nation, etc.
Ultimately, workers organized into unions did achieve enormous
improvements in their wages and working conditions and in
their political status. In a few nations, they even made a
socialist revolution, and tried to create a workers’ state.
Women don’t figure much in this part of the story, either.
Historians said that women had interrupted and unsteady work
histories (going in and out of the workforce as they had
children, or as those children grew up), that women had limited
involvement in working class unions and politics, and that
women had less class consciousness than did the men of their
class. Female workers were not leading characters in the stories
written by labor historians like Edward Thompson, and with a
few exceptions, women did not play leading roles in the stories
written about working class organizations like the Labour Party
in Britain, or the Social Democratic Party in Germany.
Gendering the Story: Women and Industrialization
This was the state of the “his-stories” when I was an
undergraduate in the late 1970s and 1980s. Around that time,
however, the first female labor historians began to go to work,
doing research about women’s roles during industrialization. If
we think of labor history as a tapestry that depicts a story or
pageant about the history of work, production, and the
workplace---- the women’s historians were embroidering on the
story, adding new panels (chapters), new colors, and characters,
supplementing rather than challenging male labor historians.
They wrote women into the story in a more complete and
32. detailed fashion.
Early female labor historians like Louise Tilly and Joan Scott
examined working class women’s life histories and work
histories. They said that the early labor historians were wrong:
it wasn’t that women didn’t work, it was that they had to juggle
their responsibilities for their families with income earning.
Women had moved in and out of factories in some areas (but not
all) but the new women’s historians pointed out that female
workers were always earning income–they did what was called
“piece work” (producing clothing by the piece, for middlemen
who outsourced clothing manufacture), did the laundering of
other people’s laundry at home (as washerwomen), or ran small
businesses out of their homes.
Women’s historians added to the story, by showing how the
male breadwinner (who might well work in a factory) had his
paycheck supplemented by the earnings of the wife and
children. By combining the husband’s wage with the money
earned by his wife and children, the working class family shared
a pooled family income, that allowed the household to survive.
Women had “worked,” historians proved: but they had often
done so in jobs that were “off the books.” Women’s work was
thus transient, done at home, and thus in jobs that didn’t show
up in government records, or even very much in the
consciousness of men, who often seemed unaware of how much
the wife contributed to the family’s survival.
Women’s historians also looked at women’s social roles,
demonstrating how women knit the social fabric together. Men
might carry the labor unions with their activism and
membership, women’s historians said, but working class women
carried the neighborhood. Poor women knit together
communities, looking after each other’s children, sharing work,
maintaining ties to neighbors, relatives, people back in the
village. Far from being the silent, invisible actors of the early
labor histories, women’s historians concluded, working class
women were really at the heart of the working class family and
33. community.
Gendering Skill
This new women’s history was a good addition to the older
stories, a necessary supplement covering a group that had been
omitted from the stories before. And up to about 15 years ago,
that was enough for female labor historians. But then another
phase of research began. Women’s historians began to look at
the influence of gender on the process of class formation and
industrialization. This means not just adding women to the
already established plot line and narrative. It means, re-writing
the story in drastic ways, to show how ideas about gender
influenced both men’s and women’s approach to work, their
labor unions, and their political organizations. In this unit, I
want to outline the role that gender played in shaping some of
the core elements of the story: work skills; wage levels; and
class consciousness
That skill is an inherently gendered concept is something I
discussed in the first class unit. Before industrialization,
“skill” often defined in terms of guild training and membership.
Work done by women outside of the guild system, no matter
how much experience and training it might demand (like
weaving or cheese-making or other dairy work) was simply not
seen as “skilled.” “Skilled” work was, by definition, something
that you could learn within a guild only, as you were trained as
an apprentice or journeyman. And since very few women’s
trades were allowed to organize within guilds, most women’s
jobs were NOT seen as “skilled.”
This idea of men’s work as “skilled” and women’s work as
“unskilled” was carried over into the new industrial workplaces,
as well. Within the factory, work usually strictly divided by
sex–some jobs were for women, and some for men. And the
work done by men much more likely to be defined as “skilled,”
although these distinctions can often seem quite arbitrary and
even meaningless to us today. But it is a carry-forward of the
gendered ideas about skill that had been established by the guild
34. system.
In industries where women were simply not employed and thus
not present, there were not so many tensions about “skill,” since
the notion of “skill” was not needed to divide up and separate
men’s jobs and women’s jobs within the same industry. But in
textile production and the clothing industry, where women were
present, tensions about “skills” and preserving the division
between men’s and women’s work were often very strong.
In Germany, this dynamic was clear in the industry of cotton
weaving, a form of manufacturing that industrialized early, and
generally employed women as unskilled labor for low rates.
Women were able to enter this area of manufacturing as it
industrialized, because employers wanted cheap labor, and
could pay women less. Cotton weaving was therefore
considered to be “unskilled.” But at the same time, silk and
velvet weaving were seen as “skilled” work that was done by
men. In the silk and velvet production industries, there was a
slower development of the technology necessary for power
weaving (which slowed down the process of industrialization)
plus stronger guild associations among silk and velvet weavers
(and the guilds fought against mechanization). These two
differences allowed hand weavers of silk and velvet (men who
headed family weaving businesses, with wives as their
assistants) to delay and slow down the process of
industrialization in velvet and silk production.
But in the cotton industry, where these factors did not exist, by
the mid-19th century, cotton weaving was almost entirely
industrialized. As a result, the (largely female) workforce
received lower wages, and the work in cotton weaving (unlike
velvet and silk weaving) was seen as naturally “feminine” and
“unskilled”. Even after velvet production brought into factories
and mechanized (a few decades after this had happened in
cotton production), male weavers fought against bringing
women workers into velvet and silk factories. The male
weavers argued that velvet weaving was too “skilled” for
35. women. For many decades, these male weavers were
successful–women were kept out of velvet weaving for most of
19th century, and thus male wages stayed higher in that
industry.
Women’s work was not only seen as “unskilled,” but often as
dishonorable, if it competed with male workers for lower wage
(women workers were seen as what union workers today call
“scabs”----unskilled, unorgranized, unfair competition). Again–
one flashpoint in the industrial world here was clothing
production, since this was an area where women were hired as
cheap labor early on. In tailoring shops, male tailors had
allowed wives to assist them in clothing production, in earlier
generations. Now, there was increasing tension about female
relatives assisting male tailors. Such work was now seen as
“dishonorable,” because women were not true guild members.
Tailor’s guilds and journeymen’s groups had strong group
identity (the men in the guilds went drinking and celebrating
together after the work day was over)– guild members sang
songs denouncing masters who employed women in shops. In
some areas, male tailors refused to work for masters who
allowed women in the shop, or even to work next to other
tailors who had formerly worked in shop where women were
also employed.
The Gendered Wage
Linked to the strong association of “skilled” with masculine
work and “unskilled” with women’s work was a wage hierarchy.
Women were cheaper labor, because they were “unskilled.”
Women employed in full-time jobs generally earned about half
the wages of men employed full-time in similar positions. Even
the most skilled female laborers only earned about 2/3 of what
“unskilled” men earned. Thus, a study of English cotton mills
done in 1833 found that by the age of 35, the average male
worker earned 22 shillings per week, while the average female
worker earned 8 shillings per week.
36. These wage disparities were due to many factors, most of them
influenced by gender. Workers were paid on the basis of what
employers thought was supply (ample supply of workers for a
given industry= lower wages) and women were almost always in
greater supply. This was because women workers had more
limited range of job options, since many industries would not
employ women at all. Because they had many fewer job
choices, women thus “flooded” the few industries where they
could apply for jobs, thus driving down wages in those areas.
As a job category became thus “feminized” with lower wages,
the remaining men in these fields usually switched to other
industries (since men had a greater array of choices), thus
reinforcing the “feminization” and trend towards lower wages in
the now “feminized” industries (like cotton weaving) that
women were in. It was a vicious cycle, in some cases.
Wage differences also due to “skill,” although often skill was in
the eye of the beholder. But wage differences often also due to
the difference in how employers thought of men’s and women’s
wages–what employers thought one ought to pay men and
women, what employers thought men and women ought to earn,
and ought to be able to purchase with their wages. Men’s and
women’s wages were strongly influenced by what employers
thought each group of workers needed.
Like women, men’s wages were influenced by supply of
workers, their productivity, their skill and experience, but in the
case of men, also by the idea (widely supported by male labor
unions and many economists) that men ought to earn a “family
wage” that is, enough to support a family. Men were thought of
as “breadwinners” for a family unit, and many employers agreed
that male workers ought to be given the wages appropriate to
this role. The idea of a family wage (to be given to adult men,
who were assumed to be heads of households) contrasted with
what most workers were getting at the time, a living wage,
which meant just barely enough money for one person to
survive on it.
37. One British economist argued that a working class man’s wage
ought to be increased, so that it could pay for “a well-drained
dwelling, with several rooms, warm clothing with some changes
of underwear, pure water, a plentiful supply of cereal food
(bread or porridge) with a moderate allowance of meat and
milk, and a little tea etc., some education, some recreation, and
lastly sufficient money so that his wife will be freed from other
work and enabled to perform properly her maternal and her
household duties.”
(italics there are mine)
Women were not thought of as breadwinners, even they often
did have dependents (mothers or siblings that they had to
support, or women workers might be widows with children).
What was their wage to be? Women’s wages reflected not what
was but what ought to be. They were seen as dependents
themselves, since in theory all women ought to live with fathers
or husbands. Thus, the debate over women’s wages was a
struggle between on the one hand, the supporters of a “living
wage” (who argued that female workers should be paid enough
to avoid starving and live at a very simple level) and others who
(as you see below) thought that women should be paid even
less. These “living wage” advocates were the champions of
women, who pointed out that some women did have to support
themselves.
But on the other hand, those who argued for a “living wage” for
women came up against employers who argued that women
should be given a “supplementary wage” (an amount well below
the living wage), simply to supplement the paycheck of a male
breadwinner. Employers assumed that all women lived with
fathers or husbands, who had a “breadwinner” paycheck, and
thus the women’s paychecks only had to “supplement” this
larger, male paycheck.
The discussion of women’s wages among economists,
employers, and labor union leaders was quite different from the
discussions of men’s wages. Even the “living wage” supporters
for women were trying to figure out what was the minimum
38. needed for survival–what they thought women ought to have.
And this “ought” did not include supporting dependents (enough
to support a child or elderly mother). It meant only enough to
ensure the woman’s own survival.
The budgets drawn up by experts generally only opted for bare
necessities. After doing extensive surveys of working women’s
budgets, economists included almost nothing beyond bare
subsistence. A typical survey was that published in an English
magazine in 1910. It showed sympathy for the girl who “ate no
breakfast,” whose “luncheon consisted of coffee and rolls for
ten cents,” and who “as she had no place in her room to do
laundry, paid 21 cents a week to have it done.” Her weekly
budget was as follows: lodging, 42 cents; food, $1.40; washing,
21 cents; clothing and all other expenses, $1.97: total, $4.00 a
week. The budgets showed that if a women lived alone, she
would have to exercise the strictest thrift, self-discipline and
restraint. The economists who made up such budgets argued
that employers ought to pay women at least enough to live at
this level. They did not argue that women might want even
more–enough for recreation, for example, to ride a trolley to the
park or the seaside on Sundays, for example, or to go to a dance
hall.
The other side of the debate, the supplementary wage
employers, was also well-represented in these debates about
women’s wages. The 1910 magazine survey found many
employers who were quite clear that they did not expect women
to live on what they were paid. A stenographer described how a
lawyer she worked for had refused to pay her more since “he
expected that young women had friends [that is, boyfriends or
relatives] who helped them out.” A budding newspaper reporter
was told by her editor that his “rule is never to employ a woman
who must depend entirely upon my salaries.”
He only hired women who had family members to help support
them, in other words.
Women’s wages were thus strongly influenced by what
39. employers perceived their “wants” to be–what they ought to
have, and whether they ought to be dependents of a male
relative.
Wages had risen for many employees, male and female, due to
unionization and minimum wage laws by the 1920s. Some
employers, like General Electric or big automobile
manufacturers, began to even introduce benefits, such as life
insurance or pensions. But again, these benefits were influenced
by gender. Male workers were assumed to be breadwinners,
who need life insurance and pensions in order to support women
or children. Female workers were not seen in this way, and
usually not given these new benefits. Instead, many
corporations offered female employees things that were thought
to appeal to women: dances, cooking classes, picnics, and clubs,
or nicely decorated locker rooms for female workers. (pretty
locker rooms and cooking classes were heaper than pensions,
too).
Employers adopted often self-fulfilling policies that ensured
that women were not breadwinners, and would be forced to be
economically dependent if they married: many governments and
corporations had explicit policy that women would be fired
when they married. This was called the “celibacy rule” in some
European cultures: if you got married (became non-celibate),
you lost your civil service or corporate position and were fired
immediately. Married women were not allowed to hold such
positions (e.g., teachers, librarians, or many white collar jobs)
until the 1930s and even in some areas, until after WWII,
because the feeling among employers was that married women
should be at home, looking after their families. Working
mothers were seen very negatively in popular culture: as
neglectful of their children (because they worked) but also as
mediocre employees (since they couldn’t devote themselves
fully to their jobs).
Gendering Class Consciousness
The difference between male and female workers in their wages,
40. in whether their work was perceived as “skilled,” and the
powerful ideal that men ought to be breadwinners---- that a man
was judged on whether he was a good provider---- these things
all added up to shape the consciousness of male workers, as
expressed in their labor unions and political parties. The last
and most recent change that female labor historians have come
to make in the older story of class and industrialization is to
argue that “class consciousness” was really implicitly
gendered–that it was a “class and gender consciousness”–that
the members of labor unions and working-class political parties
were defining themselves as men and as workers.
The concept of a “breadwinner” came to be a very powerful one
in the 19th century when it came to shaping ideas about
masculinity and men’s roles, although it was seldom a reality
(that is, few working class men earned enough so that their
wives and children didn’t have to contribute to the family
income). The earlier idea of masculinity was that of a male
head of household, a somewhat different thing, which you saw
in the Norton reading on “Founding Mothers and Fathers.”
The male head of household (in the pre-industrial, Early Modern
concept of the family and gender roles) was, as you’ll recall, the
governor of his dependents. Or at least he was supposed to be--
-which is why Mr. Pinion was such a disaster in the eyes of his
community. In economic terms, he had been seen before
industrialization as the head of a family business. He guided
and oversaw the servants, wife, children, apprentices, etc., but
they worked, too. No one thought that he was “supporting” his
wife and children (as would be the case with the “breadwinner”
after industrialization).
But industrialization and rise of bourgeoisie meant the creation
of a class (the bourgeoisie) where women did not contribute to
family income, and increasingly did not work in family
businesses. And this became the standard for masculinity–the
standard of being a “breadwinner” (a man who was the sole
economic support for his wife and children) that working class
41. men now increasingly aspired to achieve, too.
So, working class men in the late 19th century began to argue
for the “family wage” (wages enough to support the family, in a
modest way) in their unions, that they, too, could be
“breadwinners.” And because they saw women as ideally
belonging at home, many unions didn’t admit female members,
and fought against women in the workplace. Working women, as
many male union leaders saw it, were a “social evil” that ideally
would one day disappear by paying working class men more, so
that (like the bourgeoisie) working class wives and daughters,
too, could stay at home.
This new ideal of the male breadwinner influenced working
class men’s political leaders in many other ways. For example,
in Britain, men’s labor unions in the 1920s and 1930s
successfully opposed the introduction of substantial “child
allowances” paid to mothers. “Child allowances” (a small sum
of money paid each month to each mother by the husband’s
employer or in some areas, by the state) were introduced in
France during this period, and were widely advocated by
women’s organizations in Britain, as a way of guaranteeing poor
mothers a minimum income to feed their children with.
But British labor unions rejected this idea (although they might
well have been able to persuade the British government to begin
to pay such allowances to British mothers). Labor union leaders
argued that women should NOT have their own separate source
of income–the money that employers and state might have
contributed to child allowances should instead go into the
paychecks of male “breadwinners”, who should control all
family income. As a result, Britain did not introduce any
meaningful system of child allowances, although France and a
few other nations did do so.
In Britain, male workers also linked their claim for the
expansion of voting rights to role as breadwinner and married
father. The Chartist movement of Britain of 1840s, which tried
to reform political system and give working class men the right
to vote (at that time, only upper class and bourgeois men could
42. vote in most elections), strongly argued that working class men
deserved the right to vote because they were breadwinners and
heads of families. Thus, the Chartist movement linked political
and citizenship status to family roles in a way that justified
votes for all men, but not for any women.
So the moral of my story here is that once labor history is
rewritten from the standpoint of gender, the story changes. It
becomes more fragmented in a way, since it becomes necessary
to view the story from multiple standpoints: from the standpoint
of male and female workers, for example. The story also
becomes less inspiring, in some ways, too–since working class
men are now seen as not only champions of the downtrodden
and exploited male workers (which they most surely were) but
now also as men whose politics were powerfully influenced by
an ideal of gender that would tend to permanently place women
in the role of dependents, and thus work to keep women’s wages
down at a very low level, and to segregate women into the
lowest status jobs.
It becomes a more complicated story, with a more difficult and
complex plot line, But I think that this new version of the story
does do in a better way what historians are supposed to do, after
all: it comes closer to recapturing historical reality.
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