When reading the history of Europe – and probably mirrored in history elsewhere – one is struck by the deep dividing line between those who control the money supply and those who do not. Most particularly between worker and owner. I was wondering today when the tea break first came into existence and why. Workers on the land in the days when my cottage was built worked every hour of sunlight they could all year round. Miners used to live underground and come up only on Sundays to go to church.
One reason skills were passed down families was not because children longed to be like their fathers but because there was no cross over of skills because each skilled worker was in a different social class even amongst workers. Looking at the tools they used as well, everything would have taken so much longer to do. It is not surprising they were tired, old men by fifty.
But somewhere along the line working men became working men and women and the day was structured not around the work to do and the costs involved, but also about the working environment. In itself a new idea aided by the ever increasing population and the ability to share work amongst many more workers than in the past.
One plague and we’d be back in the seventeenth century overnight.