The History of Work: Medieval Leisure to Industrial Labor

[00:00:14]We work too much. This is a pretty recent phenomenon,   and so this fact makes us unusual, historically.  It puts us out of step with our ancestors. It   puts us out of step with nature. For reasons that will become obvious,   Anthropologists in the 20th century became  very interested in the evolution of work,   and so to answer some of their questions they  looked back to Stone Age societies. What they   discovered surprised them. They found that  while there were unique cultural variations   all over the world, virtually all Stone Age  people liked to work an average of 4-6 hours   per day. They also found that most Stone Age  people liked to work in bursts, with one fast   day followed by one slow day, usually something  like 8 hours of work, then 2 hours of work,   then 8, then 2, Fast, slow, fast, slow. These anthropologists found another thing.   Pre-capitalist and pre-industrial societies  all had their own ways of measuring chunks of   time. Some would measure by how long it took to  accomplish a specific task, or cook a specific   meal, or walk a specific distance. But the  odd thing is that when you compare all of   these little markers that were used by different  cultures, they were all somewhere in the ballpark   of 30 minutes. It seems that in a world without  clocks or phones or sundials, measuring the day   in 30 minute chunks just feels good and natural to  humans. Very few societies ever felt the need to   break the day into smaller chunks than that. It’s hard to go much deeper than that from   archeological evidence alone, but there are other  pre-capitalist and pre-industrial societies that   we can look back to that can help us.  There are excellent surviving records   from medieval Europe that delve into  this issue, so let’s start there.   For virtually all of human history, most work  was agricultural work. This was also true of   medieval Europe. So when thinking about medieval  workers, we shouldn’t be thinking about cities,   we should be thinking about workers in fields. For the first hour or so of the medieval workday,   people would just trickle in at their own pace.  The employer was usually expected to provide   some food to the workers, so for this time  people usually had a chat and a bite to eat,   but otherwise did nothing. As you can imagine,  convincing people to get up and start the work   for the day was often quite difficult. Employers  complained about this all the time.   After a couple of hours in the field, there  would be a midmorning break that could range   from 30-60 minutes, where workers  would have another bite to eat.   When the Sun was high in the sky and the day was  starting to get hot, work would stop again for an   extended period of time. Something like 2, maybe  even 3 hours depending on how hot it was that day.   This period would begin with a larger midday meal  that would be recognizable to us as lunch, and was   followed up by, this is not a joke, naptime.  In medieval Europe, siestas weren’t just a   Spanish thing, they were an everywhere thing. After returning to work refreshed and rejuvenated,   workers would intensify the pace of their work in  an effort to finish everything up for the day. If   they were done by the midafternoon, they could  go home. If they weren’t, they would break for   another 30-60 minutes with more food provided  before going back for one last sprint.   Most of the time, workers didn’t have to stay much  later than this. But if it was harvest season and   people were working late, there would often be  a longer break in the evening with a larger meal   provided by the employer. But this was rare. Workers might be in the fields for like 8 hours a   day, but when you account for all of the breaks,  they would only be working for 4-6 of those   hours. During the busiest times of year they  might be in the field for like 12 hours a day,   but with the breaks they would only be  working for 7-9 of those hours.   Notice the numbers we’re playing with here. Stone  Age peoples all over the world and agricultural   workers in medieval Europe both liked to work  4-6 hours a day, even though each group had   no knowledge or memory of each other. It seems  that this is just a natural pattern that humans   like. Medieval workers would work longer  during the harvest or during a crisis, but   they didn’t like to, and that’s the point. Also notice the length of these breaks. Medieval   workers measured the day in 30 minute chunks,  just like their Stone Age ancestors.   What else sticks out in the medieval workday?  Notice how the workers were constantly eating.   That was one of the perks of being a day  labourer. Food was a worker’s biggest expense,   and so part of their compensation was that  their employer would take care of the food   for that day. It would be like if part of your  compensation was that your boss paid your rent.   It relieved a massive financial burden. One other thing to note is that work was generally   understood to be a thing that happened during the  day, and although there wasn’t an exact science   to this, a workday was broadly understood to be  half of daylight hours. If there was an urgent   need for people to literally work from sunrise to  sunset, there was kind of a gentlemen’s agreement   that this would count as 2 days of labour. What can we take away from all this? Work used   to be a lot more informal and a lot more casual.  Labour and leisure used to be intermingled. One   was expected to relax or even nap on the job.  Work was a part of a worker’s life. Kicking   back and passing the time wasn’t just something  workers did at home, it was equally something   they did at work. Unless there was some sort  of unusual crisis, workers were not expected   to experience great stress while working. The week always began at a leisurely pace. Monday   and Tuesday are described as days with a “holiday  spirit.” Employers write of their difficulty in   getting people to even show up. Thursday and  Friday are described as “fast” days.   Mondays and Tuesdays were slow, Thursday and  Friday were fast. An echo of the Stone Age   pattern of working. Fast, slow, fast, slow. Saturday was pay day, and so it functioned as a   “hurry up and finish everything so that we can  get the hell out of here” day. It seems that   under normal circumstances, Saturday was kind  of a half-day, although during busy seasons   it could easily turn into just another  fast day like Thursday and Friday.   After the week’s work was done and everybody got  paid, workers got a full day off on Sunday.   But by the 16th and 17th centuries, a new  custom invented by workers disrupted this   pattern. They called it Saint Monday. Saint Monday was a kind of unofficial holiday,   where absenteeism was permitted and even  expected on the first day of the workweek.   People were still flush with cash from last  Saturday, and Monday was a “slow day” anyways,   so it just organically became a thing  that workers just didn’t show up.   Employers learned to tolerate it, and workers  gleefully looked forward to it. Countless labour   actions in Early Modern Europe can be traced  back to some dumbass boss with something to   prove trying to crack down on their beloved  Saint Monday. This was the real origin of   the two day weekend. It didn’t come from the  government, it came from workers, they did   it themselves. And it came centuries before any  legislature got around to making it official.   But leaving aside Saint Monday, it’s striking how  different the mentality of medieval workers was   from the mentality of workers today. Or, let’s  flip that around. It’s striking how different   our mentality is today from that of our ancestors,  going back hundreds, even thousands of years.   Here’s one specific example of that  difference. Whenever medieval workers   could afford to stop working, they did. Medieval Europe was not a culture in which people   saved a lot of money. This isn’t because they  were primitive or selfish or anything like that,   there just wasn’t that much for poor people to  spend their money on. Food, housing, clothing,   that was pretty much it. If a worker was all set  in those three categories, there honestly wasn’t   that much else available to them. This led to a  phenomenon in medieval Europe where… after all   of a worker’s basic needs were met, the more  they earned, the less they worked. To put it   another way, medieval workers liked to spend most  of their discretionary income on leisure.   This isn’t such a strange phenomenon. If you  survey people today and offer them a choice   between more money or more time off, most people  would take more time off. It’s just that under our   system, people are never offered that choice.  Or when they try to exercise that choice for   themselves, they are either professionally  punished or fired. In medieval Europe,   people could make that choice for  themselves, and whenever possible,   workers worked less. A lot less. There were three major holiday periods   where workers routinely took a big chunk of  time off. Easter, Midsummer, and Christmas. Or,   for the uninitiated, March or April, late June,  and late December. I would note that of the three,   only the December holiday period made  it into the modern era intact.   Things really slowed down in the winter. Days  were short and the work was also short. Because of   this, a tradition evolved called “winter wages,“  where workers were paid half a day’s wage for half   a day’s work. We’re talking about a 4 hour workday  at the very most. If you add in all of the breaks,   this would be maybe 2-3 hours of actual work.  “Winter wages” were usually done for the months   of December and January, and during this time,  people took as much time off as they could afford.   Workers spent their extra time on indoor labour  that might not generate a profit. Home repairs,   building new furniture, patching up or  making new clothing, these were jobs   best saved for the slow winter months. When you total up the estimated number of days   worked by medieval farm labourers, things become  quite stark. Researchers have found that Spanish   farm labourers did not work for 42% of days in a  year. In France, the number was more like 49%. The   English usually worked more, but this wasn’t  because they were naturally more industrious,   it’s because they were historically more exploited  by their aristocracy. When there was a labour   shortage in the 14th century, English labourers  immediately used their clout to create more time   off for themselves. For a period of time, English  workers enjoyed 51% of days free from work.   The funny thing about these numbers, 42%, 49%,  51%, is that once again they echo how people   worked in Stone Age societies. Almost every  other day off. Fast, slow, fast, slow. Labour   historian E. P. Thompson describes this work  pattern as a natural human rhythm and a common   preference in people across different regions,  different cultures, and different times.   For a point of comparison, consider a modern  worker working 5 days a week. In a calendar year,   that worker has 28% of days off. Add in the 10  or so public holidays that most countries have,   and that worker now has 31% of days off. Add  in 2 weeks of vacation, and that worker has   34% of days off. Assume instead that they get  6 weeks of vacation, and that worker has 39%   of days off. In order for a modern worker to  even begin to rival the amount of time off   enjoyed by a medieval French farm labourer, that  modern worker would need to be provided with 3.5   months of vacation per year. Plus weekends,  plus public holidays. Medieval workers were   operating on a level so far beyond us, it’s  difficult for us to even dream that big!   Up until the Early Modern era, workers were  paid by the day. The length of a workday   could fluctuate throughout the year,  but even during the busiest periods,   workers might be in the fields for 12 hours at  most. But as I’ve said, if you take into account   all of the breaks and mealtimes and naptimes, that  might translate into 8 hours of actual work. And   that was on the busy end of the spectrum. At  other times, a shortened workday would often   lead to less than 4 hours of actual work. That all began to change with the proliferation   of mechanical clocks. Cities and towns began  building clock towers in their town squares   in the late 14th and early 15th centuries,  and before too long, churches and yes even   some private businesses were inspired to have  their own mechanical clocks installed.   Arguably the most important  clock ever built was installed   at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in 1611. The Netherlands were at the epicenter of this new   capitalism fad that was sweeping Europe, and their  shiny new stock exchange reflected that.   Local Dutch governments tried to curb the  capitalist fervor taking over their country   by restricting stock trading to certain times of  day – 2 hours in the summer and 30 minutes in the   winter. Wait a second. See that? Even as late as  1611, Dutch stock traders had their own version   of winter wages. It didn’t even necessarily make  sense for their job, it was just in the culture   that that’s what people did in the winter. Anyways, the Dutch wanted to issue hefty fines   to any traders who violated these  restrictions, so the stock exchange   commissioned a giant state-of-the-art clock.  This idea quickly proliferated to every stock   exchange in Europe. And with this, the  clock escaped the public realm of town   squares and churches and entered the private  realm of business. All of a sudden, capitalists   wanted to prove how much of a capitalist they  were by having their place of business install   a mechanical clock just like their local  stock exchange. Clock mania had begun.   Textile mills were the first businesses utterly  transformed by the clock. Some brain genius had   the idea to connect their mechanical clock to a  bell, which would ring to signal the beginning   and the end of the workday. This was a profound cultural shift,   and workers really struggled to make sense of  it. Understandably. Under the old system – and   by the old system I mean the way that people had  been working for all of human history – workers   were hired by the day, and measured the day in  30 minute chunks. They began and ended their   workday accordingly, within a broad 30 minute  window. Now, workers were hired by the hour,   and measured the day in 60 second chunks.  This was new, and it was confusing.   Many workers responded to the workday bell  by doing the most logical thing under the   circumstances. They just ignored it. It  had never before mattered at precisely   what minute one began or ended their  work, so why should it matter now?   But the capitalists cared. In fact, they would  develop an unhealthy obsession with the clock.   Before too long, the capitalists were able  to convince city governments to get involved,   who began issuing fines to workers who were late  for the workday bell. Let me say this again. If   a worker who worked for a private business was 1  minute late for work, the local government would   fine them as much as an entire day’s pay. This  kind of thing had never been done before, it had   never been part of the unwritten social contract  between bosses and workers. The capitalists   just unilaterally invented this new rule out of  whole cloth, and they did it by joining hands   with local governments across Europe. Industrial  capitalism and the heavy hand of the government,   friends since the beginning! The owners  of the textile mills wanted to change the   culture of work, and they did, but they did it by  basically beating workers into submission.   As capitalism and later industrialization swept  across Europe, it brought with it an oppressive,   even authoritarian relationship  between workers and owners.   Shortly after the introduction of the  work clock, the capitalist class killed   the customary afternoon nap that had  been a part of the workday for as long   as people could remember. Absolutely tragic. They also stopped providing food to the workers,   which dumped an extra financial burden  onto the working class. Meal times,   which up until now had been long and  informal and subsidized by the employer,   were shortened and regulated down to the minute.  The entire workday was squeezed and squeezed   until all of the air and all of the culture  and all of the joy was taken out of it.   But soon, even having a maximally  productive workday wasn’t enough.   Workers quickly figured out that they could not  trust the company clock. Many bosses liked to   fiddle with the time so that the work day  started a little bit too early and ended   a little bit too late. One trick that bosses  liked to pull with early company clocks was   to rig them to the production line so that if  there was any sort of technological problem,   as there often was, then the clock would  stop. Later generations of company clocks   had mechanisms built into them that caused  them to periodically pause during the workday,   accumulating minutes, only to suddenly jump  forward to the “real” time during breaks.   It’s funny, because the capitalists were the  ones that invented this idea that the clock   must reign supreme. They were the ones that had  the government fine people if they were 1 minute   late for work. They were the ones who unilaterally  imposed this new social contract on workers. And   then they were the ones to immediately break  that new social contract. Why? No reason,   really. Just for a few extra bucks. Like I said, workers caught on pretty quickly.   But when workers talked with other workers  about how the company clocks were inaccurate,   it became standard practice within the textile  industry to fire them on the spot.   Fast forward 200 years. When pocket watches became  common, workers did the sensible thing and brought   them to work. Why wouldn’t they? The capitalists  had established long ago that being even 1 minute   late for work was a mortal sin. Surely pocket  watches would enable workers to be supernaturally   punctual. This was exactly what the bosses  wanted, right? But that’s not how it went.   For the first time ever, workers with  pocket watches had physical proof that   their bosses were tampering with the  clocks. This practice was so egregious   and so clearly morally wrong that it became  a political scandal, particularly in Britain,   with genuine calls for regulation and reform. The capitalists responded to this scandal by…well,   what do you think they did? Imagine, you own a  factory, you find out that your middle managers   are messing with the company clock, word gets  out, there are angry newspaper columns, there   are debates in Parliament, there is the threat  of legislation coming down on your head, it is a   full blown political scandal. What do you do? If you said “ban pocket watches from factories,   search workers before they enter the building,  and fire anybody who complains about it,” then   congratulations, you’re a fascist! And yeah  that’s exactly what the capitalists did.   By now it should be clear that the mechanical  clock was a tool used by the industrialists   to subjugate and exploit their workers. It  was never about productivity or efficiency,   because they proved over hundreds of years that  they would rather fire a productive worker than   run an accurate company clock. That was where  their priorities were. It was never really   about profits, was it? It was about power. 20th century Canadian socialist George Woodcock,   who wrote at length about what he called the  “Tyranny of the Clock,” wrote the following. “And   because, without some means of exact time keeping,  industrial capitalism could never have developed   and could not continue to exploit their workers,  the clock represents an element of mechanical   tyranny in the lives of modern men more potent  than any other exploiter or any other machine.”   All of the trends that began with the mechanical  clock kicked into overdrive with the widespread   adoption of artificial lighting. This is  what finally killed “winter wages.” Now,   there was no need to take it easy when the  days were short. With artificial lighting,   capitalists started treating every season like it  was harvest season. That’s how factory workers got   stuck working 12, 14, 16 hour shifts, not just  during the busy season, but all year long.   That familiar feeling where you leave work  in the winter and it’s already dark out? That   wasn’t a thing until like 1802. That was a thing  that was invented by the industrial capitalists   in order to maximize productivity. The industrial capitalists did not stop   with the tyranny of the mechanical clock, and they  did not stop with the invention of the 12, 14, or   even 16 hour workday. In time, they expanded their  reign of terror to target public holidays. Within   a matter of decades, public holidays that had  existed for hundreds of years were systematically   suppressed in favour of more work. We talked earlier about the late medieval period,   when workers were able to live lives where  they had 42%, 49%, 51% of days off. Only 2   or 3 hundred hundred years later, workers had  to learn to survive with only 15% of days off.   The industrial capitalists would have taken  more if they could, but the Church mounted a   defence of Sunday as a day off. Mostly. At the end of it all, the lives of workers   had been completely transformed. English workers  in the 19th century were working 80% more than   English workers in the 17th century. The country  had never been richer, but you’d never know it by   looking at the workers. Over the century leading  up to this, the British GDP had grown by 50%,   but over the same period, worker pay was  not just stagnant, but in decline. They were   doing almost double the work for less pay. And the transformation wasn’t just in the number   of hours worked. Owners and bosses used their  leverage to force their workers to live in a   tiny authoritarian world run by capitalists. This shift in the culture of work has always been   fascinating to me, and so I tried to look  back to where it first began. When and why   did we shift from the more casual and laid back  work culture that came out of medieval Europe,   to the more totalizing and authoritarian  and inhuman work culture that came   out of the Industrial Revolution? I think I’ve figured out where things   started to shift, and I think I’ve got it  pinned down to the exact year. 1664.   In 1664, some absolutely psychotic capitalist  named Richard Palmer, cursèd be his name,   paid the church in the town of Wokingham, England  to ring their bell at precisely 4 o’clock every   morning and at precisely 8 o’clock every  evening. He did this because he was still   seeing the cultural evidence of “winter wages,”  where workers woke up later during the slow winter   months and worked half as hard as they normally  did. As a capitalist, this drove Palmer crazy. He   felt that it was deeply important for workers  to be up 4 hours before sunrise every day,   even if they didn’t really have any work to do.  If they didn’t want to wake up on their own,   he would do it for them. So he had the church bell  ring at 4 o’clock every morning, 4 hours before   sunrise. He also felt that it was his job to tell  people when to go to bed, so he had the church   bell ring at 8 o’clock every evening. Also, shout out to the church for straight   up abandoning their religious mission and  surrendering to this capitalist weirdo. Way   to go guys, I hope the money was worth it! According to Richard Palmer and this new breed   of 17th century capitalist coming up with him,  “private time” was an outdated concept. This   new generation of capitalists wanted a say in  how workers were spending their hours at home.   They even wanted a say in what time they went to  bed. They had a totalitarian worldview. As far   as they were concerned, all time was company  time. Inspired by the work of Richard Palmer,   this particular form of abuse became a fashionable  trend in England. Psychopaths all across the   country started co-opting churches and victimizing  towns, all in the name of productivity!   20th century Canadian socialist George Woodcock  writes of this new breed of capitalist, “the   new capitalists, in particular, became rabidly  time-conscious. Time, here symbolizing the labour   of workers, was regarded by them almost as if it  were the chief raw material of industry.”   But this newfound obsession with time and  productivity didn’t stop there. When this   new generation of capitalists left their  places of business, they would see their   workers getting off work for the day. And what did  they see them doing? Standing around in groups,   chatting. Relaxing on public benches. Walking  into public houses to grab a meal, or, God   help us, a drink! All of this public recreation  bothered Palmer and his friends immensely.   Palmer’s obsession with the clock coincided almost  exactly with the rise of English newspapers. And   what did this first generation of newspapers like  to discuss? They liked to discuss the “problem” of   the poor, and specifically the “problem” of the  leisure activities of the poor. The capitalists   were very open about this, they said that the  only legitimate leisure activities for the   poor were mental cultivation or religious study.  Basically, studying Latin or studying the Bible,   that’s what poor people should be allowed to do  for fun. Anything other than that, they argued,   was corrosive to the culture. For those keeping  track at home, bribing the church and turning   into a private tool of the capitalist class,  not corrosive to the culture. Relaxing on a   public bench after work, corrosive to the  culture. These people were demons!   That’s what the capitalists wanted.  No life outside of work. No hobbies.   No idleness. No relaxation. No days  off. Nothing to look forward to. No   life. Just work and someone else’s profit. 20th century Canadian socialist George Woodcock   concedes that “mechanical time is valuable as a  means of co-ordination of activities in a highly   developed society, just as the machine is valuable  as a means of reducing unnecessary labour.” But,   he argued, the modern use of the mechanical  clock did not reduce unnecessary labour. It   did the opposite. “Hurried meals, the regular  morning and evening scramble for trains or buses,   the strain of having to work to time schedules,  all contribute to digestive and nervous disorders,   to ruin health and shorten life.” What to make of all this? We are   richer as a society than ever before, but  somehow we are less free. Workers have lost   so much. Not just our afternoon naps and our  holidays, but our autonomy, our dignity.   In short, we work too much. But it doesn’t have to be this way.   Medieval French peasants took as  much time off as they could afford,   which for them was 49% of the year. It’s time for  us to start moving back in that direction.   We already know how to do this. We have the money,  we have the policies, we have the administrative   capacity. We have everything we need to work  less. The only thing we lack is the ambition.   The messed up thing is I’m  actually very punctual.