Comparing 2018 and 1918...Are we happier?

[DarkLight]

Child labor was, by my reckoning, pretty immoral - but it was only beginning to be seen as a massively bad thing

I actually find the change in child labor interesting. It’s something of a product of the industrial revolution.

Prior to the industrial revolution, there really didn’t seem to be a sharp divide for most classes of society, between work, education, and home life. Children were educated by assisting an adult at their work as they were able. The industrial revolution is where we really see a large quantity of people starting to work outside of their homes (it’s also really the first time in history where you can talk meaningfully about whether women worked or stayed home).

The problem with the industrial revolution is the proliferation of poverty-level, unskilled labor. It was much more advantageous to the factory owner to employ large numbers of children in dangerous unskilled jobs.

Holy cow. I want to see it too, for that reason.

Where can you find it?

Amazon has it, and I believe directtv has it. Both classify it under history.

 

[Pup7]

Prior to the industrial revolution, there really didn’t seem to be a sharp divide for most classes of society, between work, education, and home life.

I never thought about it that way - but basically, no, there wasn’t. Only really in the way and with what materials they did all those things, and perhaps as you went up the food chain with more domestic help depending on where you lived (eventually of course starting to veer from the narrative parallel you’ve drawn). But, yes - cooking, cleaning, chopping wood, making clothes, making cloth and thread, maybe storekeeping, farming, taking care of siblings - that would have definitely been somewhat the same.

Fascinating.

It was much more advantageous to the factory owner to employ large numbers of children in dangerous unskilled jobs.

Not only that, tiny hands fit more easily into intricate machinery for things like repairs, or for detail work on industrial looms. So they were cheap, and convenient.

Amazing that for so long that was “okay”.

 

[SnowRose]

Oh but don’t forget the angel makers.
Fostering women would take in newborn babies from unwed working mothers (often maids and farm workers) for pay and kill off the babies through mistreatmemt. It was quite an industry.
Personally I find it hard to fault the resulting public outrage, or the initially illegal movement to promote use of condoms etc as a counter to these practices.

My point is, the past is just as morally corrupt as the present. You just need to scratch the surface and it’s all there.

 

[DarkLight]

I never thought about it that way - but basically, no, there wasn’t. Only really in the way and with what materials they did all those things, and perhaps as you went up the food chain with more domestic help depending on where you lived (eventually of course starting to veer from the narrative parallel you’ve drawn). But, yes - cooking, cleaning, chopping wood, making clothes, making cloth and thread, maybe storekeeping, farming, taking care of siblings - that would have definitely been somewhat the same.

Even among the mid levels you might combine the ideas. A tradesman in need of help could take on apprentices who would work in the shop in return for learning his trade. A family might take on a girl for a similar purpose, where she worked and learned domestic tasks.

And honestly not having child labor is somewhat of a privilege of societies that don’t need it. Subsistence farmers always use everyone old enough to perform a task to do some task, because you just can’t feed and clothe children for 18 years without them contributing to the household upkeep.

Even nowadays some poor areas have had to resort to paying families to keep children in school, because poverty means it’s too costly to spare a child for education who could be earning money.

Not only that, tiny hands fit more easily into intricate machinery for things like repairs, or for detail work on industrial looms. So they were cheap, and convenient.

Amazing that for so long that was “okay”.

The mine jobs were some of the worst.

You could see this around that time with the english workhouse. The original plan was for pauper children to be apprenticed out, so that they might learn a useful trade and support themselves. In theory the master was expected to make a decent provision for the apprentice, ensuring they were adequately fed and housed and learned the trade.

In practice, there was a great demand for “apprentices” among the coal mines that wanted children who could work in smaller spaces, and other places who simply wanted a cheap drudge. Workhouse children were preferred because they generally had no family in a position to protest their treatment.

 

[oldgraymare2]

Call the Midwife is the late 1940s, isn’t it?

It’s hard to find now, but go look for a show called Casualty 1918 or London Hospital (the US title). It’s based off of actual patient records found in the The Royal London Hospital in the East End from that year.

Absolutely fascinating stuff. Used to be on Amazon Prime; I think you have to pay for it now. But totally worth it if you like history.

It’s a great series.

I watched it years ago.

I saw it when it was on Hulu here in the U.S., when you could watch Hulu for free and didn’t need a paid subscription. They had the whole series up.

Most of my Grandmothers were alive during 1918, except for my paternal Grandmother. She was born a few years later.

They were young ladies during that time, except for my maternal Grandmother, who was a young girl then.

They would talk about life being difficult, as they were all still alive when I was a young woman. They all lived a long time.

There wasn’t any indoor plumbing where they grew up.

They lived on farms, so they grew up using outhouses, and there wasn’t any electricity in their homes, either. They were still using kerosene lamps.

My maternal Gramma got pulled out of school to help raise her siblings as they came along, so she never graduated past the 8th grade. She didn’t get to go to high school.

Back in those days, it wasn’t uncommon for children to be kept home from school to help out with the farming and with the raising of other siblings.

 

[Nelka]

In 1918 my nan was five, WWI had ended, during that war there were air raids where my nan lived and as she was half Polish and half Lithuanian he was told by here mother not to speak at school in case they thought she was German/Prussian. There were food shortages and she lived in a slum in the east end of London, no shoes, sharing a bed and she was one of six children that survived where as seven of her siblings died in infant mortality.

I wouldn’t have wanted to live then but I wouldn’t have known any difference if I had.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

My parents were alive in 1918. Because they were Catholic, they had to be extra careful. There were cross burnings going on. KKK was more active than now.

My granddad was a KKK member, probably around 1918.
There were no people of color and few or no Jewish people in the part of the USA where he lived.
There were lots of Irish Catholic immigrants. It was primarily an anti-Catholic organization in his county.

I’m not sure but my grandma may have been in the ladies’ auxiliary of it. She obviously did not cleave too strongly to the beliefs because when my dad decided to become a Catholic and marry my irish Catholic mom, she did not object and was very nice to my mom. (Her sister, by contrast, had a huge problem with Dad marrying a Catholic.)

A couple years ago I was looking up stuff on the Klan in my dad’s old home county and found an article where some civic building or office had apparently happened upon the big trunk of Klan stuff used for the old time meetings, stored away in an attic. This was a big deal for the local historians. I guess a lot of folks were not aware there had been an active Klan chapter in the area, as this wasn’t in the South. I already knew because Grandma told Mom all about it.

 

[babochka]

There was also some interesting discussion of how the medical community’s recommendations didn’t always fit well with the lives of the women. The midwives were valued in part because they actually worked with the poor where they were at and knew what their lives were like.

This is still an issue today.

 

[babochka]

Pup7:

I’ve already lived longer - way longer - than I was supposed to have lived back then if I’d been born in 1873.

Eh, if an accident didn’t get you, old age back then was kind of genetic.
All of my grands were born in the 1880s. Three of them lived well into their 80s and my grandmas had 5 and 6 children respectively.
I know my maternal great-grands also lived into their late 70s or 80s.

I recently read an obituary for my great-great-great grandfather, who died at the ripe old age of 96. According to the obituary, he “lived the life a hermit, in the old Indian style to the last.”

I

 

[Pup7]

The mine jobs were some of the worst.

Oh yes - I have read about that. Horrible.

According to the obituary, he “lived the life a hermit, in the old Indian style to the last.”

Probably protected him from a lot, bless him.

 

[babochka]

babochka:

According to the obituary, he “lived the life a hermit, in the old Indian style to the last.”

Probably protected him from a lot, bless him.

Certainly, it had an effect. He wasn’t a hermit his whole life, as he had several children who checked on him regularly. He survived the Trail of Tears as a child. He had six sisters who died in childhood, three of them on the Trail of Tears. His five brothers lived into their late 80s and early 90s.

I still think genes play a bigger role. Many of my ancestors who lived into old age on that side of the family lived well into their 80s and 90s, including my grandparents. The other side, not so much, as far back as records can be found and up to my parents’ generation. Deaths in the 60s and 70s were most common. My dad, at 74, is one of the two longest-living of his seven siblings and he has stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

An interesting side-note on this hermit ancestor of mine. One of his brothers had a Catholic funeral Mass and was buried in a Catholic cemetery. I’ve never known of any other Catholic in that branch of the family tree. I’d love to know the story.

 

[JamalChristophr]

I agree with most of what you say, but men’s viewing of pornography has exploded since the dawn of the internet. I think statistics would be quite disturbing that would bear this out.

I also believe sexual immorality has greatly increased due to the so-called use of the pill and artificial contraception.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

There’s a lot of evil out there that isn’t just nudity and sex, you know.
It sometimes seems that nobody ever thinks of any other sin but lust.

By the way, women’s viewing of porn or reading of it has increased with the Internet too, so don’t be gender-biased.

 

[Mtatum1958]

Between now and 100 years ago, I would choose in the current time. Firstly, for selfish reasons, without the improvements in healthcare, I wouldn’t be alive at this age (no, I’m not that old).

We have seen vast improvements in basic sanitation and healthcare, technologies to ease everyday life (like refrigeration), safer working conditions, less time dedicated to basic survival.

On the downside, these improvements are not universal and many people benefited greatly while may do not. The advances in technology and more ‘free’ time has led to an increase use of these for sin, pride, greed, lust, envy… increase.

I thing the good has still, and will continue to outweigh the bad.

 

[JamalChristophr]

I think I could go either way really. What I think is particularly fascinating is that our average lifespans were half as long.

Mother Angelica said once, “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”

 

[StephieNorthCo]

Don’t forget the lifespan issue has some bones in it. Due to the state of the art in medicine, death in childbirth or infants was a lot higher. This dragged down life expectancy stats. It’s not like everyone died in their 40s. If you lived to 21, chances were pretty good of hitting your 60s or 70s.

 

[JamalChristophr]

Good point. But wasn’t there quite a high mortality rate in children younger than roughly ten? I haven’t looked at the stats.

 

[StephieNorthCo]

Yes there was. I think I saw a chart on Wikipedia a while back. Visited that topic a month or so back, looking for some other data.

 

[JamalChristophr]

I think I got some of my intuition about that from walking around cemeteries, looking at the grave stones.

 

[StephieNorthCo]

Nope, not taking the bait on that one.