WorkingClassLifeinthelate19thCenturyUrbanCanada
Hierarchies&LabourMarketSegmentation:*23 things they don't tell you about capitalism*
(book)
1. New skilled trades: emerging from industrial revolution, e.g. engineers, machinists,
moulders printers
2. Skilled construction trades (seasonal work) eg. carpenters bricklayers
3. Skilled workers of threat of deskilling e.g. shoemakers, coopers
4. General unskilled labour
5. Women and girls (unskilled or garment makers, shoemakers), boys, (unskilled or
apprentices)
*Avg wage = $1 a day, maybe added 25c added on later if you're a man
Half for teens, women, young
- Wages for men would generally range 25 cents above/below $1/day, depending on
skill union membership etc
- Wages for women/girls would be half for the= of skilled/unskilled work
The work day:
1860s: 12 Hours/day factory shivs common
1880s: Successes for 9 Hr movement
6 day work week (sundays off)
Mandatory overtime, pay deductions if prod. quotas not met, piece rate.
* pop. in Canada mostly Christian (Sunday = mass)
- Children in the workforce
- most attended school ages 4-13
- Majority of boys entered workforce at 15-16 as apprentices/unskilled labours
- 1/3 of girls entered work (primarily domestic servants) or helped at home
- Very few working class children continued their education
Housework: time consuming and physically exhausting
- Economist Ha Joon Chang: in terms of its impact on economic and social change, the
washing machine has (so far) been more important than the internet.
- On what basis could this be argued, in the context of this week's readings?
*Earn cash because now they have more spare time on their hands
*telegraph>internet takes ten minutes is big but the internet takes like a few seconds but
the time gap is lower than the 2/3 weeks snail mail
- KeyQuestions"GenderatWorkatHome"(Bradbury)
- Describe the influences on working class family decisions on whether their daughters
should look for wage work outside the home.
* the order in which the daughters fall 1st stays home by the time you get to the last
daughter not so much need for her to stay at home so she'll work
*health of the family members, father's ill, falls on the daughter to work *marriage - how young they get married to
*scandalous
- Explain some of the reasons the proportion of wo
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