Ideas And Opinions.
Beware, rants lay ahead.

I've been a bit of a bum in recent months. Since my departure from the Brandeis University Physics Department, I have spent the majority of the summer searching for gainful employment, as I have discovered that bill-collectors do not stop pestering me even if I do not have a paycheck. Fortuantely, I have been hired (now about two weeks ago) by Leominster High School, teaching physics, which I am certainly looking forward to. The time this summer, however, looking for a job, has given me time to reflect upon Things. I had been working very hard throughout college, and then graduate school such that a forced cessation of activity has brought some philosophizing which has not existed in quite a while.

This week, Megan's organization is in the process of acquiring a large funding grant from what I am guessing is the Department of Health & Human Services. We are, of course, very excited, as the National Center for Family Homelessness does wonderful work. I am proud of Megan in that when she goes to work every morning, she is making the world a better place. Unfortunately, receiving a large grant means that my wife's workload increases substantially. She worked Friday night until 11:30, then went in again on Saturday morning for the majority of the day. I hate to see her overwork herself as such--- this is likely a 60-hour week for her, and it does not look like it will let-up soon. She is, as always, more than strong enough to handle this, but I do not beleive that in a modern society that anyone should be working this much.

This enters into my thesis for tonight's rant. I have lately been reading, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America by Tom Lutz. A cute little book to begin reading while unemployed, and I can always appreciate the life of slacking [insert Phil's reverence to Clerks or propensity for video games here]; but it brings to light many interesting points in our culture of work, how during the Industrial Revolution the work ethic evolved from a natural state of working in "sun-time" to "clock-time." There is quite a bit to this philosophy, I recommend you pick up the book.

At any rate, the historical approach to the philosophy of work in America, I believe, shows an interesting pattern: in the beginning of the industrial revolution, our society found itself in an uncomfortable change in going from an agrarian to industrialized view of work. In the early 19th century, it was not uncommon for workers to leave a job once, or even several times a day to have a quick drink at a local pub. Much to employers's chagrin, this continued, as the agrarian view of a "work day" still dominated in the nascent industrial workforce. As no historian, economist, nor sociologist, I can only speculate on such matters, but this interplay between employer and employee did not erupt into the well-known unionizations and related riots until the 1870s seem to be the beginning of the end of the otium of the agrarian era.

Of course, later growth in unions and their power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries fortunately had their progress-- even the beginnings of a six-hour workday movement in the 1930s. But I wonder if the beginning of antagonism between management and labor in the 1870s was of a societal origin. In the 1860s-1890s, the country felt two great demographic shifts: the first being a sudden class of Americans freed from bondage, and the second being a massive influx of immigrants.

Perhaps now that the employers now had a lower class to further exploit, the drive of the proletariat (I hope I'm using that word right) for easier work conditions was less powerful. And still, this trend continues until today as seen in undocumented workers throughout the country being exploited via sub-minimum wage pay and/or long work hours. Capitalism, if not else, finds creative ways to exploit anyone other than oneself.

One could easily argue, "Before the Civil War, wasn't the vast majority of the black population exploited? How about the Famine? the large Irish waves started in the 1840s-50s?" Of course, those are both factors, and again, I claim to be neither an historian nor sociologist. The African enslavement, I think was not directly exploited by industrial America in the mid-nineteenth century. I cannot speak to how slavery in the agricultural South did or did not affect growing industry in the North-- I could easily be very wrong. As for the Irish in the prebellum industrial cities, the affects could have very well been long-term, as the immigration explosion America felt was in the decades after the Civil War.

As a descendant of those from the immigration in the 1880s-1890s, I am not by any means saying that immigration hurts the "native" population by this manner... it simply seems that when industty finds a large social group to exploit, all of us feel the concequences.

What are the effects of these matters today? Perhaps it is indeed related to the greater structural difference between American and European societies in the way which work, socialism, immigration, and leisure are viewed. Again, this is an enormous topic, so pick a book up.