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Article: Laborers
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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LABORERS
LABORERS.
Overtime, output schedules, and standardized wares suggest both rapid and regular production. Steady, fast-paced toil also conjures up the factory and mechanized work
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and workers. Craft shops and even many mills, with the languid splash of their waterwheels, evoke a more leisurely rhythm of labor, a human pace governed by the hand and readily disturbed by the seductions of the tavern or carnival. A vast divide supposedly separated these two worlds of work, one modern and the other traditional, one in which time is spent and the other in which time was passed (Thompson, p. 359). There is much to commend in this conventional depiction. But the intensification ...