Labor!

            In honor of Labor Day, I wanted to share a quote from James Michaels that is as good as a story:

            “When you are my age you don’t have to ask: Are Americans really materially better off than they were in recent past?  Those of us born in the 1920s and with vivid memories of the Depression simply know how much better things are today . . . If he was fortunate enough to have central heating (less than on third of the population did in 1920), the middle class Dad had to pull himself from bed at 4:00 A.M. on cold winter mornings to unbank the furnace and shovel coal; if he overslept, the pipes froze.  But he usually didn’t have to rake leaves or shovel snow.  Not in the 1930s.  That was done by shabby, humble men who knocked at the back door in the mornings asking for a warm meal in return for doing chores.”

            Michaels goes on to remind us that seventy-five years ago the typical workweek was at least sixty hours, but women worked a lot more than that in the home.  The leisure industry didn’t exist because no one had leisure.  For half of the population, the family toilet was in the backyard.  Life expectancy was about fifty-four years. 

            Happy Labor Day!

Source: HUSTLING GOD by M. Craig Barnes, p. 90