By Frank Noakes
Charles Dickens writing during and of early industrial Britain (those glorious days extolled by Margaret Thatcher et al), relates that entry to public parks in the industrial towns was prohibitively expensive, except on Sunday afternoons, when it was free.
The philosophy behind this, notes Dickens, decreed that workers should be at work 10-16 hours a day, Monday through Saturday, and in church on Sunday morning. Only the "better" classes had the time and money to promenade through the parks at their leisure (and without the "offensive" lower orders) whenever they chose.
British scholar Eric Hobsbawn states: "The Industrial Revolution marks the most fundamental transformation of human life in the history of the world recorded in written documents". At the height of that revolution, time off — in reality there was very little leisure — was kept to a minimum; premature ageing and an early grave were the reward for the new industrial working class. Men and women were literally worked to death.
Even today, North Americans in employment work 25% more than the medieval average, claims Juliet Schor in The Overworked American. Weekly hours of work in the 14th century are estimated to be around 40, rising sharply to an average of 70 during the industrial revolution. While the number of hours worked in a typical week have returned to around 40 hours in the industrialised world, the amount of time spent travelling to and from work and the increased intensity of the labour process continue to make for an unfavourable comparison.
Writing in the US magazine Independent Politics, Alex Chis notes: "In the 19th century, movements began for the 10-hour day, and had some victories. But the continued extraordinary length of the working year led to movements to further shorten the working day. These culminated in mass strikes and protests in the major industrial cities of the US on May 1, 1886. Out of this movement came international May Day, and the demand of the eight hour day became its main slogan. This was won generally in the 20th century." But, as Chis reminds us, this is being whittled away continually.
Extremes were often resorted to in an effort to maximise the working day, particularly after the shorter working week was won, in the early part of this century. Anyone familiar with the Charlie Chaplin movie Modern Times will recall the hilarious scene where Chaplin, the hapless production line worker, is hooked up to a feeding machine to obviate the need for a lunch break.
In his book Leisure in Australia, Stanley Parker points out, "Today we tend to think of leisure and recreation as something that we have time for only after paid employment or household duties or other obligatory activities. But this has not always been so. In non-industrial societies in the past, and even in some parts of the world today, people do not divide their lives into periods of work and periods of not-work or leisure. Instead, all of their daily activities partake both of the nature of work and of leisure ...
"[T]hey tend to couple this with behaviour that we would normally associate with leisure: chanting, singing, telling stories, taking frequent breaks for refreshment, starting and stopping when they feel like it rather than by the clock. A time-budget study of Aboriginal people under traditional conditions shows that food gathering or hunting not only consumed a relatively small part of the day, but also that it was undertaken at an extremely leisurely and pleasant pace, being interspersed with talking, sitting by the fire or sleeping."
In the initial, competitive, stage of capitalist development, the Protestant work ethic ruled, emphasising discipline and productivity. Work equalled life and living. However, once, through necessity, the working day was reduced and free time increased, employers and governments became increasingly concerned that this ethos might be usurped. Leisure became a "problem". Might workers enjoy time off and demand more, might the time for socialising become time for organising and lead to resistance? Time off had to be organised, made productive; temperance societies were encouraged, churches organised more activities, and "useful" education was rewarded.
Work, discipline, order, productivity, all being re-emphasised today, are still the catchcry of our institutions from the cradle to the grave. One has been added since the industrial revolution: consume, or more specifically, buy.
As productivity, through technological advance, increased, and as workers organised to win a greater share of the fruits of their labours, incomes increased beyond the minimum necessary to keep body and soul together. Leisure became possible (although far less so for women, who work a double shift), and was transformed into a commodity to be bought and sold.
"If people are going to have leisure, let's organise, regulate and sell it to them!" was the response of business. Professional sport, entertainment and holidays are neatly packaged for easy, if often expensive, consumption. The advertising agencies of big business have sold us productive leisure.