Making slow but sure progress in E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. 'Sure' in the sense that a slow reading allows for assimilation of the often compelling detail of what it was like back then. And still is today, in so many ways.
Here's a little something from one J. Smith's Memoirs of Wool, published in 1747:
The poor in the manufacturing counties will never work any more time in general than is necessary just to live and support their weekly debauches... We can fairly aver that a reduction of wages in the woolen manufacture would be a national blessing and advantage , and no real injury to the poor. By this means we might keep our trade, uphold our rents, and reform the people into the bargain.
Thompson doesn't tell us anything about J. Smith but I reckon we can safely 'aver' that he was one of the masters from the upper classes happily looking down on those suffering below. His voice reminds me of those I hear today who favour austerity and an end to unions organising for the rights of ordinary folk to protect them from from creeps like him and those who regard themselves as somehow superior to those who have to genuinely labour manually for a living.
Nothing much changes, eh?
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