Again, please put this rhetoric in perspective, not in the eyes of a 21st century person from a developped society, but in the eyes of a person of that time, who had the choice between staying in an enpoverished countryside, potentially victim of starvation and malnourishment, and the perspective of having a stable, paid job in a factory.
Let's not play the "they chose it" or "at least they were fed" argument for those situations. Having to choose between starvation and working as a wage-slave in horrible conditions, as they had, is not really a choice at all.
It's just employees of the time TAKING ADVANTAGE of people that had no other option than giving in to them, and the laws et al permitting them to do so. It is only slightly better than the "choice" slaves had, i.e that of working for their masters or getting killed.
People were NOT stupid. They made the choice of "more gains", not less. They ended up richer and in better position than where they started. They progressed on the social ladder.
Yes, working to your bone and getting paid peanuts is "more gains" over dying of starvation. Nothing to write home about, though.
I wouldn't call it exactly "progressing on the social ladder" either. Those people were dirt poor, they died dirt poor, and their children were dirt poor also, usually working on the same dead end conditions. With the occasional success story.
And those people knew the were getting a raw deal. That's how the labour movement was established, that's why people fought for the 8-hour day. And those people were also many times killed, by private guards and even the national guard, ever lending a hand to the rich men of their day, when they asked for fairer treatment.
One of my most vivid memories was visiting the Ludlow site in Ludlow, Colorado, and hearing of the story of the Ludlow Massacre, one of many. Here it is:
> I wouldn't call it exactly "progressing on the social ladder" either. Those people were dirt poor, they died dirt poor, and their children were dirt poor also, usually working on the same dead end conditions. With the occasional success story.
I disagree. They did not die as poor as they started off. They were able to save a little, raise children and some of them did get education. This is the result of wealth creation. Life expectancy increased. They WERE better off.
By the way, facts and studies on the subject do not corroborate your theories:
"According to estimates by economist N. F. R. Crafts, British income per person (in 1970 U.S. dollars) rose from about $400 in 1760 to $430 in 1800, to $500 in 1830, and then jumped to $800 in 1860. (For many centuries before the industrial revolution, in contrast, periods of falling income offset periods of rising income.) Crafts’s estimates indicate slow growth lasting from 1760 to 1830 followed by higher growth beginning sometime between 1830 and 1860. For this doubling of real income per person between 1760 and 1860 not to have made the lowest-income people better off, the share of income going to the lowest 65 percent of the population would have had to fall by half for them to be worse off after all that growth. It did not. In 1760, the lowest 65 percent received about 29 percent of total income in Britain; in 1860, their share was down only four percentage points to 25 percent. So the lowest 65 percent were substantially better off, with an increase in average real income of more than 70 percent."
And this one too:
"Other evidence supports the conclusion of slow improvement in living standards during the years of the industrial revolution. Crafts and C. K. Harley have emphasized the limited spread of modernization in England throughout most of the century of the industrial revolution. Feinstein estimated consumption per person for each decade between the 1760s and 1850s, and found only a small rise in consumption between 1760 and 1820 and a rapid rise after 1820. On the other hand, according to historians E. A. Wrigley and Roger S. Schofield, between 1781 and 1851, life expectancy at birth rose from thirty-five years to forty years, a 15 percent increase. Although this increase was modest compared with what was to come, it was nevertheless substantial."
Let's not play the "they chose it" or "at least they were fed" argument for those situations. Having to choose between starvation and working as a wage-slave in horrible conditions, as they had, is not really a choice at all.
It's just employees of the time TAKING ADVANTAGE of people that had no other option than giving in to them, and the laws et al permitting them to do so. It is only slightly better than the "choice" slaves had, i.e that of working for their masters or getting killed.
People were NOT stupid. They made the choice of "more gains", not less. They ended up richer and in better position than where they started. They progressed on the social ladder.
Yes, working to your bone and getting paid peanuts is "more gains" over dying of starvation. Nothing to write home about, though.
I wouldn't call it exactly "progressing on the social ladder" either. Those people were dirt poor, they died dirt poor, and their children were dirt poor also, usually working on the same dead end conditions. With the occasional success story.
And those people knew the were getting a raw deal. That's how the labour movement was established, that's why people fought for the 8-hour day. And those people were also many times killed, by private guards and even the national guard, ever lending a hand to the rich men of their day, when they asked for fairer treatment.
One of my most vivid memories was visiting the Ludlow site in Ludlow, Colorado, and hearing of the story of the Ludlow Massacre, one of many. Here it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre