Friedrich Engels alleged: “The workers vegetated throughout a passably comfortable existence, leading a righteous and peaceful life in all piety and probity, and their material position was far batter off than hteir successors.”
This was written of an age characterized by staggeringly high mortality rates, especially among children, crowded towns and villages untouched by sanitation and notoriously high gin consumption. The working class diet consisted mainly of oatmeal, milk, cheese and beer; while bread, potatoes, coffee, tea, sugar and meat were still expenive luxuries. Bathing was infrequent and laundering was a rarity because soap was so costly; and clothing, which had to last a decade or a generation, would not last if washed too often.
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on Women and Children – Robert Hessen (1962)
On Monday, were back with Mr. Alan Greenspan’s “Assault on Integrity” essay