‘in training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton’
[...] The commonplace doctrine of employers in the 18th century was the simple one that only the lowest possible wages could enforce the poor to work: as Arthur Young declared, in 1771, "every one but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious". Metho…
a movement which succeeded, very largely, in extirpating this insidious ‘violation’ of the Lord’s Day
For centuries the Established Church had preached to the poor the duties of obedience. But it was so distanced from them – and its distance was rarely greater than in this time of absenteeism and plural livings – that its homilies had ceased to have much effect.
All in all, it is an unremarkable record. In fifty years of the Industrial Revolution the working-class share of the national product had almost certainly fallen relative to the share of the property-owning and professional classes. The ‘average’ working man remained very close to subsistence level…
