Most people did toil very long hours back then, but Franklin was one of the first to make the jump from common class into pseudo-nobility. Class mobility was a new thing back then.
The idea of "work" was considered very uncool at the time, especially to upper class, or social climbers like Franklin who mixed with them. I heard somewhere that this is why old school scientific publications have names like "Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c." Because we're not working, we're just observing.
"These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind."[1]
But also:
"Based on the amount of work performed — for example, crops raised per worker — Carr (1992) concludes that in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake region, “for at least six months of the year, an eight to ten-hour day of hard labor was necessary.” This does not account for other required tasks, which probably took about three hours per day. This workday was considerably longer than for English laborers, who at the time probably averaged closer to six hours of heavy labor each day."[2]
Comments
Most people did toil very long hours back then, but Franklin was one of the first to make the jump from common class into pseudo-nobility. Class mobility was a new thing back then.
The idea of "work" was considered very uncool at the time, especially to upper class, or social climbers like Franklin who mixed with them. I heard somewhere that this is why old school scientific publications have names like "Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c." Because we're not working, we're just observing.
A few counterpoints:
"These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind."[1]
But also:
"Based on the amount of work performed — for example, crops raised per worker — Carr (1992) concludes that in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake region, “for at least six months of the year, an eight to ten-hour day of hard labor was necessary.” This does not account for other required tasks, which probably took about three hours per day. This workday was considerably longer than for English laborers, who at the time probably averaged closer to six hours of heavy labor each day."[2]
[1] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... [2]http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/