America 1870-1900 - OCCUPATIONS- The Many Roads to Riches

This section opens with a double photo spread of “Puddlers” and waterboys at an Ohio steel mill. Don’t none of them look happy in their work! There is that one little boy I'm pointing at with a half smile and the rest are all dead eyed. It is from the Massillon Museum in Massillon, Ohio.

The list for the 1890 employment census information is split by gender and it is about what you would expect. I watch the first two episodes of HARLOTS on Hulu a few days ago and it too was about what you would expect - about as sexy as a kick in the groin. But they said in 1762 or so in London one in six women made their living in the sex trade. That occupation is not even listed on the census! I do wonder about the veracity of that statement. 

Franklin Wilson says, "Work has sometimes been called worship, and the dusty, smoky workshop a temple: because there man glorifies the great Architect by imitating him in providing for the wants of his creatures."  Which sounds like he is trying to justify the fact that most people had to work so hard under such awful circumstances back then. 

There is a section about how the industrial revolution completely blew out job prospects. However, they do use the phrase “coolie wages. The whole bootstrap-y bullshit got its start here in the freedom of the USA.  By 1890, 3.7 million women were working and 7 out of 10 colleges were coeducational. Surely the playing field will soon be level! And those 1.75 million kids under 15 who were working were just getting a head start towards prosperity!

At this point let us give a brief prayer of thanks for the labor movement. 

Sailor, thresher, cowboy, newspaper publisher, sheepherder, surveyor, housemaids, waitresses, telephone linemen, miners, hop pickers, wagoners and blacksmiths - of the 100+ people pictured 13 were women and one was a person of color. Guess who?

The Cowboy! They count about 40,000 of these “hard riding nomads, of whom 5000 were Negroes like this man.” And there is the cutest picture of a cowboy who knows he is smokin’ hot. As a matter of fact, the cowboy, the newspaper publisher, the sheep herder and the surveyor look like the gilded age version of Mystery Date. 

The waitresses are pictured in front of the Pine Street Dining Room in Manchester, New Hampshire. The housemaids are in front of a boarding house. Wouldn’t they live where they work? What was the live in/live out ratio I wonder?

Education is up next. We will get to that extremely fraught subject real soon!