SUMMARY

Native American and European societies functioned through the labor of men and women working in order to survive. Native Americans often worked for the good of the community. Some European colonists worked for themselves and their families in some form of collective, cooperative, or communal relationships and just as many, if not more, labored for the elites. In the colonies, the elites and successful artisans and yeomen experienced some comfort and economic independence. The vast majority of colonists, however, endured hardships and economic insecurity or even economic dependency. In addition, by the middle of the eighteenth century, people witnessed widening economic disparities as some became richer while many became poorer. Social tensions mounted within and among the colonies and between the colonies and Great Britain. Many colonists sought various ways to resolve their problems in the ten years preceding the Battles of Lexington and Concord (1775).

In general, pre-industrial people worked hard, long hours, usually in very dangerous conditions, often without anything approaching what twenty-first century Americans consider large machinery and laborsaving devices. Their tools and machinery were handheld or small items that fit in a room of a house. People who owned their own tools and machinery, especially if such implements were small, had greater opportunity to control, if not own, their own means of producing and making a living. The large tools were machines like windmills, furnaces, forges, watermills, handlooms, printing presses, sailing ships, and so forth. Individuals who owned large tools and machinery are more likely to have others working for them.

Preindustrial people lacked concepts such as the workweek and fixed daily or weekly working hours. With the exception of slaves, prisoners, and other coerced individuals, most people worked when they had to work. Paradoxically, many working people in many preindustrial societies with moral economies worked fewer days than working people do in modern industrial societies, including most Americans in twenty-first-century "postindustrial" United States. For example, if inhabitants in today's hunting and gathering societies express disbelief to learn that people in modern societies work far beyond an average of twenty hours a week, then one can imagine what hunting and gathering people of yesteryear might think of modern people laboring for forty or sixty or more hours a week.

One of the most significant underlying issues in this lesson essay is the meaning of freedom in the world of work. To what extent do most twenty-first century Americans have control over their work or final decision-making authority on their jobs. In other words, how many people call their jobs their own jobs? How many Americans are CEOs, owners, or bosses of their own careers or jobs? The bottom line is that (most) people have to work in order to survive. Yet, how free are they when they own their own jobs or when they work for someone else?