When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely the pace of work relaxed. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. The implicit - but rarely articulated - assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. At noon he must have his sleeping time, then his bever in the afternoon, which spendeth a great part of the day and when his hour cometh at night, at the first stroke of the clock he casteth down his tools, leaveth his work, in what need or case soever the work standeth. SchorĪnd: Eight centuries of annual hours The labouring man will take his rest long in the morning a good piece of the day is spent afore he come at his work then he must have his breakfast, though he have not earned it at his accustomed hour, or else there is grudging and murmuring when the clock smiteth, he will cast down his burden in the midway, and whatsoever he is in hand with, he will leave it as it is, though many times it is marred afore he come again he may not lose his meat, what danger soever the work is in. Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today'sįrom The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, by Juliet B. Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's Workweek Reduction Equivalent: a measure of potential economic progress