Full Throttle Industry
This is Part II of a multipart series on Labor Day. Click here for Part I.
How many people today are all about the Hustle? How many subscribe to the #nosleep movement? How many buy into the whole “If I work hard enough, I’ll earn a good life and happiness for myself?” Work harder, push further, drive, drive, drive. How much of that is built into American culture? Many would say (rightly, I may add) that this work ethic is what made America what it is today.
But there is a terrible dark side to this ethos. We have only to look back 150 years to see what life looks like when everyone is EXPECTED to hustle. How many of the #nosleepers you know would last working 12+ hour shifts, six or seven days a week, in the steel or textile mills of the late 1800s? Would you be proud of how hard you hustle? Would you still believe that all the effort and energy you’re putting in is making a better life for you? Are you happier working like this all the time?
Agricultural Roots
Like any nation, the core of America’s economy began with the land. This is why America was colonized in the first place. People survive and thrive from the food and natural resources that their environment produces, and America was (and still is) incredibly rich with raw materials and arable land. Those who originally came here sought fortunes predicated on farming and agriculture.
And as anyone who has EVER worked on a farm knows, work on a farm is never done. There’s ALWAYS something more to do. Most farmers and hired hands adopted a natural circadian policy of working first-light to dark, meaning about 7-9 hours of work per day depending on the season. And on small-scale start-up farms, your survival depended on that work getting done.
So the ethic of a full day of hard labor was always ingrained in America’s working class. However, work followed a natural rhythm, ebbed and waned during the seasons, there was access to clean air, water, and open space, and many were able to directly reap the rewards of their labor at harvest.
Rise of the Machine
With the 1800s, though, arrives the age of the machine, and with it the opportunities for VAST fortunes. But only if you happen to be one of the very few who have the resources to afford one of these massively expensive machines. Machines are the new producers (or means of production), not inefficient human hands. Machines will make more for humanity than humans ever could. In fact, many who have seen what these miracles machines can make truly believe that all of this Industry will actually save humanity. These machines are our saviors, our gods. And machines need energy and fuel to run.
Now imagine yourself in that time and place. You almost certainly don’t have a lot of money, so you probably don’t have much of an education and therefore don’t have opportunity to get a higher-paying specialized job. Clearly you can’t afford one of these machines yourself. You really only have one resource to trade – your own body and the energy that it produces. So you trade the sweat of your brow and the work of your hands for the resources you need to survive, just like your family has always done on the farm.
However, you see the world around you is changing, and you hear that for an average Joe/Jane like you, there’s a little more money to be made in these new factories. You’re tired of trying to scratch out an uncertain living from the ground, so you head off to the city to get one of these jobs. You get after the Hustle.
Or, you may simply just find yourself born in the city to a working-class family, with no real opportunities to choose between town and country. So you do what you have to do to eat and you also get after the Hustle.
Now imagine your boss is also all about that Hustle. Your boss is a man of his time and a rational human being. He recognizes that it’s not your hands that are bringing him wealth, it’s his machine. Your energy, your body are ultimately just the fuel for his machine. And since the only rules are to get the most you can out of everything you have, well, what do you expect is going to happen to you?
In this world, is there any logical reason for your boss to not to treat you just like a machine? Something whose value is tied to what it can produce? And the only way to increase its value is to increase its efficiency? If the machines are our saviors, our ideal entities, why would your boss not expect you to behave like one? Why would he not push you to do more and more with less and less? All while telling you that it’s good for you and working hard is going to give you a better life?
Are you still all about that Hustle?
Do you feel like your life is everything you want it to be? Do you feel like it matches the promise of the American Dream? Or, as the years go by, and every single day you’ve given your body and your energy just to make it to the next day, with no gain or no end in sight, do you feel trapped in a system that exploits you?
Redlining the Engines
Today, we all have (or should have) a basic understanding of how engines work, since they’re such a part of our everyday life, especially in our cars. We know that we have to monitor the data of the engine’s performance, periodically checking temperature, speed, etc., otherwise the engine could be damaged and us along with it.
One of the gauges we should be familiar with is the tachometer. This tells us how fast the engine is revving. At the end of the gauge is the maximum the engine can handle, and it’s usually marked in red. The red line means danger. It’s a warning that means the engine is being pushed too hard. Sometimes we need that maximum energy for a short time. But we all know that can’t be the normal operating level. It’s not healthy for the engine.
But what if you didn’t have a tachometer? What if you had no gauge to tell you that you were pushing the machine too hard, stepping too hard on the gas? How would you know when to ease off before something inside breaks? How do you know when you’re pushing yourself too hard?
Or, what if you believed that it’s impossible to push yourself too hard? What if you believed there were no limits? Imagine you live in a world where if you find yourself at the end of your rope, well that’s just your weakness and you need to work harder to expand your capacity. Maybe you don’t have to try too hard to imagine that.
In the late 1800’s, America had known nothing except limitless expansion. The frontier was theirs for the taking (emphasis on taking) and the Industrial Revolution had opened up entire worlds of opportunity for wealth and advancement. A young, energetic country with no boundaries and a distinct history of exploration, determination, and rebellion was faced with an open road. So it continued to step on the gas.
It was still a new world. Society as a whole didn’t know the limits, or if they did they chose to ignore them. There wasn’t a functioning tachometer telling those driving the car that they’re pushing it too hard, or the drivers were convinced that the engine could handle it. The engine was supposed to handle it. That’s what it’s for. That’s it’s job.
America was redlining. And the engines, the factories, were starting to strain.
For some interesting facts and figures and an in-depth look at Work Hours in American history, be sure to check out this article.