The 1700 and 1800's - The Era of Misery

" Do you really think that English peasants in the 1800s were so enthusiastic to give up their rural, communal lifestyle for below-subsistence wages in the dangerous factories set up by early capitalists?"

Taxcutter says:
They voluntarily left their communal villages in droves. Nobody was forcing them to do so at bayonet-point. They saw going to the factories as being in their own self-interest. Many did stay in their communal villages and died in squalid poverty. the factories were hardly utopia but the factories offered a lot more opportunities than the old villages.

 

Some of them certainly were "forced", if not by bayonet then by forced sale. It happened all the time, not necessarily to the detriment of every peasant who had to sell but it did happen. Also, nothing you said changes the fact that these changes needed massive government action to happen. The General Enclosure Act of 1801 was needed to make mechanized agriculture work on a large-scale and the Poor Law Reform of 1834 forced most men into workhouses. Laissez-faire never existed, at least not in England.

 

Did they own any land or just a tenant farmers on large estates?

 

" Laissez-faire never existed, at least not in England."

Taxcutter says:
That's why they got on ships in droves to come to America.

 

Get with the times man. Things have changed a lot since ancient Greece.

India? You can't be serious. Europe is a continent. Switzerland is highly culturally homogeneous, unlike the US, and this can cause problems for cultural minorities: An exception to homogeneity: How Jews do and don't fit into Swiss culture

If you're not a Federalist, then why are you so supportive of Federal power?

 

The US in its first century was as close to laissez-faire as any economy has ever been and it was an unprecedented, unparalleled success. Apparently, though, at some point, something changed to make this system no longer viable or optimal. I wish someone could tell me what it was or when it happened.

 

Yes, most of them were just tenant farmers but prior to the enclosures most of their rents were prolonged indefinitely. The lord technically "owned" the land but maintained an open field system.

 

Why is the USA the only country that harks back to the 17 and 1800´s.... jesus Christ alive, the OP has buckets of despair about it.

 

You explained that well.. Thanks.

 

Hmm...All diseases with etiology brought by Europeans immigrating to America. If it was so bad why did your family come to America? If America and Americans are so bad why are you still here?

 

I have never said Americans are bad..... but the good old days were full of disease.

My family has been in America since the 1620s. Why are you so defensive?

 

Phoebe have you ever walked in old cemeteries? There was a lot of death and disease.

 

Oh, genius, how wrong can you get? All that economic 'growth' you speak of went to the top .0005%. $0 plus $1,000,000 = $1,000,000. The next year it was $0 plus $1,000,001 = $1,000,001. Who gives a flying feck?

 

Slavery, child prostitution, child labor, rampant violence, rampant drug use, high workplace related fatalities, women as second-class citizens...

 

Maybe yes, maybe no, but progressive boondoggles had a lot to do with stopping robber baronism and company townism and their resultant poverty, starvation, prostitution, tuberculosis, mine cave-ins, and (if you need a disease) black lung.

 

The cemeteries tell the story.. If you had little kids and your wife died of diphtheria or pneumonia or whatever.. and you were a farmer.... You walked down the road to the next farm and married the daughter.

 

Is there something wrong with studying the past or comparing it with the present? We had amazing results in the 1700's and 1800's, so why can't we "hark back" to them?

 

Somehow "Small_government_caligula" is mixing European history and American history falsely. The British, French, Spanish and Portuguese first populated the Americas with "criminals" released from their prisons indentured to the "governors" of the individual colony sites staffed by soldiers. Not many of the "colonists" came to America by choice in the beginning of the 16th and 17th Centuries. It's a shame that many have slept through their American history classes and accept the revisionist history fed to them by the Progressive Left..

 

No they didn't .. Have you ever heard of the Dutch East Indies company... or the The London Company's Royal Charter of Virginia?

These people worked off their passage and support by providing timber and dried cod to the English or Dutch.. They weren't criminals.

There was also sugar and rum..

 

I'm not the one that is defensive. No one has denied that disease was a part of life throughout the world not only America or the Americas. The Europeans that came to America in the 17th century brought their diseases with them.
"From the 1620s until the American Revolution, the British colonies in North America received transported British criminals, effectively double the period that Australian colonies received convicts. The American Revolutionary War brought that to an end and, since the remaining British colonies in what is now Canada were close to the new United States of America, prisoners sent there might become hostile to British authorities. Thus, the British Government was forced to look elsewhere."

 

There was no antibiotics.. and you could die of a broken leg or sepsis or cholera..

 

"There was no antibiotics."

Taxcutter says:
Big Government had nothing to do with antibiotics.

 

Where is your evidence for that claim? According to the data, between 1790 and 1912, real GDP grew by 4.15% per year on average[1], while wages for unskilled labor and blue-collar workers rose by 1.26% and 1.77% per year on average, respectively[2]. That's about one-third and two-fifths of the growth going to unskilled and middle class workers, respectively.

[1] - http://www.measuringworth.com/growt...790&end[]=1912&beginP[]=&endP[]=&US[]=REALGDP
[2] - http://www.measuringworth.com/growt...beginP[]=&endP[]=&US[]=UNSKILLED&US[]=MANCOMP

 

I saw that.. There WERE no antibiotics.

Kids died of scarlet fever and damaged hearts...

I can trace my family back a long way.. They died of diarrhea.. and tetanus.. measles, and so on..

 

When I see paintings of my city and street from that era, I see nothing applicable to today. Harking back is just silliness.