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usrevenge t1_iz43ixk wrote

Reply to comment by RainbowEmpire in TIL "The Twelve Days of Christmas" STARTS on Christmas Day, and ends of January 5th (Three Kings Day). by HauntedHippie

Iirc in peasant times all these were paid holidays basically.

The average person who works 40 hours a week works significantly more hours a year than they would have as a peasant.

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CryptidGrimnoir t1_iz49pb2 wrote

And by comparison, it's forty hours in an office as opposed to x number of hours working backbreaking labor on a farm, for crops they had to give to their fiefdom.

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LittleGreenSoldier t1_iz53ynv wrote

From a farming family here.

There's really only two periods per year where the work is that hard, even pre-industrial, and that's plowing and harvesting. Each is a sort of two week crunch time. The rest of the year is actually pretty chill, you get into a routine.

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canalrhymeswithanal t1_iz9yikr wrote

Then why the hell America need to enslave so many people? Should've just gone to a temp agency.

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LittleGreenSoldier t1_iza20lr wrote

Cotton is a way more labour intensive crop. The bolls had to be picked by hand, and because they're mostly air they take up a huge volume, meaning more trips back and forth to empty your basket/sack/whatever. In addition to that, there was a MASSIVE upswing in demand for cotton because of the industrial revolution, and the mechanization of textile manufacturing. Suddenly machines could card, spin and weave cotton faster than a hundred people could. With that skyrocketing demand came the plantations, just like with sugar in the Caribbean; huge monoculture farms planting on an industrial scale. You can pay workers to do that, but buying a slave is an upfront cost equal to about a year's wages for a free worker, and you have that slave until they die. Buy a woman and you can make more slaves for no additional cost.

It's monstrous, but they considered it solely an economical decision.

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canalrhymeswithanal t1_iza2fgv wrote

I should've added the /s tag, but also this was informative and I appreciate that.

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Sintarus t1_iz5m9k7 wrote

Except for everyone who works a physical job, who: checks notes is a shit ton of people.

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worthrone11160606 t1_iz4etgz wrote

That is absolutely not true though.

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Jumpy-Win5810 t1_iz6fpu6 wrote

It's very true. Peasants had lots of time off. They used this time to complete tasks that we don't have today. Mostly, they went out gathering natural materials needed to produce household items/foods/medicine.

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worthrone11160606 t1_iz6kfdo wrote

They did not have lots of time off. If by time off you mean getting the field ready for the next harvest, hunting for food, war and famine and all that other stuff fhan yeah they had time off

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