249,211 views
13 votes
13 votes
17. How did the Market Revolution change the way Americans viewed work and leisure
time?

User KDeogharkar
by
2.9k points

1 Answer

22 votes
22 votes

Answer:

The emerging industrial economy produced changes in leisure. Leisure became increasingly separate from work, rather than intertwined with it. Employers considered the workday time that laborers should devote exclusively to the tasks at hand; recreation and amusement would have to wait until after quitting time. In addition to separating work and leisure, industrialization also changed their venues. With the rise of factories, fewer workers labored at home. Though workers continued to recreate with their families, they also sought amusement and sociability outside of the home, in taverns, theaters, and clubs populated by other workers. A host of new leisure venues and services, ranging from icecream parlors and workingmen's libraries to brothels and unlicensed drinking establishments, sprang up to meet the new demands for recreation outside the home.

Though factory work required less skill than the craft system, it imposed work discipline on laborers unaccustomed to the regimentation of their time and activities. Because factories required a steady, reliable workforce that would produce consistent amounts of product during the week, preindustrial patterns of work and leisure began to disappear: Employers discouraged drinking on the job, forbade socializing during work, and prohibited Monday holidays, workers responded in a variety of ways to these changes. Some adopted new standards of promptness, diligence, and temperance in an effort to gain favor and economic advancement from employers. Others rejected the new industrial discipline, clinging to older patterns of work and leisure. Preferring independence to advancement, traditionalist workers preserved drinking practices, favored periods of intense labor followed by raucous celebrations, and continued to celebrate St. Monday. Still others adopted new patterns of leisure, but not to please employers. Labor organizers who wished to limit employers' authority urged workers to be temperate and to use their leisure for reading, reflection, and intellectual improvement. Sober, literate workers, they reasoned, would be more useful in the struggle to gain concessions from employers

Women, too, felt the impact of these changes. With men away from home, child-care and family responsibilities fell more heavily on wives and mothers, curtailing, in some cases, time that might have been devoted to leisure pursuits. The new public leisure facilities often excluded women, making recreation outside the home largely a male preserve. Thus women's leisure and recreation centered more than ever on the home, and on interaction with other women. Moreover, women, especially those of the middle class, assumed responsibilities for making men's leisure time spent at home pleasant and uplifting.

User Dave Reid
by
3.6k points