The reality of "The Good Old Days"

[Meeka]

In a lot of the Fundies blog they harp on how wonderful things were when women stayed home and the children were homeschooled. I came across this as to the realty for some in those days.

bjws.blogspot.ca/2012/09/women-children-working-in-early-20th.html

[Ariel]

What a fabulous historical resource!

What stands out to me is how OLD most of those children look. Some of them appear to have wrinkles!

I've never had rose-colored glasses on in regards to the good old days- my grandma started working at a factory at age 12 and couldn't afford the bus fare to go to high school, so they've never seemed that glamorous to me. I guess it's knowing that if I were born 100 years ago I would 100% be doing this kind of labor.

[No Cure for Stupid]

Tsk-tsk. Everyone knows that the "Good Old Days" were "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," "Leave it to Beaver," and "Father Knows Best." That's the real "Good Old Days."

It doesn't matter that -- in the real world -- most people wanted their kids to go to college and do better than they did or that many households were single-parent and that many women worked multiple jobs to take care of their families...

[Iokaste]

What really stands out to me is how tired and dirty and under-nurished as they are, so many of them still have a sparkle in thier eye from the novelty of being photographed, it's just heart wrenching.

A few years ago I read a book based on the 26th picture: "Addie Laird, 12 years old. Spinner in a Cotton Mill. Girls in mill say she is 10 years old. She admitted to me that she was 12 years old, that she started during school vacation and now would stay. North Pownal, Vt, February 1910" (I believe she was sometimes refered to as Addie Card), I think it was the one called "Counting on Grace", Grace being based on the little girl in the photo, google tells me it is by an author called Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop. It's a children's book, but I remember it as being fairly good although a little slow.

[ThatSnark]

If these pictures resonate with you, you might enjoy a website called shorpy.com, which is named from a caption on one of these child labor photos. Right out of college, I worked at a nursing home in a mill town with people who had worked in textile mills since childhood -- these were the fortunate ones who had survived to old age with a lesser version of the lung problems that took their family and friends much younger due to poor ventilation. The Good Old Days were only good for the wealthy. The majority of people led hard, hard lives.

[danvillebelle]

If these pictures resonate with you, you might enjoy a website called shorpy.com, which is named from a caption on one of these child labor photos. Right out of college, I worked at a nursing home in a mill town with people who had worked in textile mills since childhood -- these were the fortunate ones who had survived to old age with a lesser version of the lung problems that took their family and friends much younger due to poor ventilation. The Good Old Days were only good for the wealthy. The majority of people led hard, hard lives.

Exactly, and these nimrods project themselves and their 21st century middle-class incomes backwards 50-75 years and assume all would be hunky-dory, not even thinking about the fact that they'd probably have been born poor.

My Nana's good old days...born in a cabin in Southeastern KY, 5th of 6th siblings. Father was a blacksmith, a barber, 2-3 other things and farmed their land to get by. At age 5 she watched her mother die in front of her; blood poisoning from the 7th child she was carrying who had died in utero. Her dad testified in court against someone and in retribution they burned his house to the ground. When she was about 9, he remarried a woman with 4 kids of her own. They couldn't afford to feed everyone (this is 1930), so my Nana, her older brother and younger sister were shipped off to live with their oldest married sister. When she took my dad back to visit her family in 1945, the living conditions were unchanged from when she was a girl; no electricity, no running water, outhouse in the back.

Yeah, those fun good old days. And when I was little I wondered why Nana was always so obsessed with financial security and the house burning down from being struck by lightning in a storm. :(

[EmiGirl]

My great grandmother always said the only thing good about the "Good Ole Days" is that they're gone.

[curlytoes79]

What a fabulous historical resource!

What stands out to me is how OLD most of those children look. Some of them appear to have wrinkles!

Wow, no kidding. The "adolescents" in the third picture look like they're in their 30s and 40s. That's hard living for sure.

[Marianne]

When they talk about the "good old days", they talk about the "good old days" for the rich and the high class.

Thank you for the link, this blog is very interesting.

[TressieThales]

Thank you for this. While browsing this blog, I found this entry, which ties in nicely with the original you posted:

bjws.blogspot.com/2012/09/women-children-working-at-home-in-early.html

[curlytoes79]

Thank you for this. While browsing this blog, I found this entry, which ties in nicely with the original you posted:

bjws.blogspot.com/2012/09/women-children-working-at-home-in-early.html

For these poor folks, each child that pops up has to start pulling their weight and earning money fairly soon after they're born. There's no way to support such a large family otherwise, and there's scarce access to affordable and effective birth control .

[Conuly]

What a fabulous historical resource!

What stands out to me is how OLD most of those children look. Some of them appear to have wrinkles!

I've never had rose-colored glasses on in regards to the good old days- my grandma started working at a factory at age 12 and couldn't afford the bus fare to go to high school, so they've never seemed that glamorous to me. I guess it's knowing that if I were born 100 years ago I would 100% be doing this kind of labor.

When my mother was in high school, she went to Belgium to spend some time with her dying grandfather. They had a visitor from somewhere in Africa, and her grandfather asked "do you have schools in your country?" which embarrassed my mother and grandmother no end. The civil rights movement was getting to be big in the US, and what sort of racist question is that?

It wasn't until later that my mother remembered that, of course, her grandfather only had a third grade education. He had to leave school at eight to go to work. And for that matter, his daughter, MY grandmother, was supposed to go to university but never did. When the war started she left school and went to work and never had a chance to continue her education. But in two, three generations things changed so much that my mother and grandmother were horrified and embarrassed at ignorant Opa* suggesting that this man might not have had any schools where he was from.

* Come to think of it, I think Opa was *his* father and he was Pa Jo, but I'm not sure how to spell that in either French or Walloon. It's not terribly relevant.

Edit again: I say Walloon because, of course, that's what he spoke growing up. My grandmother never really learned it because they were determined she would get ahead in life, and so they only ever spoke French to her. This is how languages die - people really, really, really want their kids to do better than they did in the bad old days, and they are willing to pay whatever it costs.

[SPHASH]

Would I want to live in "The Good Old Days". No. But I would love to time travel back to the 20's for a day or two (or any era for that matter) where I could wear a flapper dress, watch Babe Ruth play baseball, listen to Ben Selvin on the radio, or imbibe at a speakseasy. Call me corny but I love pop culture from decades gone by. Hell I would even settle for the 80's.

[snarkyjan]

Around 1932, my paternal grandfather suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed and confined either to a wheelchair or his bed for the rest of his life. Due to his disability and with two small daughters to support, my grandmother at one point worked 7 different jobs because no one employer could give her more than 5 to 8 hours of work a week. Things only improved somewhat about 6 years later, when she finally found a full-time job and when my mother was old enough to augment the family income by babysitting (at 11). Good old days, my hindquarters!

[Trynn]

I think it is good to look at both the good and the bad of any time period. Only then can we truly learn.

[lilah]

When they talk about the "good old days", they talk about the "good old days" for the rich and the high class.

Thank you for the link, this blog is very interesting.

Yeah most fundies like Lady Lydia and Anna T feshize a hybrid of being in an Austen novel crossed with little house on the prarire and some foofy Victorian crocheted doilies thrown in for good measure.

[OkToBeTakei]

Would I want to live in "The Good Old Days". No. But I would love to time travel back to the 20's for a day or two (or any era for that matter) where I could wear a flapper dress, watch Babe Ruth play baseball, listen to Ben Selvin on the radio, or imbibe at a speakseasy. Call me corny but I love pop culture from decades gone by. Hell I would even settle for the 80's.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! :lol: I really like to pretend the 80's never happened!

[Arete]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! :lol: I really like to pretend the 80's never happened!

I have a picture of myself in an 80s poodle perm. Trust us youngster, the 80s was nothing to get nostalgic about. :P

[Hane]

Would I want to live in "The Good Old Days". No. But I would love to time travel back to the 20's for a day or two (or any era for that matter) where I could wear a flapper dress, watch Babe Ruth play baseball, listen to Ben Selvin on the radio, or imbibe at a speakseasy. Call me corny but I love pop culture from decades gone by. Hell I would even settle for the 80's.

I was a full-fledged adult during the '80s. They were no great shakes.

ETA: When we were kids back in the '50s and '60s, we used to tease Grandma for loving to wash dishes. "Running hot and cold water is such a luxury," she always said. None of us ever understood--hadn't she been born and lived her entire life in New York City?

Then I visited The Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and saw how Grandma actually lived as a child and a young woman in the 1890s-1920s.

But in the Olden Days Everybody was Nice and Nobody Screwed Around. That's why, when Grandma came home and told her mother that Grandma and Grandpa had sneaked off to Town Hall and gotten married, my very Italian Catholic Great-Grandma asked, full of genuine concern, "Maggie--are you in trouble?"

[FloraKitty35]

Good old days! My paternal grandfather was not able emigrate from Hungary to Ellis Island, because of the quota system that was put in place after WWI, he had to immigrate to Montreal, Canada (he later entered the US legally on a work Visa, with his boss and his uncle vouching for him). My parents both lived without indoor plumbing for part of their childhoods. It was thanks to the REA (Rural Electrification Act, an evil government program) that my paternal grandparents were able to have electricity and indoor plumbing, when my father was about 7 (1944). My mom didn't live in a house that had indoor plumbing until she was 9 (1949). And my parents didn't live in the "Real America" (i.e. not the northeastern US) that right wingers harp on about my father was born, raised, and died in Kent County, DE and my mom is from Caroline County on the Maryland's Eastern Shore, she moved to Delaware when she was 9. Good old days, my ass! There was plenty of not so good and downright shitty days in the good old days.

[YPestis]

Wait, where's pictures of the mothers knitting dollies? Why aren't the ladies having tea parties?! :lol:

I still remember reading an article written by the Botkins' girls about learning how to "manage an estate" as part and parcel training for all SAHDs. All I could think was in what delusional world do middle class people expect their children to own large estates and manage servants?. Not only would that be preposterous for most families but if everyone grew up to become the master and mistress of their estate, who is left to be the servants?

I don't think most fundies are that stupid. I think the Botkins and some of the elite VF families like to project an air of privilege and elitism, and pretend that they are the heirs of the ruling gentry from years past. The rest of the their plebeian followers probably have lowered sights, believing that they would be comfortably "middle class" (which at the turn of the century, still had a couple of servants) and that papa would support a large family and a SAHM without issue (unlike today, of course).

The problem is that the majority of people back in the days scrapped by and that the middle class comforts we are used to (education for children, ample food, plenty of clothing, car and house) were still rare in those golden "good ol' days". Most people were, by today's standard, be considered POOR. It's how the "middle class" in the 19th century could afford to have a SAHM and multiple families----they had a vast population of poor people who will work for very little cooking, cleaning and caring for children. The fact that the majority of people can enjoy middle class comforts is a miracle of our modern society helped along by time saving devices and a mechanized world economy. Of course, the Botkins would never see that. All the modern world brought were chaos and disorder and those uppity females! It must take a lot of energy maintain such delusions....

[Hane]

Wait, where's pictures of the mothers knitting doilies?

Well, MY mother tatted and crocheted TONS of doilies--during her daily commute on the Staten Island Ferry on her way to work in Manhattan--as an employed wife. In the '40s and early '50s.

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

When (non-fundie) folks start waxing poetic about the good old days, I tell them that I have four words for them: birth control, anesthesia, and antiseptic. :)

[LilMissMetaphor]

Look, it's Zsu's girls!

Cheap shot, yah yah, I know.

[snarktastic]

4 year old Mary, who shucks oysters, (two pots a day). Tends the baby when not working. The boss said that next year Mary will work steady as the rest of them. The mother is the fastest shucker in the place. Earns $1.50 a day. Works part of the time with her sick baby in her arms. Father works on the docks.

Go on, tell me again about what a bad idea daycare is.

My grandmother came from the tea-sipping classes but she told me all about what life was like for everyone else. The girls all worked, long hours, in factories, and everyone was still malnourished. The kids all slept in one room together and incest was common.