Many years ago I traveled to Wisconsin with my wife, son, and in-laws to visit my wife's cousin and his family. While there, we went to Old World Wisconsin. This was an interesting place, having many different types of farms from the late 19th century based on different heritages (such as a German settlement, a Norwegian settlement, etc.) One location was showing how thread was spun on a spinning wheel. This got me thinking about how many hours it must have taken people back in those days to make a simple shirt.
Later, as the family was relaxing at a bus stop, I asked my cousin, "How many hours do you have to work to buy a decent shirt?"
He was a bit puzzled by my question, but answered, "One or two hours, I guess. Why do you ask?"
I responded, "I just wanted to compare the amount of labor required today to obtain a shirt compared to the 19th century. How many hours do you think they had to work to obtain a shirt?"
He now saw what I was getting at. "I don't know, but many hours I am sure."
New inventions, such as powered looms and their further improvements, have allowed the amount of labor to produce a product to keep getting lower and lower, thus making the product much cheaper to obtain. It's this industrialization that has allowed everyone's standard of living to skyrocket. The average middle class American today lives a much better life than most kings did a thousand years ago. Yeah, we may not have a bunch of servants standing around waving fans at us to keep us cool on a sweltering day, but we have something better: air conditioning.
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