Idle Hands...

Reading American Slavery, American Freedom still... I came across a passage that explained some of the labor problems in 16th century England that were insane.  

So apparently employment was so hard to find after an apparent massive population boom in 16th century England that the government had to move in and do something about it...

hence the Statute of Artificers

Now these laws did a lot of things and one of those things was pretty much to force a person to hire a laborer for periods of one year only...

A year of this... oh the joys!

  
I know what you are saying... that looks perilous, even with those nice clovers....

But according to some of the stuff I am reading, this toiling on the farm did not take very long because in order to maintain this insane system each person had a specific job they were trained for so see that one guy holding the wheat while those others picked it and the woman who apparently is floating on her own medieval ego is watching, this might actually be pretty accurate because the law meant to employ everyone 

Because IDLE HANDS LED TO THE DEBIL!

Anyway... so after everyone did their job, they sat around and did nothing and hence...were still idle so I don't see what it fixed but....

Is she not AMAZING!!!???!!!

Any law this amazing wonder of monarchy is alright with me, however much nonsense it is....

The Book talks about one Master who had so many people under his employ (oh by the way you could not fire them, you could not stop their terms early, if you did the courts would send them back to you)... he ran away from home because he couldn't handle taking care of so many people...

So lets be realistic here...these people were serfs, indentured servants, slaves who basically got "paid" because the government couldn't catch up with the amount of people the fertile English population were birthing every year.  

But its crazy because they thought being idle was ungodly so they made this law that apparently took care of the idle, but instead it specialized every single job to get people off the roads and stealing so they literally sat at someone's house who had to pay them and when they didnt have a job to do...they sat idle.
(now there were government houses that made linen and other materials where I am sure the days were long, grueling, and not fun at all)
And I would sit around and be idle too if I had to stay on some guys property and basically had no real power to leave... but I just thought this was pretty funny..

BTW.... read American Slavery, American Freedom if you want to know more.  I am really enjoying the book.