Schleswig-Holstein Business and Occupations: Difference between revisions

====== <br>Toward the end of the 17th century, around two million of Denmark’s population lived in the country as farmers, farmhands, servants and day laborers. This group of people belonged to the absolute lowest social class. The day laborer was distinctly separated from other workers. He worked in the city or in the country for a daily wage. He was not a member of a guild, had no craft or trade. He worked for others in the fields and in the city did odd jobs as he found them. Some day laborers were in possession of a house or some small piece of land which could not sustain them. They came like all other land owning farmers under the control of the manor lord because they owed him rent and other services. Most day laborers did not have property and therefore were quite independent and enjoyed some freedom, that is, part of their time was theirs. They were not part of the servitude that encumbered most of the land working population. Their work lasted for one day. Work in the city was more varied than it was in the country.  ======

====== <br>A day laborer was not part of the social network in a village and had no access to the cooperative arrangements attainable to the establishment. He had to live and fare for himself and his family. If work was not available close by, the man had to search for it, sometimes had to move, the downside of this sort of job. The bad social conditions for these people lead to emigration en masse. Even when democracy was introduced in Denmark in 1849, the day laborer was still a part of the group without any rights. When the Danish government issued some social protection for servants, it did not phase those who claimed rights of disposal over their personal. Those providing service did not have a political voice. A contemporary observation was this: After a long hard winter, small farmers, farmhands, servants and day laborers started the so called spring starvation, which meant, they either went hungry or ate up the grain that was put aside for sowing. Land reforms gave back property to farmers, but often they had not the ability to support themselves or their workers. Masses of the non-landowning population found themselves begging or in poor houses. It took more than one hundred years before poverty was no longer an issue for large parts of the population. ======