don\'t know if any of you have seen this madmen show, but one of the things it points out is what the workplace was like in a business in the 1950\'s. Lots of smoking, drinks in the afternoon, etc. Reminds me of bartleby the scrivener. Anyway, while reading I just came across this passage:
"At my first admission into this printing-house I took to working at press, imagining I felt a want of the bodily exercise I had been us\'d to in America, where presswork is mix\'d composing. I drank only water; the other workmen, nearly fifty in number, were great guzzlers of beer. On occasions, I carried up and down stairs a large form of types in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands, They wondered to see, from this and several instances, that the Water-American, as they called me, was stronger than themselves, who drank strong beer! We had an alehouse boy who attended always in the house to supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o\'clock, and another when he had done his day\'s work. I thought it a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he suppos\'d to drink strong beer, that he might be strong to labor. I endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer could only be proportion to the grain or flour of the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made; that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread; and therefore, if he would eat that with a pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer. He drank on, however, and had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages every saturday night for that muddling liquor; an expense I was free from. And thus these poor devils kept themselves always under."
Benjamin Franklin, His Autobiography
recalling the winter of 1725 in London, England
note; dinner in that time was what we called lunch and you would work on average 12+ hours a day, so you worked from the time of breakfast through supper, after 6.
