Edward
Bartender
- Messages
- 25,111
- Location
- London, UK
RBH said:
RBH -> Thanks, interesting reading. Funny how some things never change - it sounds to me like a lot of the arguments that were played out then are pretty much identical to those that were advanced when the minimum wage was introduced in the UK a few years ago.
Deanglen-> It definitely would. It'd also be interesting to see a range of photos of other workers as well, see what the trends were in hats. Is it just coincidence, for instance, here that while all three white workers are wearing fedora types, the black gentleman is wearing a Gatsby-type cap? It seems a reasonable probability to me that back in those days, different fashions could prevail among different racial groups as a result of the level of segregation that was still very much evident then. Of course, given the very small number of men in that picture, it could also be total coincidence. Nowadays, of course, they'd all likely be in hardhats and matching corporate overalls. It's interesting to see those old photos of how folks used to dress for manual labour. A lot of our modern safety gear just wasn't available then, which affects it, but I'm sure there was still an element of care taken to their appearance - they all four have made the effort to wear a tidy hat, and their shirts are reasonably neatly tucked in. Not many present-day labourers seem to take that much care with hteir appearance. Which I can understand, a construction site is not the place where many of us would think much about sartorial elegance, but it does seem to me something of a change.
