Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the First Edition
- Conversions
- Part One Feathers, Fleece and Dust of Gold
- 1 A Turban of Feathers
- 2 Australia Felix
- 3 A Golden Ant Hill
- 4 The Silver Stick
- 5 One in Ten Thousand
- 6 ‘My Lord the Workingman’
- 7 Sunshine and Moonshine
- 8 Who Am I?
- Part Two Whirlwind and Calm
- Short Chronology of Victorian History
- Sources
- Index
6 - ‘My Lord the Workingman’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the First Edition
- Conversions
- Part One Feathers, Fleece and Dust of Gold
- 1 A Turban of Feathers
- 2 Australia Felix
- 3 A Golden Ant Hill
- 4 The Silver Stick
- 5 One in Ten Thousand
- 6 ‘My Lord the Workingman’
- 7 Sunshine and Moonshine
- 8 Who Am I?
- Part Two Whirlwind and Calm
- Short Chronology of Victorian History
- Sources
- Index
Summary
In the space of barely half a century Melbourne had grown from a patch of grass on the riverbank to a city larger than such ancient cities as Edinburgh and Lisbon. Victoria's population was approaching one million, and some of its older residents could recall when hardly a house stood on Victorian soil. In transforming the land, titanic energy had played a part. The standard of living of everyone depended on a volume of sweat and energy and on long hours which we would find forbidding. When a shovel had to do the work of a bulldozer, when a hand axe had to do the work of a chainsaw, and when the housewife had to make with her hands what an automated factory now makes, people had no alternative but to work hard. Moreover, social services did not exist: if you did not work hard, how could you save in order to provide for unemployment or sickness?
Hard work was also seen as a moulder and a tester of character, just as idleness was the slippery path to crime. That slightly disapproving phrase, ‘the work ethic’ – a phrase unknown in 1890 – is increasingly used to describe the old attitude to work, but hard physical work was much more than an activity enshrined by the pulpit and the nursery rhyme. It was a necessity and, for a large section of the population, a source of contentment.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Victoria , pp. 102 - 115Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013