We speak with pride of our freedom, and yet we are slaves to time; it is time to get up; it is time to shave; it is time to get breakfast; it is time to get a plane; it is time to come here to a lecture; it is time for a manuscript; it is time to pay taxes. We have forgotten there are other kinds of time than sun time and chronologic time-months, years, days, and hours.
Our ordinary clocks and calendars fail us completely as tools for the measurement of astronomical or geologic time.
There is such thing as biologic time, determined by the rate of living, which may be very rapid in one individual and very slow in another. Phylogenetic time is a subdivision of biologic time. There is also psychological time. To illustrate the variations in psychological time: any military aviator knows that ten seconds of combat are the equivalent of ten minutes in apparent duration and intensity of the experience. Everyone of you needs but to contrast an hour spent in a dentist's waiting room with an hour spent in courtship, to appreciate the variability of psychological time. Nevertheless, each interval is still an hour, as measured by that infernal mechanism, the clock. The rate of living at levels lower than the mental (living which goes on below the level of awareness) is similarly variable. The rate of living is affected by use, by disuse, or by abuse. We must remember that disuse is a form of abuse, as we shall see a little later.
Unfortunately, the great majority of us are biologically older than our years. I would like to reverse the proportions and say the majority of us are biologically younger than our years. But I cannot, and remain truthful. It is my clinical impression that the average individual of sixty years is physically nearer what he should be at seventy, because of unnecessary depreciation.
The biologic age of an individual should be the basic criterion for social adjustments related to age, such as when to grant the right of voting, marriage, retirement, and the assumption and removal of privileges and responsibilities. Is it not utterly ridiculous that a man sixty-four years and 364 days is perfectly competent to carry on the immense responsibilities of an important post, and the next day he is too old to carry them? Such arbitrary retirement rules simply do not make sense.
How are we going to measure biologic age? This is an extremely difficult question, because we have to measure various ages, both structural and functional, and to try to average the estimates. Further complicating the problem is the fact that the various functions and structures are of widely differing significance to our total efficiency. Should the thickness and color of the hair or the presence or absence of wrinkles be weighed the same as visual acuity or the reserve strength of the heart?
The measurement of biologic age becomes a very complex and interesting problem, closely paralleling the challenge involved in the measurement of health, because health and the depreciations of age are closely parallel problems. The definition of health in the dictionaries today is sadly inadequate. Knowing that most medical and college textbooks are at least ten years behind the times, and that dictionaries are at least twenty-five years behind the times, we must not anticipate a revision for perhaps another decade. The antiquated definition of health, as it still appears in authoritative tomes, is that health is that state of being existing in the absence of disease. A negative and utterly inadequate definition. To me, health is that state of being in which all the reserve capacities of the organism are at their maximum. It is an ideal state, an abstraction, and, like infinity, unattainable in its perfection, but approachable.
The older person is less tolerant to starvation
The concentration of sugar in the blood is the same at eight or eighty. Though there is no appreciable change in these constants, the ability to maintain equilibrium depreciates with aging. There is great diminution in tolerance for extremes. Older individuals cannot tolerate extremes of temperature. They become ill when they are cold. An annual trip to Florida and the desire to seek warmth in winter is an admission of senility.
Similarly, the elderly do not tolerate hot weather. Each summer in the twenty-five years of practice, I have seen anywhere from one to ten persons over seventy years of age collapse during a spell of hot weather. They seem to go all to pieces. Last week I saw a gentleman of eightyfour who, after several hot days, suddenly became too weak one morning to raise his head from his pillow. He has no recollection of a period of twenty-four hours. His collapse occurred because he did not compensate for the changed external environment by necessary dietary adjustments. All he needed was some salt. Two liters of saline solution were given into his vein, and in a few hours he wanted to get up and go home. You see, as we grow older we live by habit. He had not changed his habits. The hot weather made him sweat (in Washington we not only perspire, we sweat). Sweat is salty, but he drank only pure water and did not adjust to that necessity for an increased salt intake. His collapse was due purely to salt deficiency. Habit was the major cause of his difficulty. A child, whose dietary habits are not fixed by time, will usually demand salty food in hot weather. The older person responds to habit rather than makes adjustment to the environment.
The older person is less tolerant to starvation and to overeating. The ability to maintain a normal blood sugar concentration is lessened. Thus, it is frequently desirable for the aged to eat small quantities often, rather than to attempt to eat large amounts at longer intervals.
In the aged where the reaction to any stress is lessened, symptoms are less conspicuous. The symptoms of illness are not due to injury; they are due to the reactions of the body to the injury and in later life these reactions are less violent. We may see a man of seventy walking around, admitting he does not feel very well, but not complaining very much, despite the fact he is suffering from an extensive lobar pneumonia. . . . The older person's symptoms are much less conspicuous. Perhaps it is a blessing that illness in later years is associated with less subjective distress, but it is also a curse, inasmuch as medical attention is postponed. Too often the institution of therapy is delayed until such time that only a miracle can be expected to accomplish a cure. Pain is our friend, more precious than that dearest chum who warns us about halitosis. There are fewer accidents where there are stoplights.
The rate of aging change is by no means fixed; it is extremely variable. . . .
The asymmetry of aging is extremely significant to you and to me as individuals, as well as to the physician. First of all, there is a variation in the rate of aging at different times in the life span. For example, at puberty and the climacteric there is an acceleration of change in the structures involved in reproduction, whereas other structures do not show such acceleration of change at that particular time. There is a great variation of physical versus mental, and especially emotional maturation. For example, I am sure all of you have had experiences with individuals with old hearts but young ideas. They are likely to get into trouble because of this asymmetry; they play tennis long after they should cease. Perhaps a greater problem than being old too young, is the problem of being too young when old. Biologic age is by no means synonymous with chronologic age. They are not at all the same. They may coincide, but such parallelism is largely coincidental.
Similarly, the elderly do not tolerate hot weather. Each summer in the twenty-five years of practice, I have seen anywhere from one to ten persons over seventy years of age collapse during a spell of hot weather. They seem to go all to pieces. Last week I saw a gentleman of eightyfour who, after several hot days, suddenly became too weak one morning to raise his head from his pillow. He has no recollection of a period of twenty-four hours. His collapse occurred because he did not compensate for the changed external environment by necessary dietary adjustments. All he needed was some salt. Two liters of saline solution were given into his vein, and in a few hours he wanted to get up and go home. You see, as we grow older we live by habit. He had not changed his habits. The hot weather made him sweat (in Washington we not only perspire, we sweat). Sweat is salty, but he drank only pure water and did not adjust to that necessity for an increased salt intake. His collapse was due purely to salt deficiency. Habit was the major cause of his difficulty. A child, whose dietary habits are not fixed by time, will usually demand salty food in hot weather. The older person responds to habit rather than makes adjustment to the environment.
The older person is less tolerant to starvation and to overeating. The ability to maintain a normal blood sugar concentration is lessened. Thus, it is frequently desirable for the aged to eat small quantities often, rather than to attempt to eat large amounts at longer intervals.
In the aged where the reaction to any stress is lessened, symptoms are less conspicuous. The symptoms of illness are not due to injury; they are due to the reactions of the body to the injury and in later life these reactions are less violent. We may see a man of seventy walking around, admitting he does not feel very well, but not complaining very much, despite the fact he is suffering from an extensive lobar pneumonia. . . . The older person's symptoms are much less conspicuous. Perhaps it is a blessing that illness in later years is associated with less subjective distress, but it is also a curse, inasmuch as medical attention is postponed. Too often the institution of therapy is delayed until such time that only a miracle can be expected to accomplish a cure. Pain is our friend, more precious than that dearest chum who warns us about halitosis. There are fewer accidents where there are stoplights.
The rate of aging change is by no means fixed; it is extremely variable. . . .
The asymmetry of aging is extremely significant to you and to me as individuals, as well as to the physician. First of all, there is a variation in the rate of aging at different times in the life span. For example, at puberty and the climacteric there is an acceleration of change in the structures involved in reproduction, whereas other structures do not show such acceleration of change at that particular time. There is a great variation of physical versus mental, and especially emotional maturation. For example, I am sure all of you have had experiences with individuals with old hearts but young ideas. They are likely to get into trouble because of this asymmetry; they play tennis long after they should cease. Perhaps a greater problem than being old too young, is the problem of being too young when old. Biologic age is by no means synonymous with chronologic age. They are not at all the same. They may coincide, but such parallelism is largely coincidental.
The Personal Challenge of Aging: Biological Changes
The problem of aging is so immense that I should like to take a few moments for orientation. In order to comprehend any complicated situation involving human affairs or involving natural affairs in which human beings are concerned, such as floods, wars, volcanoes, divorce, marriage, aging, and other potential catastrophies, we need to look at it from three perspectives. If we look at it only from one or two of these perspectives, we assume a very asymmetric viewpoint. The three perspectives can be easily defined by using magnification as our basic simile. First, we must examine the problem with the naked eye. The individual is indivisible; body and mind are one. The individual is the unit. Second, with a microscope, we can take this person apart with blood counts, kidney function tests, blood pressure observations, basal metabolism determinations, and various other procedures. When we study the individual microscopically and dissect him into his biological components, the cell becomes the unit of thought, rather than the individual. Lastly, we must stand back far enough so that we may look at this individual with a telescope and see him in relation to the total environment, social and physical, economic, biological, and historical.
The science of aging, or gerontology, includes all three of these facets or perspectives. Man is the core. Our motivation for study is concern with ourselves. . . .
The second division of gerontology is concerned with the biology of senescence. Here the cell is the unit of thought. Each of us is composed of approximately two billion cells. The world population, in contrast, consists of about two billion people. The third division of gerontology is concerned with the sociologic problems of the aging in this crowded world. . . .
Aging may be defined as the element of time in living. Aging is part of living. Aging begins with conception and terminates with death. It cannot be arrested unless we arrest life. There is no elixir of eternal youth, thank goodness! It would be dreadful to remain infants all our lives. We may retard aging or accelerate it, but we cannot arrest it while life goes on, because it is essentially an element of living. Living is a continuous process, variable in its rates. Aging slows as we grow older. This is one of the compensations for later years. Aging change is rapid in youth and even more rapid prenatally in the period between conception and birth.
Aging involves two simultaneous processes which operate continuously in spite of the fact that they are contradictory to one another. On the one hand growth or evolution occurs, on the other atrophy (which means shrinkage) or involution. These processes continue throughout life, though at varying rates. We can observe illustrations of atrophy even before the infant is born in the disappearance of the gill clefts which first develop and then atrophy in the early mammalian embryo. At the time of birth, when the child begins to breathe and get its oxygen from the lungs instead of from the mother's circulation, the atrophy of certain arterial structures is indistinguishable under the microscope from the involutionary changes which we see late in life. The atrophic process is the same in the newborn infant and in the senile grandparent. A very interesting phenomenon occurs in the placenta or afterbirth. It becomes atrophic or "old" when its functional life is near termination. At nine months of pregnancy, these exists an intimate proximity and interdependence in a very young baby, a middle-aged mother, and a senile placenta. Biologically adjacent and functioning together are three widely divergent biological ages. Here is an area of study which has by no means been explored adequately.
On the other hand, growth continues late in life. The hair continues to grow throughout life, and certain hairs grow more vigorously than ever. The eyebrows become shaggy, and often about the ears there is a growth of bristly hairs that were not there in middle age and youth. The whiskers become heavier, more brittle, and thicker. The lower jaw continues to grow throughout life, according to reports of several anthropologists. These students of anatomy, however, do not tell whether the rate of this growth in later years varies with the amount of wagging that the lower jaw has done during the lifetime. It is quite possible that such functional activity is a modifying factor, as we shall see later. I am not being facetious.
Cells are the ultimate units of life. What can we learn about the aging of cells? Here the biologist in search of information is blocked, because individual cells do not age. They grow to maturity, and then divide to create two young daughter cells. Individual cells simply do not age in the sense that an individual ages. With the exception of a very few cells in our central nervous system, the brain, and spinal cord, none of the cells of our bodies is as old as we are. They are being replaced constantly with young cells. You and I are constantly rubbing off our hides and developing new skin underneath. The same process, without the friction, occurs in all other structures. So we come up against an insurmountable difficulty in studying the aging of the individual cell, because the individual cell does not age.
The limiting proviso is a fundamental clue to the mechanism of aging. Continuation of a culture of cells is possible only if the culture medium in which it grows is sterile and refreshed every forty-eight hours. If the medium is permitted to become depleted of necessary food elements and allowed to accumulate the toxic garbage of the living, growing cells, the tissue culture quickly degenerates and dies. The essence of senescence lies not in the cellular structure, but in the matrix fluid in which they live. This intercellular medium is often spoken of as the internal environment.
Perhaps some of you do not realize that we live in two environments-an external environment of social strife, stale air, tobacco smoke, grime, grit, wind, snow, competition, sunshine, love, and hate, and an internal environment which is extraordinarily stable. The internal environment varies very little chemically and very little physically. We are by no means healthy if our temperature varies more than a degree, or more than 1 per cent of the optimum. If the concentration of sugar in the blood rises above a certain level we are no longer biologically healthy. Or if the glucose content of the blood falls below a certain level we become ill. The same applies to the many other chemical elements included in the composition of the organism. There are many elaborate mechanisms for maintaining the constancy of this internal environment. If this internal environment is not maintained within a relatively narrow range, health is impaired. We may say that an optimum internal environment is synonymous with health; that an internal environment deviating from the desirable in some respects but still within tolerable limits, is equivalent to disease, but that any intolerable deviation of the internal environment leads to death. The constants, and by that I mean such factors as body temperature, pulse, blood pressure, chemical concentrations, and many other things which are relatively constant, are not actually changed by aging. These things are not absolutely constant, but vary within narrow limits. Normal body temperature is the same at eighty as it is at eight. Pulse rate varies relatively little with age under comparable conditions of rest. Of course, the child of eight is much more active and energetic than the individual of eighty, and thus reveals a more rapid pulse when active, partly because he is more active.
The science of aging, or gerontology, includes all three of these facets or perspectives. Man is the core. Our motivation for study is concern with ourselves. . . .
The second division of gerontology is concerned with the biology of senescence. Here the cell is the unit of thought. Each of us is composed of approximately two billion cells. The world population, in contrast, consists of about two billion people. The third division of gerontology is concerned with the sociologic problems of the aging in this crowded world. . . .
Aging may be defined as the element of time in living. Aging is part of living. Aging begins with conception and terminates with death. It cannot be arrested unless we arrest life. There is no elixir of eternal youth, thank goodness! It would be dreadful to remain infants all our lives. We may retard aging or accelerate it, but we cannot arrest it while life goes on, because it is essentially an element of living. Living is a continuous process, variable in its rates. Aging slows as we grow older. This is one of the compensations for later years. Aging change is rapid in youth and even more rapid prenatally in the period between conception and birth.
Aging involves two simultaneous processes which operate continuously in spite of the fact that they are contradictory to one another. On the one hand growth or evolution occurs, on the other atrophy (which means shrinkage) or involution. These processes continue throughout life, though at varying rates. We can observe illustrations of atrophy even before the infant is born in the disappearance of the gill clefts which first develop and then atrophy in the early mammalian embryo. At the time of birth, when the child begins to breathe and get its oxygen from the lungs instead of from the mother's circulation, the atrophy of certain arterial structures is indistinguishable under the microscope from the involutionary changes which we see late in life. The atrophic process is the same in the newborn infant and in the senile grandparent. A very interesting phenomenon occurs in the placenta or afterbirth. It becomes atrophic or "old" when its functional life is near termination. At nine months of pregnancy, these exists an intimate proximity and interdependence in a very young baby, a middle-aged mother, and a senile placenta. Biologically adjacent and functioning together are three widely divergent biological ages. Here is an area of study which has by no means been explored adequately.
On the other hand, growth continues late in life. The hair continues to grow throughout life, and certain hairs grow more vigorously than ever. The eyebrows become shaggy, and often about the ears there is a growth of bristly hairs that were not there in middle age and youth. The whiskers become heavier, more brittle, and thicker. The lower jaw continues to grow throughout life, according to reports of several anthropologists. These students of anatomy, however, do not tell whether the rate of this growth in later years varies with the amount of wagging that the lower jaw has done during the lifetime. It is quite possible that such functional activity is a modifying factor, as we shall see later. I am not being facetious.
Cells are the ultimate units of life. What can we learn about the aging of cells? Here the biologist in search of information is blocked, because individual cells do not age. They grow to maturity, and then divide to create two young daughter cells. Individual cells simply do not age in the sense that an individual ages. With the exception of a very few cells in our central nervous system, the brain, and spinal cord, none of the cells of our bodies is as old as we are. They are being replaced constantly with young cells. You and I are constantly rubbing off our hides and developing new skin underneath. The same process, without the friction, occurs in all other structures. So we come up against an insurmountable difficulty in studying the aging of the individual cell, because the individual cell does not age.
The limiting proviso is a fundamental clue to the mechanism of aging. Continuation of a culture of cells is possible only if the culture medium in which it grows is sterile and refreshed every forty-eight hours. If the medium is permitted to become depleted of necessary food elements and allowed to accumulate the toxic garbage of the living, growing cells, the tissue culture quickly degenerates and dies. The essence of senescence lies not in the cellular structure, but in the matrix fluid in which they live. This intercellular medium is often spoken of as the internal environment.
Perhaps some of you do not realize that we live in two environments-an external environment of social strife, stale air, tobacco smoke, grime, grit, wind, snow, competition, sunshine, love, and hate, and an internal environment which is extraordinarily stable. The internal environment varies very little chemically and very little physically. We are by no means healthy if our temperature varies more than a degree, or more than 1 per cent of the optimum. If the concentration of sugar in the blood rises above a certain level we are no longer biologically healthy. Or if the glucose content of the blood falls below a certain level we become ill. The same applies to the many other chemical elements included in the composition of the organism. There are many elaborate mechanisms for maintaining the constancy of this internal environment. If this internal environment is not maintained within a relatively narrow range, health is impaired. We may say that an optimum internal environment is synonymous with health; that an internal environment deviating from the desirable in some respects but still within tolerable limits, is equivalent to disease, but that any intolerable deviation of the internal environment leads to death. The constants, and by that I mean such factors as body temperature, pulse, blood pressure, chemical concentrations, and many other things which are relatively constant, are not actually changed by aging. These things are not absolutely constant, but vary within narrow limits. Normal body temperature is the same at eighty as it is at eight. Pulse rate varies relatively little with age under comparable conditions of rest. Of course, the child of eight is much more active and energetic than the individual of eighty, and thus reveals a more rapid pulse when active, partly because he is more active.
Young people and leisure
Adolescence is often a time of considerable turbulence both for the young person and for those in close association with them. The period may also be one of considerable creativity, experimentation and excitement. Young people explore their environments, look for new ones, sample new experiences -- all in an attempt to crystallise their personal identities which will underpin a transition to greater independence. The paradox in considering young people and their leisure patterns is that while their experience is in one sense universal and phase-specific, in another sense they are incomparably variable; their attention shifts frequently, they like moving from one interest to another, they are highly labile in their behaviour from day to day, if not from hour to hour. Typically, when young people describe their 'patterns' of activity, they may include activities they have pursued only once, and intend to pursue again, or activities they are interested in pursuing in future. In this sense they are difficult to categorise, to pin down, and they tend to react against pressures to organise or plan for them though their malleability is not easy to grasp and is generally lost in reports based on survey data. On the other hand, providers of leisure, or any other facilities, like to be able to classify and predict the behaviour of the populations they are providing for and find it difficult to subsume such a high level of variation in their provision. If they can accept that the 'membership' of groups for which they cater may be highly unstable, their tasks may be eased; there are likely to be sufficient numbers of young people at any given time eager to pursue specific activities -- both to sample the activities and the people there. This may suggest a reorientation to the goals of many providers.
Examining the process of transition to greater independence, in the framework we have suggested, young people are seen as moving along developmental life line, with groupings of significant social influences impinging on them; family, school/work and community. This is a cross-section of the life line presented in chapter 1. Within each sector of this model there are some figures who are close and who entertain personal relationships with the individual (parent, teacher, corner shopkeeper) and others who are more remote, known only through their social roles in organizations (the principal, the club warden) or even through the mass media (a pop idol, a famous footballer or a figure from a novel). Remoteness does not necessarily mean lack of influence; many young people go through periods in which major influences are derived from novels or plays; characters in Tolkien, O'Neill or Dostoyevsky may become very real and influential for them, as many figures in science, sport, religion or the entertainment world. The circles suggest degrees of closeness and each is divided into different spheres of life.
The shape and sizes of the different sectors of the life space vary by individual, as does the way in which they are populated and the influence that a given person or group will have on an individual. People vary in the extent to which they differentiate life sectors.
Most individuals develop categories which cut across those defined in formal terms; for example, people you can trust. Early patterns of relationship tend to carry over and generalise so that individuals who develop basic trust towards early family members are more likely to be trusting in other relationships as they proceed through school and into the broader spectrum of social relationships. Conversely those who have learned that distrust, suspicion and anxiety are prominent among the rules of life are likely to generalise these dispositions. Neither blanket trust nor blanket distrust is appropriate in a complex world. But adolescence is a period in which people and interests are intensively tested out and young people learn to discriminate those who can be trusted from those who cannot; between situations in which effort is worth while and those in which it is not.
Similarly for adults it is necessary to differentiate between different kinds of young people. Knowledge of their developmental experiences allows specific young people to be related to constructively as they are, rather than in terms of stereotypes.
For young people this may be the happiest time of their lives, but many are sad; they often seem frantically busy and impatient with their elders, but as often they impress their elders as idle (in the best sense described by Bertrand Russell) and view their elders' hyperactivity with scarcely concealed scorn; young people are idealistic and they are egocentric; they are sensuous and they are cold; they are engaging and emotionally removed; they are aggressive and they are shy; they are arrogant and humble; they are bright and they are stupid. They are people -- and as such intrinsically variable -- but it often seems that their variations are caricatures of other people's variations. They often seem, in the needs they express, to be a mass of contradictions. Sometimes they seem to need constant stimulation; at other times they seem to need to be bored; they seem to need to huddle together and they seem to need to be alone.
Examining the process of transition to greater independence, in the framework we have suggested, young people are seen as moving along developmental life line, with groupings of significant social influences impinging on them; family, school/work and community. This is a cross-section of the life line presented in chapter 1. Within each sector of this model there are some figures who are close and who entertain personal relationships with the individual (parent, teacher, corner shopkeeper) and others who are more remote, known only through their social roles in organizations (the principal, the club warden) or even through the mass media (a pop idol, a famous footballer or a figure from a novel). Remoteness does not necessarily mean lack of influence; many young people go through periods in which major influences are derived from novels or plays; characters in Tolkien, O'Neill or Dostoyevsky may become very real and influential for them, as many figures in science, sport, religion or the entertainment world. The circles suggest degrees of closeness and each is divided into different spheres of life.
The shape and sizes of the different sectors of the life space vary by individual, as does the way in which they are populated and the influence that a given person or group will have on an individual. People vary in the extent to which they differentiate life sectors.
Most individuals develop categories which cut across those defined in formal terms; for example, people you can trust. Early patterns of relationship tend to carry over and generalise so that individuals who develop basic trust towards early family members are more likely to be trusting in other relationships as they proceed through school and into the broader spectrum of social relationships. Conversely those who have learned that distrust, suspicion and anxiety are prominent among the rules of life are likely to generalise these dispositions. Neither blanket trust nor blanket distrust is appropriate in a complex world. But adolescence is a period in which people and interests are intensively tested out and young people learn to discriminate those who can be trusted from those who cannot; between situations in which effort is worth while and those in which it is not.
Similarly for adults it is necessary to differentiate between different kinds of young people. Knowledge of their developmental experiences allows specific young people to be related to constructively as they are, rather than in terms of stereotypes.
For young people this may be the happiest time of their lives, but many are sad; they often seem frantically busy and impatient with their elders, but as often they impress their elders as idle (in the best sense described by Bertrand Russell) and view their elders' hyperactivity with scarcely concealed scorn; young people are idealistic and they are egocentric; they are sensuous and they are cold; they are engaging and emotionally removed; they are aggressive and they are shy; they are arrogant and humble; they are bright and they are stupid. They are people -- and as such intrinsically variable -- but it often seems that their variations are caricatures of other people's variations. They often seem, in the needs they express, to be a mass of contradictions. Sometimes they seem to need constant stimulation; at other times they seem to need to be bored; they seem to need to huddle together and they seem to need to be alone.
The perception of freedom
The perception of freedom by the person who participates in leisure is an important factor.
Thus there will be considerable variety in the definitions that people give of leisure or of free time. Further, time as a physical element is measurable, but amount of leisure is not, if one mother perceives herself to be heavily weighted down when she feeds her infant, whereas a second finds it a delightful experience. Thus freedom is as much an issue for the social psychologist as for the economist and political scientist. The student of leisure deals on both levels, that is, with absolute quantities of time free from economic functioning and with time that is perceived as free.
CLOSE RELATION TO CULTURAL VALUES
If the concept of leisure is equated with re-creation, it has no value in itself except as a supplement to work. As developed in this book, leisure has moved further and further from subordination to work; increasingly, leisure is an end, a life of its own. As with all human ends, leisure is bound up closely with moral, ethical, and thought systems and with all social institutions.
ENTIRE RANGE OF SIGNIFICANCE AND WEIGHTINESS
Old associations of work with seriousness and leisure with lightness are now outdated and theoretically indefensible. Leisure activity, as we shall see, can include interests covering the whole gamut of human life; hence the degree of seriousness or significance is irrelevant to a concept of what leisure is or should be.
OFTEN, NOT NECESSARILY, CHARACTERIZED BY PLAY
Play, as viewed by Huizinga, penetrates many human activities. In this broad view several of the elements of play, as he defined them, are synonymous with leisure: voluntariness, play as freedom, play as an interlude in life. Leisure, as we are characterizing it here, differs from Huizinga's scheme for play in that leisure is not necessarily secluded and limited, starting and stopping at specific times; it is unlimited in time and space, and as a system of order it is less limited by rules and norms. If we leave Huizinga and revert to the vernacular (historically inadequate) concept of play as an activity that is light, associated with child life, or an objectified slice of life on a stage, then, of course, leisure is a much wider and inclusive concept in which play is only one type.
This ideal construct of leisure is not intended to indicate a content, although we will speak later of types of leisure activity. Our basic assumption is that anything or any specific acdvity can become a basis for leisure. Further, it is evident that the construct has incorporated the subjective listing of views about leisure that were summarized earlier. We are now saying that there will be a variet in the perceptions by which people will see or understand their free time. However, this element of perception can hardly be reduced to only one of a set of elements, for in actual cases one or another of the elements will be emphasized.Two issues of method demand discussion: the use of this construct in (a) observing and (b) judging specific forms of leisure.Since we proceed on the assumption that leisure is not definable as a given activity but is rather a characterstic social relationship, how can a classification be derived? As all scientific classifications are: by the creation of typological tools sharpened to meet certain kinds of issues.
Thus there will be considerable variety in the definitions that people give of leisure or of free time. Further, time as a physical element is measurable, but amount of leisure is not, if one mother perceives herself to be heavily weighted down when she feeds her infant, whereas a second finds it a delightful experience. Thus freedom is as much an issue for the social psychologist as for the economist and political scientist. The student of leisure deals on both levels, that is, with absolute quantities of time free from economic functioning and with time that is perceived as free.
CLOSE RELATION TO CULTURAL VALUES
If the concept of leisure is equated with re-creation, it has no value in itself except as a supplement to work. As developed in this book, leisure has moved further and further from subordination to work; increasingly, leisure is an end, a life of its own. As with all human ends, leisure is bound up closely with moral, ethical, and thought systems and with all social institutions.
ENTIRE RANGE OF SIGNIFICANCE AND WEIGHTINESS
Old associations of work with seriousness and leisure with lightness are now outdated and theoretically indefensible. Leisure activity, as we shall see, can include interests covering the whole gamut of human life; hence the degree of seriousness or significance is irrelevant to a concept of what leisure is or should be.
OFTEN, NOT NECESSARILY, CHARACTERIZED BY PLAY
Play, as viewed by Huizinga, penetrates many human activities. In this broad view several of the elements of play, as he defined them, are synonymous with leisure: voluntariness, play as freedom, play as an interlude in life. Leisure, as we are characterizing it here, differs from Huizinga's scheme for play in that leisure is not necessarily secluded and limited, starting and stopping at specific times; it is unlimited in time and space, and as a system of order it is less limited by rules and norms. If we leave Huizinga and revert to the vernacular (historically inadequate) concept of play as an activity that is light, associated with child life, or an objectified slice of life on a stage, then, of course, leisure is a much wider and inclusive concept in which play is only one type.
This ideal construct of leisure is not intended to indicate a content, although we will speak later of types of leisure activity. Our basic assumption is that anything or any specific acdvity can become a basis for leisure. Further, it is evident that the construct has incorporated the subjective listing of views about leisure that were summarized earlier. We are now saying that there will be a variet in the perceptions by which people will see or understand their free time. However, this element of perception can hardly be reduced to only one of a set of elements, for in actual cases one or another of the elements will be emphasized.Two issues of method demand discussion: the use of this construct in (a) observing and (b) judging specific forms of leisure.Since we proceed on the assumption that leisure is not definable as a given activity but is rather a characterstic social relationship, how can a classification be derived? As all scientific classifications are: by the creation of typological tools sharpened to meet certain kinds of issues.
Engaged in leisure
Engaged in leisure, I can dig a ditch in my yard to make way for some landscaping project; this requires energy, more than my economic job. It is, however, outside the economic system in the usual way in which I relate myself to that system. It is, obviously, not altogether unrelated to economics per se, for my "labor of love" may deprive a professional worker in these lines of employment.
PLEASANT EXPECTATION AND RECOLLECTION
With this element we eliminate all enforced leisure, such as unemployment, imprisonment, or sickness, and we include a psychological attitude moving both forward and backward in time. It is impossible to divorce "vacation," for instance, from the expectation, planning, daydreaming, savings, packing, or excitement of going away. Such looking ahead often makes the routine of life more bearable, for then work periods are seen as means toward life and living. Similarly, the recollection of the vacation or leisure activity is often inaccurate, colored by the idealization fostered in the preparatory stage. Research would probably show that many persons on vacation enjoy themselves and look back favorably upon their experience because they cannot emotionally afford to contradict their past hopes and projections. As a matter of fact, attitude and expectancy do influence the actual itself.
MINIMUM OF SOCIAL ROLE OBLIGATIONS
Social role, from the many positions or obligations he has achieved in his society or that he has been given by it: citizen, father, friend, carpenter, Protestant, Mason, and so on. He is only one John Smith who plays or possesses many roles. Part of the adjustment, maturity, normality, or personality he is credited with by everyone else is defined by how he behaves in each of these roles and, more important, how he combines or synthesizes them all into the one social being known as John Smith. In each of the many circles he touches Smith has rights and obligations (voting, supporting his wife, etc.). Leisure activity, too, may have many obligations, from making toys for his children (every father should) to going on trips with his wife (a good husband should). These are obligations, however, that he is more likely to assume voluntarily, and with pleasanter expectations, than, for example, going to work on January 2, to which he is formally committed and for a long period of time. Theoretically, he has greater freedom in deciding whether to be with his family in his off time. The observer from the outside can, in specific cases, question such self-deception; yet John Smith, himself, is the one who perceives his relative freedoms and acts in accordance with his perceptions
PLEASANT EXPECTATION AND RECOLLECTION
With this element we eliminate all enforced leisure, such as unemployment, imprisonment, or sickness, and we include a psychological attitude moving both forward and backward in time. It is impossible to divorce "vacation," for instance, from the expectation, planning, daydreaming, savings, packing, or excitement of going away. Such looking ahead often makes the routine of life more bearable, for then work periods are seen as means toward life and living. Similarly, the recollection of the vacation or leisure activity is often inaccurate, colored by the idealization fostered in the preparatory stage. Research would probably show that many persons on vacation enjoy themselves and look back favorably upon their experience because they cannot emotionally afford to contradict their past hopes and projections. As a matter of fact, attitude and expectancy do influence the actual itself.
MINIMUM OF SOCIAL ROLE OBLIGATIONS
Social role, from the many positions or obligations he has achieved in his society or that he has been given by it: citizen, father, friend, carpenter, Protestant, Mason, and so on. He is only one John Smith who plays or possesses many roles. Part of the adjustment, maturity, normality, or personality he is credited with by everyone else is defined by how he behaves in each of these roles and, more important, how he combines or synthesizes them all into the one social being known as John Smith. In each of the many circles he touches Smith has rights and obligations (voting, supporting his wife, etc.). Leisure activity, too, may have many obligations, from making toys for his children (every father should) to going on trips with his wife (a good husband should). These are obligations, however, that he is more likely to assume voluntarily, and with pleasanter expectations, than, for example, going to work on January 2, to which he is formally committed and for a long period of time. Theoretically, he has greater freedom in deciding whether to be with his family in his off time. The observer from the outside can, in specific cases, question such self-deception; yet John Smith, himself, is the one who perceives his relative freedoms and acts in accordance with his perceptions
Leisure as freedom, Leisure as re-creation
In seeking a concept of leisure that can be useful for his purposes, the sociologist may do one of two things: either he may accept leisure to be what people say it is or what it means to them; or he may seek an ideal construct.
As to the first, if he asks several persons at a baseball game, what brought them there, he will receive a variety of answers: "to enjoy the game," "to get the sunshine," "to get away from home," "to rest." If asked what leisure means to them on a more general level, the same persons are likely to consider it as "time off from work," "free time," "my own time," "doing what I like," "rest," and so on. A more sophisticated audience or a categorical-minded observer might attempt to classify such views in still other ways:
Leisure as a bulk of time, qualitatively distinct from other time, such as the evening.
Leisure as freedom from those activities that have to be done, such as work or household chores.
Leisure as an end, distinct from work as a means.
Leisure as a minimum of obligation to others, to routine, even to oneself.
Leisure as re-creation, to prepare for better work, to store up energy or knowledge.
Leisure as self-improvement, whether in study, seeking new friends, or new experiences.
Leisure as social control, using the time of others to win them over or influence them; i.e., Roman games, German youth.
Leisure as a social symbol of class position, age, or success.
Leisure as sets of attitudes or motivations, not a content.
Leisure as physiological or emotional necessity, such as therapy or physical rest.
The second approach is to construct a general picture or concept of leisure that will avoid the narrowness of anyone type of subjective interpretation and at the same time permit of both subjective perception and objective analysis. The terms "ideal construct" or "ideal type" are sometimes applied to our use in conversation about common speech when we speak of "English society" or "communism"; these analytic tools were systematically used by the eminent scholar Max Weber when he analyzed Protestantism, the Chinese literati, and capitalism. As used by Weber, the ideal type is a general, not a specific, picture or a statistical average. It contains the important elements of the situation, against which a real situation can be assessed. As a typical picture of leisure, what is sought is something "applicable to the analysis of an infinite plurality of concrete cases."
The essential elements of leisure, as we shall interpret it, are (a) an antithesis to "work" as an economic function, (b) a pleasant expectation and recollection, (c) a minimum of involuntary social-role obligations, (d) a psychological perception of freedom, (e) a close relation to values of the culture, (f) the inclusion of an entire range from inconsequence and insignificance to weightiness and importance, and (g) often, but not necessarily, an activity characterized by the element of play.
As to the first, if he asks several persons at a baseball game, what brought them there, he will receive a variety of answers: "to enjoy the game," "to get the sunshine," "to get away from home," "to rest." If asked what leisure means to them on a more general level, the same persons are likely to consider it as "time off from work," "free time," "my own time," "doing what I like," "rest," and so on. A more sophisticated audience or a categorical-minded observer might attempt to classify such views in still other ways:
Leisure as a bulk of time, qualitatively distinct from other time, such as the evening.
Leisure as freedom from those activities that have to be done, such as work or household chores.
Leisure as an end, distinct from work as a means.
Leisure as a minimum of obligation to others, to routine, even to oneself.
Leisure as re-creation, to prepare for better work, to store up energy or knowledge.
Leisure as self-improvement, whether in study, seeking new friends, or new experiences.
Leisure as social control, using the time of others to win them over or influence them; i.e., Roman games, German youth.
Leisure as a social symbol of class position, age, or success.
Leisure as sets of attitudes or motivations, not a content.
Leisure as physiological or emotional necessity, such as therapy or physical rest.
The second approach is to construct a general picture or concept of leisure that will avoid the narrowness of anyone type of subjective interpretation and at the same time permit of both subjective perception and objective analysis. The terms "ideal construct" or "ideal type" are sometimes applied to our use in conversation about common speech when we speak of "English society" or "communism"; these analytic tools were systematically used by the eminent scholar Max Weber when he analyzed Protestantism, the Chinese literati, and capitalism. As used by Weber, the ideal type is a general, not a specific, picture or a statistical average. It contains the important elements of the situation, against which a real situation can be assessed. As a typical picture of leisure, what is sought is something "applicable to the analysis of an infinite plurality of concrete cases."
The essential elements of leisure, as we shall interpret it, are (a) an antithesis to "work" as an economic function, (b) a pleasant expectation and recollection, (c) a minimum of involuntary social-role obligations, (d) a psychological perception of freedom, (e) a close relation to values of the culture, (f) the inclusion of an entire range from inconsequence and insignificance to weightiness and importance, and (g) often, but not necessarily, an activity characterized by the element of play.
Recreation - Play
This term comes from the Latin recreatio, to restore or refresf; "To restore to a good or normal physical condition from a state of weakness or exhaustion; to invest with fresh vigour or strength." 11 "Refreshment of the strength and spirits after toil." Used as an adjective, "Equipped so as to provide diversions or amusements."
The essence of the term is alternation of light, re-creative, pleasant activity -- or inactivity -- with heavy, energy-consuming, obligatory activiy. The psychological element of pleasant anticipation seems warranted. Recreation is a renewal or preparation for the continuance of routine and necessary work. Using the, philosopher's term, it is teleological, from the Greeek term telos -- purpose. In its first sense recreation has the purpose of re-creating or reviatlizing us so that we may more efficiently go back to activities that are not recreational but fundamentally of a work nature.
Play
The term play comes from the Anglo-Saxon plega, a game, a sport; and this usually meant a skirmish, fight, or battle. In the Bible, 2 Sam. ii. 14, to play really means to fight. Similarly, to "play an instrument" was to strike something. The Latin plaga, a blow, stroke, or thrust, is thus a forerunner of the term "plague."The term "play" is currently used in one of two senses:
(a) a light, informal, make-believe action, such as the play of children;
(b) a more formal, stylized, intense, and even serious presentation of some aspect of life on a "stage." In the first use our popular knowledge of psychology has made many people increasingly aware that in "play" the child is doing more than keeping busy; he is, in fact, learning and exploring the world, developing his body, setting attitudes toward himself, toward others, toward things, and toward ethical or social precepts included in the thou shall or the thou shall not. Thus as parents have acquired more understanding of the way in which a child grows up, they have begun to see play as a serious thing. The evidence is in educational toys, the large literature for children, concern with the playmates of their children, lessons for parents on how to play with children, and the development of a core of professional workers in recreation whose job it is to make play for children contribute to personal and group welfare.Thus the change in the conception held of play has in the last few decades reverted to the original concept of play as something significant.
Play is secluded and limited, containing its own course and meanrag: it begins and is over at a specific moment. Yet, since it becomes a tradition, it can be repeated. The dual elements of repetition and alternation are contributions to the independence of play, which further functions within limitations of time and space. Play thus constitutes a temporary world within, and marked off from, the ordinary world Play creates order; in fact, it is order. It is inside a "playground"; slight deviation from the rules spoils the game. Since order has a tendency to be a thing of beauty in and of itself, we have the affinity of play to aesthetics. Order within play contains all the elements of beauty, such as tension, poise, balance, and contrast. Tension demands a solution, a basic cycle to aesthetic experience. Rules become all-important, for deviations threaten the very existence of the play-community.
Last, the play-community tends to become after the game is over, for in the course of playing it has become an "in-group," having already shared a common experience within an atmosphere of some secrecy, some "dressing up," some disguise or identification.
The essence of the term is alternation of light, re-creative, pleasant activity -- or inactivity -- with heavy, energy-consuming, obligatory activiy. The psychological element of pleasant anticipation seems warranted. Recreation is a renewal or preparation for the continuance of routine and necessary work. Using the, philosopher's term, it is teleological, from the Greeek term telos -- purpose. In its first sense recreation has the purpose of re-creating or reviatlizing us so that we may more efficiently go back to activities that are not recreational but fundamentally of a work nature.
Play
The term play comes from the Anglo-Saxon plega, a game, a sport; and this usually meant a skirmish, fight, or battle. In the Bible, 2 Sam. ii. 14, to play really means to fight. Similarly, to "play an instrument" was to strike something. The Latin plaga, a blow, stroke, or thrust, is thus a forerunner of the term "plague."The term "play" is currently used in one of two senses:
(a) a light, informal, make-believe action, such as the play of children;
(b) a more formal, stylized, intense, and even serious presentation of some aspect of life on a "stage." In the first use our popular knowledge of psychology has made many people increasingly aware that in "play" the child is doing more than keeping busy; he is, in fact, learning and exploring the world, developing his body, setting attitudes toward himself, toward others, toward things, and toward ethical or social precepts included in the thou shall or the thou shall not. Thus as parents have acquired more understanding of the way in which a child grows up, they have begun to see play as a serious thing. The evidence is in educational toys, the large literature for children, concern with the playmates of their children, lessons for parents on how to play with children, and the development of a core of professional workers in recreation whose job it is to make play for children contribute to personal and group welfare.Thus the change in the conception held of play has in the last few decades reverted to the original concept of play as something significant.
Play is secluded and limited, containing its own course and meanrag: it begins and is over at a specific moment. Yet, since it becomes a tradition, it can be repeated. The dual elements of repetition and alternation are contributions to the independence of play, which further functions within limitations of time and space. Play thus constitutes a temporary world within, and marked off from, the ordinary world Play creates order; in fact, it is order. It is inside a "playground"; slight deviation from the rules spoils the game. Since order has a tendency to be a thing of beauty in and of itself, we have the affinity of play to aesthetics. Order within play contains all the elements of beauty, such as tension, poise, balance, and contrast. Tension demands a solution, a basic cycle to aesthetic experience. Rules become all-important, for deviations threaten the very existence of the play-community.
Last, the play-community tends to become after the game is over, for in the course of playing it has become an "in-group," having already shared a common experience within an atmosphere of some secrecy, some "dressing up," some disguise or identification.
Women's notions of leisure
While the shortened workday allowed more leisure time, women's experiences in the workplace reinforced the appeal of pleasure-oriented recreation in the public sphere. On one level, the desire for frivolous amusement was a reaction against the discipline, drudgery, and exploitative conditions of labor. A woman could forget rattling machinery or irritating customers in the nervous energy and freedom of the grizzly bear and turkey trot, or escape the rigors of the workplace altogether by finding a husband in the city's night spots. "You never rest until you die," observed one young box-maker, "but I will get out by marrying somebody." Indeed, factory investigators recorded the "wide-spread belief of the girls that marriage is relief from the trouble and toil of wage labor."
At the same time, women's notions of leisure were reaffirmed through their positive social interactions within the workplace. In factories, stores, and offices, women socialized with other women and informally cooperated to affect working conditions. Their experience of work in a group context differed sharply from the homebound, task-oriented, and isolated situation of domestic servants, outworkers, and housewives. There developed in this setting a shared and public culture, which legitimized the desires and behaviors expressed in young women's leisure.
Like other work groups, women workers developed degrees of autonomy and control in their relationship to managers and the work process by enforcing informal work rules and production quotas, socializing new employees into these patterns of behavior, and protecting their job skills from the bosses' encroachment. Given their status as low-skilled and easily replaced workers, wage-earning women rarely commanded the control over the work process that men in the skilled trades could exert, but neither were they merely victims of capitalist discipline. Department store saleswomen, for example, used their selling skills to manipulate managers, supervisors, and customers, enforcing work rules among the women to sell only so many goods each day and employing code words to warn co-workers of recalcitrant customers. Bookbinders too employed the notion of a "fair day's work," controlling the output during each stint, while other factory hands orchestrated work stoppages and job actions over such issues as sexual harassment and pay cuts. Even waitresses worked out their resentment toward employers by pilfering pins and small objects, supplying themselves liberally with ice water and towels, and eating desserts ordered for imaginary customers.
In mediating the relationship between the wage-earner and the labor process, work cultures involved not only informal efforts to control work but also the daily interactions that helped pass the long hours. While women characterized the workplace as tedious and demanding, a necessity to be endured, most tried to create places of sociability and support on the shop floor. Women sang songs, recited the plots of novels, argued politics, and gossiped about social life to counteract the monotony and routine of the workday. One feather-maker, for example, described her co-workers' conversations: "We have such a good time. We talk about books that we read, . . . the theatres, and newspapers, and the things that go on about town." Pieceworkers, who had more control over their time than hourly hands, could follow their own rhythms of intense work mixed with periods of sociability. "When I was a pieceworker," recalled one garment worker, "I would sing, I would fool around, say jokes, talk with the girls." Singing helped pace the work, as in one box-makers' shop where songs would rise and fall while the workers sped through their tasks:
Three o'clock, a quarter after, half-past! The terrific tension had all but reached the breaking point. Then there rose a trembling, palpitating sigh that seemed to come from a hundred throats, and blended in a universal expression of relief. In her clear, high treble Angelina began the everlasting "Fatal Wedding." That piece of false sentiment had now a new significance. It became a song of deliverance, and as the workers swelled the chorus, one by one, it meant that the end of the day's toil was in sight.
Even in factories with loud machinery, women would try to converse above the noise, while lunch hours and the after-work walk home also afforded time to socialize with workmates. At Macy's, employees were "fond of sitting down in a corner and eating a pickle and pastry and a cup of tea; they can do that very quickly and can then visit for quite a long time during the rest of the noon hour."
Women's work cultures varied according to type of employment, ethnic and religious affiliation, and larger cultural traditions. American-born union women, believing in self-education and uplift, often mirrored their male counterparts' behavior in the shop. In one New York cigar factory, for example, female trade unionists would pay one of their members to read aloud while they worked: "First the newspaper is read, then some literary work, such as for instance Morley 'Life of Gladstone.'" Even among nonunionized workers, the rituals, rules, and interactions governing work in stores and restaurants, where interpersonal skills were utilized, differed from semiskilled production, where machinery dominated the shop floor. The women themselves had a firm understanding of the occupational hierarchy indicated by language, mores, and "tone." The saleslady's patina of style and refinement differentiated her from the rougher manner of many tobacco or garment workers. Within a single industry, ethnic patterns also shaped different work cultures; cultural and political traditions, for example, contributed to the Jewish waist-makers' readiness to organize and strike, unlike their more hesitant Italian workmates. Despite these distinctive differences, we can discern important commonalities in the work cultures of women that shaped and defined their attitudes toward leisure.
In the workplace, young women marked out a cultural terrain distinct from familial traditions and the customary practices of their ethnic groups, signifying a new identity as wage-earners through language, clothing, and social rituals. "Learners" might adopt new names from storybook romances when they entered a workplace for the first time, and greenhorns shed their Old World names for Anglicized ones. Fads, modish attire, and a distinctive personal style were also encouraged, as wage-earners discussed the latest fashions, learned new hairstyles, and tried out cosmetics and cigarettes. Indeed, employers often found it necessary to proscribe the unseemly behavior of working women: "At Koch's there is a splendid system of rules prohibiting the chewing of gum, rougeing and excessively using face powder."
At the same time, women's notions of leisure were reaffirmed through their positive social interactions within the workplace. In factories, stores, and offices, women socialized with other women and informally cooperated to affect working conditions. Their experience of work in a group context differed sharply from the homebound, task-oriented, and isolated situation of domestic servants, outworkers, and housewives. There developed in this setting a shared and public culture, which legitimized the desires and behaviors expressed in young women's leisure.
Like other work groups, women workers developed degrees of autonomy and control in their relationship to managers and the work process by enforcing informal work rules and production quotas, socializing new employees into these patterns of behavior, and protecting their job skills from the bosses' encroachment. Given their status as low-skilled and easily replaced workers, wage-earning women rarely commanded the control over the work process that men in the skilled trades could exert, but neither were they merely victims of capitalist discipline. Department store saleswomen, for example, used their selling skills to manipulate managers, supervisors, and customers, enforcing work rules among the women to sell only so many goods each day and employing code words to warn co-workers of recalcitrant customers. Bookbinders too employed the notion of a "fair day's work," controlling the output during each stint, while other factory hands orchestrated work stoppages and job actions over such issues as sexual harassment and pay cuts. Even waitresses worked out their resentment toward employers by pilfering pins and small objects, supplying themselves liberally with ice water and towels, and eating desserts ordered for imaginary customers.
In mediating the relationship between the wage-earner and the labor process, work cultures involved not only informal efforts to control work but also the daily interactions that helped pass the long hours. While women characterized the workplace as tedious and demanding, a necessity to be endured, most tried to create places of sociability and support on the shop floor. Women sang songs, recited the plots of novels, argued politics, and gossiped about social life to counteract the monotony and routine of the workday. One feather-maker, for example, described her co-workers' conversations: "We have such a good time. We talk about books that we read, . . . the theatres, and newspapers, and the things that go on about town." Pieceworkers, who had more control over their time than hourly hands, could follow their own rhythms of intense work mixed with periods of sociability. "When I was a pieceworker," recalled one garment worker, "I would sing, I would fool around, say jokes, talk with the girls." Singing helped pace the work, as in one box-makers' shop where songs would rise and fall while the workers sped through their tasks:
Three o'clock, a quarter after, half-past! The terrific tension had all but reached the breaking point. Then there rose a trembling, palpitating sigh that seemed to come from a hundred throats, and blended in a universal expression of relief. In her clear, high treble Angelina began the everlasting "Fatal Wedding." That piece of false sentiment had now a new significance. It became a song of deliverance, and as the workers swelled the chorus, one by one, it meant that the end of the day's toil was in sight.
Even in factories with loud machinery, women would try to converse above the noise, while lunch hours and the after-work walk home also afforded time to socialize with workmates. At Macy's, employees were "fond of sitting down in a corner and eating a pickle and pastry and a cup of tea; they can do that very quickly and can then visit for quite a long time during the rest of the noon hour."
Women's work cultures varied according to type of employment, ethnic and religious affiliation, and larger cultural traditions. American-born union women, believing in self-education and uplift, often mirrored their male counterparts' behavior in the shop. In one New York cigar factory, for example, female trade unionists would pay one of their members to read aloud while they worked: "First the newspaper is read, then some literary work, such as for instance Morley 'Life of Gladstone.'" Even among nonunionized workers, the rituals, rules, and interactions governing work in stores and restaurants, where interpersonal skills were utilized, differed from semiskilled production, where machinery dominated the shop floor. The women themselves had a firm understanding of the occupational hierarchy indicated by language, mores, and "tone." The saleslady's patina of style and refinement differentiated her from the rougher manner of many tobacco or garment workers. Within a single industry, ethnic patterns also shaped different work cultures; cultural and political traditions, for example, contributed to the Jewish waist-makers' readiness to organize and strike, unlike their more hesitant Italian workmates. Despite these distinctive differences, we can discern important commonalities in the work cultures of women that shaped and defined their attitudes toward leisure.
In the workplace, young women marked out a cultural terrain distinct from familial traditions and the customary practices of their ethnic groups, signifying a new identity as wage-earners through language, clothing, and social rituals. "Learners" might adopt new names from storybook romances when they entered a workplace for the first time, and greenhorns shed their Old World names for Anglicized ones. Fads, modish attire, and a distinctive personal style were also encouraged, as wage-earners discussed the latest fashions, learned new hairstyles, and tried out cosmetics and cigarettes. Indeed, employers often found it necessary to proscribe the unseemly behavior of working women: "At Koch's there is a splendid system of rules prohibiting the chewing of gum, rougeing and excessively using face powder."
Sixties Groups Whose Names Have Literary Sources
Group Name Source
Big Brother George Orwell's 1984 (1948)
The Doors Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception (1955)
Steppenwolf Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf (1927)
Blood Sweat and Tears Winston Churchill, Speech before the House of Commons, 13 May 1940: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
The Ides of March William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar I, ii, 18 "Beware the ides of March."
Notice that Blood Sweat and Tears and the Ides of March have names that come at the end of a quotation, so that to get it you have to know the first part as well. Since almost all American kids have to read Julius Caesar in high school, that Shakespearean tag is especially indicative. Furthermore, these names as well as that of Big Brother promise something threatening. Music was so loud and so heavy that it did have an aggressive quality—so that it is no surprise that in 1969 a group formed that called itself War.
This use of high culture came from the fact that a new socio-ethnic group entered popular music in the years 1964-69: middle-class white kids who had gone to good suburban high schools as well as college. Aside from the Motown groups, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, and a few others, the major rock acts were white. Let's take the personnel of the following sixties bands: Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, The Doors, Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane, the Lovin' Spoonful, and the Mamas and the Papas. In the specific case of the Buffalo Springfield, the group consisted of: Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richle Furay, Dewey Martin, and Bruce Palmer. No ethnic names there at all. In fact, there are only three ethnic names in all of these groups put together: Zal Yankowski of the Lovin' Spoonful (Jewish); Ray Manzarek of The Doors (Czech); and Norma Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane (Finnish).
Most of these WASP kids had not only gone to good high schools, they had also gotten into good colleges, where they dropped out after listening to the Beatles. Janis Joplin dropped out of the University of Texas, as Grace Slick had dropped out of Manhattanville College, where she had taken classes with Tricia Nixon. Jim Morrison dropped out of two schools, Florida State and UCLA, and, remarkable as it may seem, John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas, had dropped out of West Point! While people often said that these kids were rebelling against American society, they were in fact too much a part of it to rebel in any consistent way. They just wanted to re-define it a little, and they did.
The question of what Jewish musicians did for rock in the sixties is an interesting one. While Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Art Garfunkel are clearly of major importance, they didn't make mainstream rock, music you could dance to, and after them, there's only two short-lived groups, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and the Blues Project, also known as the Jewish Beatles. On the other hand, the role of Jews in entrepreneurial roles increased. More than any other non-performer, Bill Graham made San Francisco what it was in the late sixties. Clive Davis, as president of Columbia Records, signed up Big Brother and other West Coast acts after Monterey Pop. Jerry Wexler produced Aretha Franklin's legendary sessions at Atlantic and Lou Adler managed the Mamas and the Papas. Meanwhile, a group of articulate writers, most of whom worked for Rolling Stone, were creating the new genre of rock criticism. They included Jonathan Eisen, Jon Landau, Greil Marcus, and Robert Cristgau.
Big Brother George Orwell's 1984 (1948)
The Doors Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception (1955)
Steppenwolf Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf (1927)
Blood Sweat and Tears Winston Churchill, Speech before the House of Commons, 13 May 1940: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
The Ides of March William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar I, ii, 18 "Beware the ides of March."
Notice that Blood Sweat and Tears and the Ides of March have names that come at the end of a quotation, so that to get it you have to know the first part as well. Since almost all American kids have to read Julius Caesar in high school, that Shakespearean tag is especially indicative. Furthermore, these names as well as that of Big Brother promise something threatening. Music was so loud and so heavy that it did have an aggressive quality—so that it is no surprise that in 1969 a group formed that called itself War.
This use of high culture came from the fact that a new socio-ethnic group entered popular music in the years 1964-69: middle-class white kids who had gone to good suburban high schools as well as college. Aside from the Motown groups, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, and a few others, the major rock acts were white. Let's take the personnel of the following sixties bands: Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, The Doors, Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane, the Lovin' Spoonful, and the Mamas and the Papas. In the specific case of the Buffalo Springfield, the group consisted of: Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richle Furay, Dewey Martin, and Bruce Palmer. No ethnic names there at all. In fact, there are only three ethnic names in all of these groups put together: Zal Yankowski of the Lovin' Spoonful (Jewish); Ray Manzarek of The Doors (Czech); and Norma Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane (Finnish).
Most of these WASP kids had not only gone to good high schools, they had also gotten into good colleges, where they dropped out after listening to the Beatles. Janis Joplin dropped out of the University of Texas, as Grace Slick had dropped out of Manhattanville College, where she had taken classes with Tricia Nixon. Jim Morrison dropped out of two schools, Florida State and UCLA, and, remarkable as it may seem, John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas, had dropped out of West Point! While people often said that these kids were rebelling against American society, they were in fact too much a part of it to rebel in any consistent way. They just wanted to re-define it a little, and they did.
The question of what Jewish musicians did for rock in the sixties is an interesting one. While Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Art Garfunkel are clearly of major importance, they didn't make mainstream rock, music you could dance to, and after them, there's only two short-lived groups, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and the Blues Project, also known as the Jewish Beatles. On the other hand, the role of Jews in entrepreneurial roles increased. More than any other non-performer, Bill Graham made San Francisco what it was in the late sixties. Clive Davis, as president of Columbia Records, signed up Big Brother and other West Coast acts after Monterey Pop. Jerry Wexler produced Aretha Franklin's legendary sessions at Atlantic and Lou Adler managed the Mamas and the Papas. Meanwhile, a group of articulate writers, most of whom worked for Rolling Stone, were creating the new genre of rock criticism. They included Jonathan Eisen, Jon Landau, Greil Marcus, and Robert Cristgau.
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