I was browsing an article in The World in 2010 published by The Economist about how manufacturing will overtake agriculture for the first time in India and I was struck by a couple of sentences about how, by and large, India's rural poor were protected from the [global financial] crisis by the same things that made them poor. "If you never had secure employment or many financial assets, you cannot lose them to the crisis."

That got me thinking about our ancestors. For the most part, many were Scotland's rural poor - they were labourers (general, agricultural, road) and much of that work, as we have seen, was seasonal and thus not secure. They didn't own land and they didn't own their houses. Their assets were maybe a few chickens, a pig and a cow and a cabbage patch. James Lindsay  did rise from farm servant to become farm grieve - but the majority did not progress. Women who didn't work in the fields were domestic servants on a farm or in the big hoos. With the advent of the linen industry, some migrated from the fields to the factories - becoming flax spinners or dressers - still poorly paid with long hours, but maybe a job a bit more secure until steam power put an end to hand-loom weaving at home. However, this was skilled labour - though even unskilled farm workers would have gained knowledge of animal husbandry, crops, methods and processes, the seasons and the weather and so on. Then there were those who followed a trade - becoming at first apprentices and then blacksmiths or shoemakers or bakers. Son often followed father. There were also a few who trod different paths - spirit salesman, engine driver or postman - still working class, but not labourers. The army attracted men like Joseph Hinkle (Pennsylvania Militia) and John Wilkie (Forfarshire Militia) a couple of centuries ago, but others preferred a sea-faring life. Some of these were simply nautical labourers, but others (like our great grandfathers) by dint of passing exams became master mariners - experts in the way of the sea, as their forebears were in the way of the land.  Our ancestors, despite their poverty and lack of assets, still brought up many children in cramped conditions - although there were many more mouths to feed, as they got older the children could help bring in more income for the family.  

Our grandparents, even parents, did not go to university - of course, the first and second World Wars had a hand in that - but it was still a place for the more elite. Even many in my own generation did not go either - where I went to school, only the top 2% in the county actually passed the exams (at 11 years old) to go to grammar school or high school and thus would have the opportunity, if they passed more exams at 16 or 17, to go to university. If they didn't pass those early exams at 11, then they were destined to go to the local technical college and learn a trade - usually leaving school at 16 or 17 and entering the workforce. Our mothers did not work after the birth of their children and our fathers usually brought in sufficient money to allow their wives and offspring to stay at home. Contrast even this recent past with today. Our children all go to university, as do their spouses - but after the children are born the mothers often go back to work. But university education and opportunities have made us professionals - we are managers, scientists, engineers, teachers, consultants - we work in cutting edge, high tech or business fields, we are reasonably well-off, we have comfortable homes, we have nice lifestyles, we can support our parents or our children if necessary. And (but?!) we retire at 65 (at least in Europe) whereas our ancestors generally kept on working until they dropped - most were still working (labouring) into their 80s and 90s - women as well as men.

We have come a long way - I doubt whether any of us (my generation and my childrens') are not in so-called professional jobs. Some spouses might have the luxury of not having to work. Some of us might be in dead-end or boring jobs and some might have been harder hit than others by the financial crisis - but we are certainly not part of a rural poor and neither were our parents. We got where we are today probably largely on our own merits, drive and motivation - but we also got here partly on the opportunities that were available for us to take advantage of, and partly on the sacrifices, scrimping and savings made by previous generations as well as their own courage and ambitions and self-betterment. In the 1860s John Raitt took his fledgling family to America, followed a few years later by his brother James Dorward Raitt and his family - they followed the promise of land and became farmers - and, unlike their grandparents, actually owned the land they tilled and built their own homes. Not only did they go West, young man, but they also went forth and multiplied. Several of my cousins carved out new lives for themselves in Australia and South Africa as well as the USA and Canada. My grandmother's siblings, after the 1st World War, did the same in New Zealand, Canada and Argentina as sheep farmers and cattle ranchers. Again they owned what was theirs - they moved beyond being the rural poor to having some assets - and they, like us, did it mainly by themselves.  

The point is that so many of our more distant ancestors were poor and came from humble stock - but they made the best of what they had and tried to make things better, in so far as they were able to and permitted to, for their families. They moved to take better jobs, they sent their children to school, they had kith and kin all around them - we will never know the full extent of their hardships and heartaches and their pleasures and successes - but we are who we are because of them and it behoves us to keep their spirit alive today.

Saturday, 2 January 2010

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