this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
1169 points (97.6% liked)

memes

10457 readers
2488 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
1169
I wonder why I dont get invited to parties anymore. (lemmy.world)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
115 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (3 children)

90% was self employed in 1900.

That can't be right can it?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago

Yeah, it's correct if by "self employed" you mean "subsistence farmer". The US was basically a third world country in 1900. We only won the Spanish American War in 1898 because Spain was a dying empire.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago

50% according to this article. They mention 80% in 1860.

I'm not 100% sure of the source there but I have heard similar numbers around 50%. Think of all the self-employed people doing jobs that just don't exist today in the US - delivering milk, fruit, fish, newspapers, door-to-door salesmen, and that's on top of jobs that still exist today with a lot of self-employed people like AC repair, plumbing, etc...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

From 1860 to 1900 the average size of American farms had declined from 199 acres to 147 acres and the percentage of farmers in the labor force declined from 58 to 38 percent.

No, doesn't seem right.