Historical Labor Shifts and their Relation to the Modern Job Market

I think MacLeod’s analysis of the discrepancy between the cultural identities that working-class men like the Hallway Hangers tend to develop and the strictly obsequious public personality that is needed to maintain employment in most low-level service-based jobs in chapter nine is one of the most enlightening passages in the book I have read so far. It is easy and unfortunately not uncommon for middle- and upper-class people to deride people like the Hangers for being too ‘lazy’ or ‘immoral’ to approach employment in the same way they do, but I feel sympathetic to the latter group’s struggle against occupational threats to their conceptions of themselves. Relatively little time has passed since service and information industries have usurped the position of manufacturing jobs in the American economy, so some of the difficulties that the Hallway Hangers and other working-class people have had adjusting to the new economy may have been unfortunately inevitable consequences of change. Nevertheless, I wonder how the working poor adapted to other historical shifts in the American economy, like those brought on by the Industrial Revolution and the end of the Civil War. It does seems like a long-shot, but I hope that the labor patterns of times like these might reveal some suggestions or guidelines for opening up the job market to more working-class people today.