Hi cousins, I received this on another list and thought you might be interested. I'll be setting this message aside to put up at the Homestead after I receive permission from the author. I hope you're all having a quiet, restful Wednesday evening. :) Colleen -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [B-W] Bauer versus and practicing a trade and belong to guild Resent-Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 12:37:10 -0700 Resent-From: BADEN-WURTTEMBERG-L@rootsweb.com Date: Wed, 09 May 2001 15:35:44 -0700 From: Deborah Friedrichs <deborahk@erols.com> To: BADEN-WURTTEMBERG-L@rootsweb.com Dear List, I found the following which may help explain some of the definitions we are looking for. Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870 by David Sabean (Neckarhausen is in Wurttemberg) Page 62 We will stay with the contemporary term "Bauer" to describe someone who had sufficient land to be independent and who did not practice a trade or belong to a guild. In 1710, slightly more than half of the population were Bauern. By 1790, they had fallen to a third, and by 1870 to a quarter of the taxpaying Bürger. By the end of the eighteenth century a group of farm laborers had emerged, but its size fluctuated, since many artisans and Bauern worked for daily agricultrual wages for significant periods. ... Those involved in the food industry - coopers, bakers, and butchers often founded taverns - had ample opportunity to accumulate wealth after the turn of the century so that by 1870 several tavern keepers were among the wealthiest members of the village. Page 64 ,,,,,,,, In the eighteenth century, a large percentage of handicraftsmen outside the necessary carpenter, smith, baker, and wheelwright were weavers. All of these crafts necessitated local residency. Increasingly, weaving became a part-time activityfor some of the Bauern, and other seentary crafts emerged, such as shoemaking, which kept many individuals rooted in the village. But after 1800, growthwas concentrated in the building trades - among masons, stonecutters, pavers, plasterers, carpenters, and joiners - and most of these people worked outside the village for long periods of time. There was also a significant increase in unskilled work in raod, railroad, and canal construction, and in the burgeoning building industry. The following on pages 64 and 65 The changes in the relative wealth of village groups and the new regional mobility of the growing wage-earning population had policial consequences for the village itself. Athe the beginning of the eighteenth century, artisans were fully integrated into the power structure. ...... Altogether they held about half of the offices in the Gericht (court) and Rat (council). By 1790, however, they held ony 2 out of 23 offices, most of which were firmly in the hands of the Bauern. By then practically no one not in the top 25 percent of taxpayers was able to become a magistrate magistrate. Seven decades later, although fully fledged Bauern made up only 25 percent of the population, they still held 50 percent of the offices. In summary, in the early eighteenth century, Neckerhausen was a village of about 80 households and was dominated by land but had plenty of political scope for artisans. At the time, the average share per householdof the entire village land was about 17 acres. By the end of the century, the population had grown by about 70 percent, and the village was stratified in more complex ways.While the number of independent agricultural producers had expanded modestly, most of the population increase was taken up by wage-dependent, pauperized laborers and semiemployed craftsmen. The dualism of agricultureand petty commodity production gave way to a tripartite structure composed of relatively wealthy landowners, locally resident craftsmen (whose collective and individual wealth had for the most part been eroded), and a mobile group of workers available for seasonal opportunities in agriculture and construction. This last group grew throughout the nineteenth century, abosorbing most of the 70 percent increase in population to 1870. By then, thre were 220 households, and the average amount of land available for each of them had fallen by two-thirds, to around 6 acres. Fully subsistent Bauern now made up only 25percent of the population. By the end of the eighteenth century, local village power was firmly in the hands of the landed agricultural producers. Tehy maintained their policial ascendency inthe following period, sharing powere with those artisans and tavernkeepers who were able to capitalize on the economic expansion and who themselves owned just as much land as the richest Bauern. ==== BADEN-WURTTEMBERG Mailing List ==== To Unsubscribe/Subscribe & Search the Baden-Württemberg-L Web http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/intl/DEU/BADEN-WURTTEMBERG.html To contact List Managers, email: BADEN-WURTTEMBERG-admin@rootsweb.com