How would you earn a living?

Stanley Doble · Sep 17, 2014

Some of you may be selling yourselves short. For one thing, higher education was a rarity pre WW2.

H.L. Mencken said in the 1920s that any man who knows his trade, has read 50 good books, and isn't afraid of ghosts can be a success anywhere in America.

Two Types · Sep 17, 2014

Guttersnipe said:
Only after trying your luck in the Imperial Indian Police, of course

Not my style (i.e. they probably wouldn't have had me!).

Shangas · Sep 17, 2014

If I was back in say 1925 or thereabouts I think I could survive as a shop-assistant, a writer, editor, working on a newspaper or something like that.

As has already been mentioned, university education pre-WWII was largely unheard of. Or to be precise, it wasn't as common as it is today. Most people of my parents' generation (or further back to the generation behind) didn't have university education.

My uncles, my aunts, my grandparents never went to university. Hell, half of them never finished HIGHSCHOOL. My grandmother only had 5th grade education. My uncle only made it to Grade 9. My dad was one of the FEW people in the family to graduate highschool AND university.

I think the job-requirements back then were lower, too. These days you'd be expected to have a Bachelor of This and a Master of That and a Certificate of Something Else and a Doctorate of That Other Thing...to operate a cash-register in a bric-a-brac shop. It's bloody ridiculous.

If you went to university, it was for one of the seriously upper-class jobs. Diplomat, politics, accountant. Doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief, that kind of stuff. Most people entered the workforce straight from highschool. Unfortunately these days you just can't do that. If you could, I'd have a job right now.

Back then it was simply: "Can you read? Yes? Can you write? yes? Can you count? Yes? Press this, press this, press this, Total Sales. Turn the Crank. DING!! Bang! Pay out the shillings and pence - Bang! Done".

Guttersnipe · Sep 17, 2014

Two Types said:
Not my style (i.e. they probably wouldn't have had me!).

Ha! I suppose the Eton background helped . . . of course "the dirty work of Empire at close quarters" turned out not to suit Eric Blair either.

Renault · Sep 17, 2014

In reality I would have prolly sharecropped like the rest of the family, picked cotton or thrashed peanuts. Or stretched wire and worked someone else's cattle.

up196 · Sep 17, 2014

Edm1 said:
Ok..you wake up pre WW2. What would you do to earn a living? Could you do your same job?

Railroad detective, then as now.

ChiTownScion · Sep 17, 2014

Being an attorney at any time in Chicago would have been interesting: depending upon how much prior to World War II we're talking about, I could have been a contemporary of Clarence Darrow.

But if I could rub the lamp and get any job of that era, put me in the right hand seat of a large steam locomotive, on either a top varnish passenger run or hauling expedited produce or priority freight. Opening that throttle, feeling the speed build, making that whistle scream..... could it get any better?

Horace Debussy Jones · Sep 17, 2014

Easy. I'd be an artist/illustrator/portraitist/art conservator/gallery owner/art dealer. Maybe something like "Max", from the movie of the same name, but I would have nothing to do with that Hitler person!

TheSacredFemme · Sep 17, 2014

As I'm a costuming student now I reckon in a few years time (back then) I would have been a seamstress or a home economics instructor.

HeyMoe · Sep 17, 2014

Army or more likely cop or private dic. I have family who did both back in the day.

LizzieMaine · Sep 17, 2014

Shangas said:
I think the job-requirements back then were lower, too. These days you'd be expected to have a Bachelor of This and a Master of That and a Certificate of Something Else and a Doctorate of That Other Thing...to operate a cash-register in a bric-a-brac shop. It's bloody ridiculous.

This type of attitude only really came to the front during the '90s. As recently as the '80s it was entirely possible to get an entry level job in journalism, for example, with nothing more than basic writing skills. The main requirement I remember most often from the ads was "must own reliable car." If you had that, you'd pick up everything else as you went along.

As I've mentioned before, as of 1940 less than 5 percent of the adult US population had graduated from college, and even as late as 1960, after fifteen years of the GI Bill, it was just a bit over 10 percent. Even today, only about 30 percent of the adult population holds any kind of a degree. These sorts of meaningless degree requirements are basically telling the vast majority of the population that they don't have any shot at a decent job unless they sink themselves into a morass of hopeless debt to comply with an arbitrary standard set by their "betters."

Texfield · Sep 17, 2014

Same thing then as now, naval intelligence. And then after the war, back to Africa. The animals may have Ph.D.'s in people pounding but at least they don't have 16 inch guns.

Dragon Soldier · Sep 17, 2014

Texfield said:
Same thing then as now, naval intelligence. And then after the war, back to Africa. The animals may have Ph.D.'s in people pounding but at least they don't have 16 inch guns.

Y'see I'd have said similar, but as I discovered, quickly, in the early nineties, if it doesn't have a red star on it or a fondness for Sergei Eisenstein films, I can't develop an interest.

KILO NOVEMBER · Sep 18, 2014

My father and grandfather were machinists in the steel industry. Likely I would have ended up doing the same. On the other hand, my grandfather's father was a shoemaker, and a great-great grandfather along another branch of my family tree worked as shoemakers. That has some more appeal (although less likely to earn me a good living). It's certainly more appealing than farming, which was what most of my ancestors did.

Shangas · Sep 18, 2014

If I think about what my grandparents did prewar, I don't know how I'd work out. My grandfather was a scholar and newspaper journalist before the war. My grandmother was what she always was - a dressmaker. Grandpa went from job to job to job. The Japanese Occupation and the Chinese Civil War really screwed up his prospects, though. He went from newspaper journalist to calligrapher to fairground operator to a partner in a Chinese cinema (which bombed because China was now Communist and nobody wanted to visit a Red cinema, not that Grandpa was), to working in a photography studio, to being a member of the local Chinese clan associations...

It was a huge bloody mess. Grandma was the only one who could keep her job. Mostly because everyone needs clothes. Given a choice, I would've either been a writer or a tailor (or some other sort of artistic craft).

DharmaBum · Sep 18, 2014

I would not change a thing......Active Duty Army.....just like the boys in "From Here To Eternity". However two caveats; we don't seem to have as much fun now as Sinatra and the gang had in pre-WW2 Hawaii so I would look forward to that aspect. On the other hand, as a modern day tanker I much prefer my odds in the Abrams as opposed to the Sherman!

Renault · Sep 18, 2014

DharmaBum said:
I would not change a thing......Active Duty Army.....just like the boys in "From Here To Eternity". However two caveats; we don't seem to have as much fun now as Sinatra and the gang had in pre-WW2 Hawaii so I would look forward to that aspect. On the other hand, as a modern day tanker I much prefer my odds in the Abrams as opposed to the Sherman!

A Sherman?!?! That modern???

. Heck you'd prolly be pushing an FT-17 thru the Bonus Army camp!

DharmaBum · Sep 18, 2014

Renault said:
A Sherman?!?! That modern??? . Heck you'd prolly be pushing an FT-17 thru the Bonus Army camp!

You sir are correct.....excellent point and far worse than the Sherman!

ChiTownScion · Sep 18, 2014

LizzieMaine said:
As I've mentioned before, as of 1940 less than 5 percent of the adult US population had graduated from college, and even as late as 1960, after fifteen years of the GI Bill, it was just a bit over 10 percent. Even today, only about 30 percent of the adult population holds any kind of a degree. These sorts of meaningless degree requirements are basically telling the vast majority of the population that they don't have any shot at a decent job unless they sink themselves into a morass of hopeless debt to comply with an arbitrary standard set by their "betters."

The part that frightens me is that obtaining a higher education is becoming less and less of an affordable option- even for the ambitious kid who doesn't have a check writing Popsie and Mumsie but is still willing to work their way through college, and forgo the immediate gratifications of owning a car, buying toys, going out every weekend and getting plastered with the gang, and getting married at a ridiculously young age. Education is still the best avenue to upward socioeconomic mobility.

I don't buy into the idea that there are "worthless degrees:" pursuing any baccalaureate in an area where one has a passion demonstrates the ability to pursue an intangible but objective end, and since most HR people who are doing the hiring have trod that same path, that seems to be what is expected. Contra, I remember being lectured on Day One by a particularly obnoxious university dean that getting a college education to "get a job" is a ridiculous proposition: time would be better spent to that end by getting into an electrician apprenticeship program. I can only state that the best thing I obtained from my undergrad years was mastery of life and study skills that have proved invaluable... but in the short term, the diploma itself would have never landed a job.

Grad or professional school, on the other hand, is for those who have obtained their general education and have decided their vocational path. And sadly, this is where debt becomes the bigger burden. The good news is that student loan default is far greater among those who choose to attend for-profit vocational schools than those who attend legitimate academic programs. As much as it's pooh-poohed, the Wharton or Kellogg grad with an MBA, or the Medill grad with a masters in journalism, is statistically in a far better position to pay off that $200,000. student loan debt than the grad of the XYZ Vocational Academy who is in the hole for $68,000. for courses that could have been obtained at an accredited community college for a fraction of that debt.

filfoster · Sep 18, 2014

I could still be a trust officer, but maybe I'd try something different. Practicing law had to be a lot simpler and more civil then.

How would you earn a living?

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