Remnants of the pre-modern World in SGF

Today is Labor Day and that means my annual trip to the Springfield Labor Day parade. This is a bit of  Americana, which I try to explain to my children as historically relevant, but mostly they just like the gobstoppers and tootsie rolls. On a day in which I sleep in, workers from all across SGF take to the parade and group themselves with signs, trucks, bikes, and heavy machinery to demonstrate their community and ties to a union.  What is my link to this class? We looked briefly at the concept of a guild. Remember that Burckhardt said that everyone was free in the Renaissance and man had no ties. However, we (and Brucker) critiqued that notion by suggesting that guilds continued to function in Italy, even during the Renaissance. We learned on Friday that the guilds of Florence, especially the cloth guild and the wool guild, were major patrons of art. Guilds played central roles in town governance, kept the economy stable, helped established a product, and provided important social networks and health benefits, as Zophy pointed out.

Here, in the photo above, the heavy laborers and their families march to show solidarity. Not only do they share health benefits but they demonstrate a link to a common political ideology. How would this have been similar in the historical past? One thing is that when I ask students who in their family is a member of the working class--rather than a professional class--usually smaller number of students raise their hands.