5 Oct

Zoom, Uppsala

Rural Workers and Casual Labour Markets in Eastern Finland, 1822-1862

seminars, workshops |

Division of Agrarian History invites you to a seminar with Petri Talvitie, Researcher in Economic and social history at Helsinki university.

This article seeks to analyse the impact of climatic seasons – or more precisely the impact of agricultural production cycle – on the employment of labouring poor in the northern Savo region in eastern Finland during the nineteenth century.

The focus is on day labourers or casual labourers (Sw. inhyseshjon; Fi itsellinen or loinen), which are sometimes called also vagrant labourers because of their unsettled and mobile life style. Day labourers formed the poorest strata in the rural areas in eastern Finland, mainly because they did not have any regular income in contrast to for instance annual farm servants. Most of them did not even have a dwelling of their own but were forced to lodge within the homes of farmers or crofters. During the nineteenth century, the share of casual labourers of the rural population in eastern Finland increased from circa ten per cent to over thirty per cent, and they formed the most important social class in the region at the turn of the twentieth century, together with peasant farmers and industrial labourers. Despite their large number, our understanding of their living conditions is still very limited and mainly based on newspaper articles and administrative accounts from the latter part of the century.

The paper concentrates on three themes. First, it seeks to quantify, albeit in a very rough way, the scope of the seasonality or the length of the typical working year in agriculture in Eastern Finland in 1820–.

Second, the paper discusses the division of labour within the farms. What kinds of tasks were contracted out to casual workers?

Third, to what degree did wages adjust with shifting demand for labour? In addition, the basis of payment (piece rate or time rate) and means of payment (cash, food, cropland, housing etc.) will be discussed in the presentation.