JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. TOHN Shenton, a Philadelphia mariner, sailed four times to Antigua Con the snow Mary between October I750 and November I752. He yearned between Li3 and LI 5 per voyage, plus 3s. 6d. for each day he may have worked unloading or stowing cargo, for an annual income of approximately ?32 during those years. Shenton's personal expenses must have been minimal, for room and board were provided on ship, and the only financial difficulties he may have encountered would have resulted from supporting a wife and children, if he had such. The material conditions that he and his hypothetical family experienced, however, are not clear to us.Fifteen years later, Joseph Graisbury earned about Li8o annually by outfitting some of Philadelphia's wealthiest citizens in the latest fashions from Holland-cloth breeches to silk vests. He bought a house worth ?I 20 in Lower Delaware ward, in which he resided with his wife, at least seven children, all under eight years of age, and a slave. But the standard of living provided by his tailoring, and the ways it varied during the decade before the Revolution, are unknown.Late in the I78os, John and Elizabeth Baldwin performed occasional jobs for the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Sick Poor. John whitewashed fences and walls for 5s. 5d. per day, and spread dung on the hospital's garden for is. 6d. per day. Elizabeth washed clothes, cleaned rooms, made candles, cooked, and nursed, usually for 2s. 6d. per day. The couple and their two children lived in a "brick tenement" rented from the hospital for LI2 annually and may at times have paid 9d. for a meal at the hospital. Again, the material circumstances of their lives and the nature of their struggle to make ends meet cannot be clearly understood from these fragmentary data.' Mr. Smith is a member of the Department of History at Douglass College of Rutgers University. He wishes to thankThese vignettes provide glimpses into the material world of urban laboring people in America during the second half of the eighteenth century. They are a summons to research the day-to-day lives of ordinary Americans rather than a basis for easy generalizations about their physical existence. Despite limited evidence, historians usually describe the living standards of the urban lower classes as comfortable, perpetuating the hoary myth that labor scarcity in early America inevitably meant high wages for anyone who cared to work. Thus Sam Bass Warner finds Revolutionary Philadelphia a city of "abundance for the common man." "An unskilled laborer without connections," Warner claims, "could find work with board and wages to begin accumulating a little money for tools," and the "earnings of the ordinary artisan . .. could support a wife...
No abstract
This study analyzes the demographic characteristics of a previously neglected area in colonial America—the urban center. Growth, birth, and death rates in Philadelphia between 1720 and 1775 are estimated using a variety of sources. Immigration, smallpox, economic vacillations, and a skewed age structure are attributed primary responsibility in determining the level of and changes in Philadelphia's vital rates. The elevated level of these rates is evident in a comparison with vital rates in Andover and Boston, Massachusetts, and Nottingham, England.
The present study examined the relationships among self-reported amounts of exercise, body composition, age, weight, blood pressure, and physical fitness. Participants reported their duration and frequency of exercise, which were combined to obtain individual indexes of exercise. VO2 max predicted from a 1-mi. walk test, percent body fat via sum of skinfolds, blood pressure, and flexibility of the lower back and posterior thigh were measured. Findings indicated that age and exercise index were significant predictors of fitness for women, and percent body fat was a significant predictor for men. Results suggest individuals' exercise index moderately correlates with fitness, although it is not the only contributing factor.
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