A Letter to Thomas Willing (1731–1821)
Dear Tom,
In 1776, work was not something people “balanced” against life.
Work was life.
The average American did not clock in, commute, optimize productivity workflows, or quietly pretend to answer emails while emotionally disassociating inside a Zoom meeting.
Most people worked because failing to work carried immediate physical consequences involving hunger, exposure, debt, or catastrophic crop failure.
Employment was survival wearing muddy boots.
The colonies were overwhelmingly agricultural. Farmers dominated the labor force, especially independent yeoman farmers in the North and smallholders across the frontier. In the South, vast plantations generated wealth through the forced labor of enslaved Africans whose stolen work powered enormous portions of the colonial economy.
America’s prosperity began partly in freedom.
And partly in bondage.
That contradiction sits beneath nearly every conversation about labor in American history.
Still, outside agriculture, colonial cities buzzed with specialized trades and artisan labor.
Blacksmiths forged tools, nails, and horseshoes.
Coopers crafted barrels essential for shipping and storage.
Tailors stitched clothing.
Printers spread newspapers, pamphlets, and revolutionary ideas dangerous enough to destabilize empires.
Cabinetmakers, wheelwrights, shoemakers, sailmakers, and carpenters all sustained a highly localized economy built around practical skill.
A person’s hands often determined their livelihood directly.
And unlike modern office work, labor in 1776 generally produced visible, tangible results. You could point physically at what you accomplished: a barrel, a wagon wheel, a repaired roof, a printed newspaper, a harvested field.
Modern workers sometimes complete entire weeks unsure what exactly they created besides additional emails.
Then there were tavern keepers, many of them women or widows, who operated some of colonial America’s most important unofficial institutions.
Taverns served as political forums, hiring halls, community centers, lodging houses, rumor factories, and emotional decompression chambers for exhausted humans trying to survive uncertainty.
The original coworking spaces smelled considerably more like ale and pipe smoke.
And of course, the labor system itself was deeply stratified.
Indentured servants worked years-long contracts in exchange for passage to America.
Apprentices trained beneath masters in structured trade systems.
Enslaved people performed both brutal field labor and highly skilled crafts while denied wages, rights, and freedom entirely.
Colonial work offered opportunity for some.
Extraction for others.
Then came the 19th century, and America’s relationship with labor transformed violently.
Industrialization arrived like a machine crashing through the wall of an older world.
Factories expanded rapidly after 1820, especially in Northern cities. Textile mills, steel production, railroads, mining operations, and manufacturing plants swallowed millions of workers into increasingly mechanized systems. Skilled artisans slowly lost ground to mass production. Handcrafted labor gave way to assembly lines and industrial specialization.
The worker no longer created the whole object.
The worker became part of the machine producing it.
And the conditions were often brutal.
Factory laborers worked twelve- to sixteen-hour days in loud, dangerous environments thick with dust, smoke, heat, and injury risk.
Child labor flourished because small hands fit conveniently into industrial machinery designed without much concern for human longevity.
Women entered factories in enormous numbers while still earning lower wages than men.
Immigrants flooded cities because even terrible American factory jobs often surpassed the opportunities available elsewhere.
The Industrial Revolution generated astonishing wealth.
It also generated exhaustion at scale.
By the late 1800s, entire categories of labor emerged that sound almost fictional now:
hod carriers hauling bricks for masons,
draymen driving carts through city streets,
bootblacks polishing shoes on corners,
hucksters selling goods door-to-door,
roughers operating mills reducing metal to usable sizes.
Civilization became wonderfully specific in its forms of exhaustion.
And naturally, workers began organizing.
Labor unions emerged because industrial capitalism concentrated power so heavily that individuals possessed little leverage alone.
Strikes erupted.
Protests spread.
Sometimes violence followed.
The battle between labor and capital became one of the defining struggles of modern America.
Who benefits most from work?
That question still haunts the republic.
Then the 20th century arrived and rearranged the labor landscape again.
At the beginning of the century, over 30% of Americans still worked in agriculture. By century’s end, farming employed only a tiny fraction of the population. Mechanization devoured labor needs. Tractors replaced teams of workers. Automation transformed factories. Entire professions vanished.
Milkmen disappeared.
Telephone operators faded.
“Soda jerks” dissolved into nostalgia.
Human computers, many of them women performing complex mathematical calculations manually before electronic computers existed, were replaced by actual computers.
Machines kept eating jobs.
And yet new jobs kept appearing.
Mid-century America became the age of manufacturing and the blue-collar middle class.
Factory workers bought homes, raised families, and fueled postwar prosperity.
Union wages created broad economic mobility for millions.
White-collar office work expanded simultaneously:
stenographers,
typists,
bookkeepers,
managers,
and clerical workers
filled skyscrapers and suburban office parks.
The economy shifted from physical production toward administration.
Then computers arrived.
And everything accelerated again.
By the 1990s, technology and service-sector jobs increasingly dominated American employment.
Offices digitized.
Retail expanded.
Healthcare exploded.
Finance, software, logistics, telecommunications, and consulting became central pillars of the economy.
The labor force moved from factories toward screens.
And now we arrive in 2026, Tom, where work itself feels like it is mutating in real time.
The fastest-growing jobs today cluster around
technology,
healthcare,
data analysis,
cybersecurity,
renewable energy,
logistics, and
elder care.
Artificial intelligence engineers command enormous salaries.
Data scientists shape industries through invisible patterns.
Home health aides support an aging population.
Electricians and specialized trades regained importance because somebody still has to physically maintain civilization while everyone else debates productivity on LinkedIn.
A deeply underrated reality.
At the same time, remote work transformed millions of lives after the pandemic accelerated digital labor systems dramatically.
Entire careers now exist without offices at all.
Workers attend meetings from kitchens, spare bedrooms, coffee shops, airports, and occasionally while pretending the camera malfunctioned because they absolutely did not want to wear business casual clothing at 8:00 a.m.
Humanity fought centuries for workplace flexibility largely to remain in sweatpants.
Remarkable species.
But beneath the convenience lurks enormous instability.
Automation and AI are beginning to erase many entry-level white-collar jobs the way industrial machinery once replaced factory labor.
Basic administrative tasks,
customer service,
coding assistance,
scheduling,
data processing,
copywriting,
bookkeeping,
and even portions of legal and creative work
increasingly fall within AI capability.
And that changes the traditional economic ladder profoundly.
For generations, young workers entered industries through repetitive beginner tasks, learning systems gradually before advancing upward. But what happens when machines absorb the beginner work itself?
How do humans gain experience if entry points vanish?
That question may define the next era of labor.
At the same time, AI may unleash extraordinary entrepreneurial opportunities.
Individuals can now build businesses, design products, create media, analyze markets, automate operations, and reach global audiences with tools once available only to corporations.
A single motivated person equipped with AI may soon wield the productive capacity of entire small teams from previous decades.
Work is becoming simultaneously more independent and more precarious.
The old model of stable lifelong employment continues eroding.
Americans now change careers repeatedly.
Gig work expands.
Freelancing grows.
Continuous retraining becomes normal because industries evolve faster than educational systems can comfortably adapt.
Modern workers are expected not merely to labor.
But to reinvent themselves constantly.
And perhaps that is the deepest shift of all.
In 1776, most people inherited work through geography, family, gender, or social class.
In 2026, Americans possess far greater freedom to pursue different paths…
…but also far greater responsibility for navigating instability alone.
Freedom and anxiety arrived holding hands.
Tom, if you could witness America in 2026, you would likely marvel at professions unimaginable in your century: AI ethicists, cybersecurity analysts, drone operators, renewable energy technicians, social media managers, cloud architects.
Yet beneath the futuristic language, We suspect you would recognize something familiar.
People are still searching for dignity through labor.
Still trying to exchange effort for stability.
Still hoping work provides not merely income, but meaning.
With admiration, concern, and one deeply exhausted group chat labeled “Work Stuff,”
—The Radical Left 💦🖤
And dear reader, perhaps this is the deeper question jobs ask us after 250 years: what is work actually for?
Is employment primarily about survival, identity, contribution, purpose, wealth, or social belonging?
As AI increasingly automates both physical and cognitive labor, what happens to human value itself?
And if machines eventually perform enormous portions of economic work, how will societies redefine meaning, opportunity, and fairness?
Because from blacksmith forges to AI-powered digital economies, Americans have always been engaged in the same restless pursuit:
Trying to build a life through labor.