proportion of production, both for self-consumption and for sale, took place within the household, and in which a significant proportion of the labour force combined household production with work for wages. By no means all of the time spent away from paid employment was`wasted on idling': those with smallholdings raised crops and kept poultry and animals, while the landless could glean corn and collect fuel, and produce a variety of goods to be consumed within the household or even sold. Indeed, it is possible that much so-called 'leisure' might have yielded a greater marginal return than time spent working for wages. Nor did a day off work necessarily mean the loss of a full day's production. As Adam Smith was to confirm in the 1770s, the working of short weeks by the self-employed or by those paid by the piece could simply mean that they chose to cram five or six day's production into four.(49) At the same time, the amount of work which individuals sought was conditioned by far more than personal inclination, the level of wages and the price and attractiveness of goods. It varied according to stages in the life-cycle, which for most brought rising then falling numbers of dependent mouths to feed and bodies to clothe, and increasing then diminishing reserves of energy and strength.Most significantly, conventional economic analysis is of limited rather than decisive assistance in any evaluation of the accuracy of contemporary assertions. The backward-sloping labour-supply function, although in many respects a simple concept to accept in social terms, is much more difficult to comprehend within the laws of neo-classical economics, by which the normal expectations of rational behaviour in a market economy endow the individual worker with a strong desire to maximize income and an almost infinite variety of enticing goods upon which to spend his money. According to these parameters we are instructed that, with the exception of the very we...
