What are the differences in professions of the eighteenth century to the jobs today?

Question

Differences between present day jobs: Doctor, Lawyer, Pharmacist, Police, Firefighter

Eighteenth century jobs: Preacher, Agriculture, Fishing, Export / import trade, Lumbering

Answer 1

In the past, a doctor or lawyer or a pharmacisct could know everything that was know or seemed knowable about their field. Today, with vast oceans info, people have to specialize more. Police and firefighters also need a great deal more technical knoweldge than their eighteenth century counter parts.

Preachers probably had smaller congregations and could be more personally involved with everyone in his parish and there would have been far fewer female clergy back then (although there was some religious movements in the 1700s lead by women). Farming was dominated by small family farms, and large ranches/plantations were the exception not the norm. Now a days, most farming is done by agribusiness conglomerates. So if you are a farmer these days, you are are most likely to be an employee carrying out a specific job or set of job tasks, rather than the owner of a small far responsible for everything from planting on through harvest. Fishing and lumbering, while lower tech 300 years ago, were enjoying huge booms. No one thought the North Atlantic Cod schools would ever run out or that the forests would completly disappear. It seemed a time when tech was high enough to make large scale industrial fishing and logging possible, but idea of shortages and eco-management with which the modern fisher and logger need be concerned were centuries off.

Import/Export might be the most interesting job to look at and compare/contrast. We might find a lot of similarities between then and now. Although, of course, technology and specialization have had impacts on trade just like all the other jobs mentioned above, the heart of free commerce remains pretty much the same. It was the traders who driving the European voyages of discovery, and traders who were establishing colonies. Today, trade is still driving the economy. Hmmmmm.

Answer 2

Interesting that EVERY one of your examples, assigned to their century can be found in the OTHER century.

There were doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, police and firefighters in the eighteenth century. There are still preacher, agriculturalists, fishermen, lumbermen and people involved in the import/export trade in the present.

Technology and transportation improvements may have made all of those jobs easier and better performing, but their essential purpose and functions are still the same.

The biggest differences may be best described in jobs of the past that no longer exist, and current jobs that could not have existed in the eighteenth century. Buggy whip makers, astronauts, locomotive firemen, airline pilot.

Answer 3

The bible is what is called "Faction" A fictional story set in a factual time and place. Thus the time, place and real historical characters are all correct but the fictional characters and stories are not! There is not one single mention of Jesus in the entire Roman record - that is right - not one! At the same time as he was supposed to have been around there were a number of Jews claiming to be the messiah - all of whom are well recorded! There is not a single contemporary record from any source and even the bible mentions of him like all other references were not written until many years after his supposed death! He was supposed to have been a huge problem to the Romans and produced wonderful miracles but still not one contemporary record? Even the bible mentions of him like all other references were not written until many years after his supposed death! Pilate is recorded in the Roman record as a somewhat lack luster man but no mention of a Jesus, a trial or crucifixion that would surely have been used to make him look brighter! At best he was an amalgam of those others but almost certainly never existed! Christianity has lost over ten percent in less than a decade and the loss is increasing! forget the silly claims for Christian numbers and look at the truth! The churches own figures show only 28% ever attend church in a year. Indeed if 28% ever tried to attend church on the same day, even working shifts, there is simply not enough churches! But count the bars - in many places there is more space In the bars than the churches! Count all the seats in every church in a town and compare that to the population and it is very unlikely to achieve even 5%! This is true right through the bible belt and in Salt Lake City!

Answer 4

I can only help you with some of the professions you mentioned but hopefully you might find this useful.

Some common themes you'll notice in all these professions is that changes have been driven partly by the increase in population, as well as the increase in mechanization and the advent of computerization.

Doctors back then made house calls when the patient was sick or when a baby had to be delivered. They don't do that anymore, unless you live in a small town, partly because they have more patients and also because the patient sometimes needs sophisticated equipment only available in a hospital or doctor's office. Also, they tended to be more general practicioners partly because even the knowledge of the best doctors was but a fraction of our medical knowledge today. For prescriptions, in some cases the doctor would probably prescribe a home brew of the doctor's own recipe. A far cry from today's drugs which are mostly available in convenient pill form and are made from chemicals by some large, multinational drug company. The town doctor probably handled everything from treating minor cuts and scrapes to delivering babies and performing simple surgical procedures. It wasn't unusual for the doctor in some small towns to also be the vet, blacksmith, mayor, etc. In contrast, doctors today are very specialized, as you've probably noticed as well, simply because of the sheer volume of medical knowledge in each specialty and the risk of malpractice lawsuits. Like other professional jobs today, medicine has become highly computerized, from medical recordkeeping to actual diagnostic and operating equipment (e.g. lasers, x-ray machines, CAT and MRI scanners, etc.).

Agriculture was not as highly mechanized and influenced by advances in genetic engineering in the eighteenth century. Farm work today is still highly physical and demanding but I find it hard to believe the eighteenth century farmer could imagine sitting in an air-conditioned combine (equipped with GPS, no less) sipping cold drinks and listening to CDs while harvesting hundreds of acres of crops. Although farming is still weather dependent, chemical companies have partnered with agriculture to produce crops that are more pest- and disease-resistant and have higher yields. A telling contrast is that in the past, farmers would struggle to produce enough food to feed the communities they served, especially when crops that year were bad. Nowadays, the US constantly produces more food than it can consume.

Fishing is still done with relatively small boats today and is still one of the most demanding and dangerous jobs. But in some ways, it has also gone up in scale and is highly mechanized today, driven by the world's insatiable appetite for seafood. Some huge factory ships can take whole, live fish in at one end and produce canned fish at the other end. If anything, there is a big controversy over the fishing industry today and some are calling for it to be more regulated to stop the overfishing of some species.

Similarly, lumbering has become highly mechanized. It's still highly physical but lumberjacks now have chainsaws, giant cranes and sawmills that make short work of cutting down and processing large trees into lumber. Also, large lumber companies today are more environmentally attuned (realizing it's profitable to go green) and have dedicated areas of forest in which they plant and harvest fast-growth trees (again, genetic engineering shows its hand here) as opposed to willy-nilly cutting down forests in the past without any idea of the damage caused to the environment.

Answer 5

Well, we still have all these professions in both centuries. It seems that we need more medical and law enforcement now then in the 18th century. We still need preachers, farmers, fishermen, and lumberjacks. It seems that no one wants to do this because there is no real money in it

Answer 6

today is it a knowlewdge job, and in the eightteen a workjob