True Restoration recently released a great conversation featuring Frankie Logue, Matthew Gaskin, and Stephen Heiner, about the “Trad Men Competency Crisis.” This in our opinion is a topic of the greatest importance which ought to be discussed more, given the weight it carries for the shaping of present and future generations of trad men, and by extension to the future of the Catholic Church as a whole.
I wanted to add some additional thoughts to the debate, especially from two perspectives: 1) a historical one, looking at what Catholics used to do in the past with regard to this topic; 2) a moral one, questioning the morality of “making more money” or working to improve one’s situation.
As a side note, I want to clarify that we are talking mostly of things of the natural order here, but that doesn’t mean in any way that things of the supernatural order don’t matter more. If this article encourages men to spend more time working and making progress in their financial situation, that is never to discourage them from praying more or having a more devout life. It is taken for granted that the men we are talking to also ask for the help of Almighty God in their daily trials, and do all things necessary for their eternal salvation, and even want to make progress in the spiritual life. What is the point is that there are natural conditions to supernatural thriving.
The problem we want to address specifically is the one of trad men having a mediocre situation, and thinking that they can do no better, or – God forbid – that striving to improve their professional and financial situation would always be a sin of greed, or something close to that.
Let us first investigate what Catholics of ancient times used to do and think about their professional lives.
1- Most people in ancient times were business owners
2- Being an employee was never the best thing
3- Most people in ancient times had side hustles
4- People never complained
5- Women used to work, but not in the same way
Most people in ancient times were business owners
Today it sounds like “starting a business” is some kind of extraordinary and perilous adventure, which only a few people are actually capable of doing, while the fate of the regular man is to be an employee in some established company. For sure, our ancestors did not view it this way.
The most common condition in medieval Catholic Europe was to be a tenant: regardless of the legal status (serf, free tenant, full owner…), most of our ancestors were farmers who paid a form of rent to a manorial lord (someone from the nobility, or a religious community). But the only thing their lord cared about was that whatever agreement had been made about the rent, be it a fixed fee in gold and silver or a proportion of the harvested crops, was paid on time and according to the terms. The tenants were effectively business owners: they had to manage their land and their crops however they needed, in order to sustain their family, fulfill their obligations towards the lord, and if possible build something greater than what they had received from their parents or from the landlord. They managed all sorts of different crops, animals, and manual jobs in order to run their farm, according to the seasons and the hazards of nature. They had to plan, to make choices, to take risks, to work extra hours (if such a concept made sense back then), to make sacrifices, in order to get their own affair going. Often they started from scratch, being granted a plot of land covered with trees and weeds that had to be cut down.
Just like modern businesses, the farms of the ancient times were of all sizes, some struggling to get by, others thriving. If you were lucky enough and/or hard working enough, you could actually become rich as a peasant. If your harvest is plentiful and you had enough to nourish your family and pay your rent, whatever is left could be sold at a nearby market, for the craftsmen and the rich people who did not grow their own food, or even sold to foreign countries. Some real fortunes were built this way.
Rich or not, there was a shared understanding in Christendom that the common condition of a man was to manage his own independent farm in order to sustain himself and his family. This independent condition was viewed as something precious, as the Church and the whole society made efforts towards abolishing serfdom, which was an imperfect condition (because of the high dependency of the serf to his lord). As late as the 20th century, Catholic writers (and Pope Pius XII himself) advised parents to let their children become farmers if they wished to do so, as it is the most sane and the most natural way of sustaining oneself, and should not be despised as some sort of miserable condition.
Many young men dream of starting their own business one day: it is not a new and crazy thought, but rather a thought that all their ancestors had for generations. I want to get my own way and sustain myself and my family without depending too much on anybody else: this could be the thought of a young peasant starting his own farm after his marriage in the years 1200’s.
Today it’s not as simple to start and run a farm, for many reasons that do not depend on our wills. It’s not easy to start and run any kind of business either, but it’s certainly possible and worth trying. For all the reasons mentioned above, there is something very “traditional” for a young man in striving to become a business owner.
Being an employee was never the best thing
The condition of employee did exist in older times, but not in the ubiquitous way it does today. There were roughly three kinds of people we could describe as employees:
1) Farm workers who did not own or rent their own land and had to work on someone else’s farm. This was usually a very harsh condition. Such agricultural employees were the lowest of the low, always walking on a thin line, threatened by extreme poverty at any time, as there could be times when no one wants or can employ them.
2) Apprentices who had to work for several years in the shop of another experienced craftsman or tradesman, in the hope of opening their own shop once their apprenticeship is completed. This was by design a temporary condition, a necessary step before starting a business.
3) Officers who received a responsibility from the lord, the king or any kind of higher institution. They can be compared to modern-day managers and executives.
A comparison can be drawn between these ancient conditions and modern-day conditions.
Being a “regular employee,” and aspiring to nothing more, is comparable to being in that first class of endangered workers. The job you have today may not be there tomorrow, and you are not paid a great wage anyways. Your job in itself is likely to be painful and distressing. Only the condition of the slave is worse than yours; and at least the slave has a master to take care of his most basic needs. You would be better off, if possible, trying to have a farm of your own.
Being an employee for a few years, in order to acquire valuable skills and experience, to then work as a freelancer or straight out start your own business, is a great thing. This is the apprenticeship path of older times. In my opinion, it can be recommended to most people. Find a particular trade or skill that you are good at, that you enjoy, and most importantly that is in demand; go through the necessary training, work as an employee for anywhere between two and ten years, and then start trading these skills as a well-paid freelancer, or start your own agency or small business in this specific field.
Being a higher-ranking employee can be a good condition also. But it does not come without some specific efforts and some specific hardships. Not everybody can get there in the first place: you have to go to some specific school, to know some specific people, to be promoted. Then you have the burden of taking decisions that impact the life of many other people under you. You also have to bear with your “lord,” or the modern equivalent which is upper management, who is not necessarily virtuous or benevolent, and asks much more of you than of a “regular employee.” Many high-ranking employees feel like their condition is a curse rather than a blessing, and the high wage they receive is not enough to compensate for the late hours of work or the hardships encountered; and they too legitimately aspire to start their own business, not necessarily for making more money, but for the sake of having a more independent and balanced lifestyle.
Most people in ancient times had side hustles
If something was even more universal than the idea of having one’s own farm/business, it was the idea of having side activities to complement a main job or a regular farming activity.
When I studied my genealogy, in the parish documents I saw my ancestors described alternatively as “clog makers” or “borderers” (bordiers) – a term specific to the Poitou province for describing a farmer who operates on a small farm enclosed with hedges (borders). This may seem like an inconsistency at first, but in fact it is obvious that the Berthelot of the 18th century had both occupations at the same time: perhaps clog making was a side business to supplement their meager crops, or perhaps their farm was there to sustain them when the clog making business was not doing great.
This was actually a very common situation all across pre-industrial economies. Most countryside craftsmen were not full-time craftsmen (as opposed to city craftsmen working in guilds), but part-time farmers as well. At the very least, a small craftsman or a wage employee had its own garden to grow vegetables and herbs, and perhaps raise small animals such as hens or even a pig in his backyard.
Aside from these hybrid craftsman/farmer configurations, the typical “full-time farming” family would also have some small crafts sold occasionally on the nearby markets: they could make tools, small furniture, simple cloth, or even decorative objects. I read the record of a farming family of the 19th century in the French Pyrenees, where most things were shared among family members under the government of the father and mother, except for the revenue coming from small craftsmanship, which was basically the pocket money of each individual family member: had such girl crafted a doily in her spare time and sold it to the market, it was her personal money. Same for a guy crafting and selling a small knife.
I know a family and a village in France, also in the Pyrenees, where most men were, a century ago, both farming and extracting slate, whether for a slate extracting company or for their own small slate business. And in this village also the women were doing the laundry for the hotels of the nearby city of Lourdes. Sometimes men also served as guards at the Lourdes sanctuary, as seasonal employees at the hotels, or as guides for the tourists in the nearby mountains. There could be a whole set of side hustles in these small peasant villages!
An astonishing fact also is that regular people were usually able to build their own homes, at least some kind of simple shelters. Building the finest homes would require the help of skilled carpenters and masons, but simpler buildings could be handled by the regular working man.
We should not think of the farmers of old times as equivalents of modern-days employees specialized in a specific kind of farming: they were actually capable of handling many different crafts to some degree, working multiple jobs at the same time, doing whatever is necessary for the survival of their family and the management of their farm, fulfilling most of their basic needs directly through the work of their hands. They knew how to use all sorts of plants, and to hunt all sorts of small animals. They had a very diverse set of skills and knowledge, allowing them to be resilient and to find get-arounds when things don’t go as expected.
The idea that the life of the regular man is to have a 9 to 5 job, then go home and do nothing until going to bed, is very modern and probably not very sane. The many hours most people spend watching TV, playing video games or using streaming platforms, we Catholics can and should use them (especially when we don’t have a family yet) for learning new things, acquiring new skills, working on side hustles, helping other people or doing any kind of virtuous and constructive activity. A father has, obviously, a serious duty to spend time bonding with his children and passing on to them knowledge and virtues; how many fathers neglect these duties, and spend most of their spare time in some solitary activity, becoming strangers to their children? In any case, neither the bachelor nor the father can foolishly use the time he has left after coming home from work.
On the other hand, the idea of having side hustles is a very traditional one. It is based on simple common sense: you have to diversify your activities and if possible build other streams of income than your main job, in order not to rely too much on this one thing which is not necessarily so reliable.
It is necessary to rest and have some fun, but our modern society has taken this necessity way too far, and turned entertainment into a kind of religion. Entertainment has become the foundation of modern civilization: what do people care about and talk about, if not the last series, the last film, the last video game, the last song, or the last sporting event? The cathedrals of our times are the stadiums and the movie theaters.
You certainly don’t need five hours a day plus two full days a week of entertainment. What about spending two or three hours a day on some serious thing: a side job, a business idea, family or community service, a personal project involving problem-solving and skill progression?
This is nothing new or revolutionary. Just look at what our Catholic forefathers did: as discussed before, peasants were always busy with something serious and useful, and could have many side hustles aside from farming. You could argue that they did that for mere survival: it rather seems that most families were striving to improve their situation, and kept working beyond what was simply necessary for survival, in order to get ready for a bad day or to have something to pass on to their children (hopefully, something for each one of their numerous children). This is what civilized people do: only savages strictly live from hand to mouth, doing the bare minimum for survival, and building nothing for the future. These Catholic peasants also knew well how to spend time together, and form happy and loving families, while being busy most of the time.
The Internet brings a lot of opportunities for people willing to make a better use of their time. You can learn incredible skills, run an e-commerce site, work a part-time remote job or do some freelance gigs. There should be no such thing as “being stuck in a 9 to 5 job,” feeling depressed because of the lack of progress or the lack of financial achievement, as there is plenty of time left to you between five and midnight to improve your situation.
Granted, some people have a very tedious job and a long commute time, and when they go back home they don’t have any energy left to work on something else. But if you have enough energy to go on a straight three or four hour gaming session, setting up complex strategies and overcoming obstacles, that means you have enough energy to actually build and achieve something in real life instead.
People never complained
An interesting thing to consider about our Catholic forefathers is that they usually had a very different attitude towards the hardships of life that we, modern men (even trads) tend to have. Compared to modern standards of living, their lives were awful. They had no electricity, no air conditioning, very little heating, no bathrooms. Most of their meals were made of bland and plain food. Hard work was necessary for survival at any time of the year. A bad crop could be survived, maybe, but two successive bad crops could cause your fall into abject poverty and starvation. Same for an unexpected fungus or insect eating your grains or the roots of your plants. Medicine was almost non-existent, not very effective anyways and anesthesia was not invented yet.
Yet were they depressed? Were they sad? It seems that most people weren’t actually, quite the opposite if you look at what peasant life was in Europe.
When investigating the culture of my peasant ancestors in Poitou, I came across something quite interesting: it seems that these people were singing all the time. They had all sorts of chants, songs, and dances for all sorts of different circumstances. They used to sing while plowing. They sang about nature, about daily life, about war, about love and marriage (#1 topic of popular songs it seems), about wine, about God. They were merry people. But God knows how hard their lives were! They had enough strength to find joy in the challenges of their daily lives.
Aside from the supernatural Catholic conception of suffering and hardship as an integral part of our salvation, our ancestors also had, on a natural level, a kind of strength and acceptance that we rarely see among men nowadays. They also were foreign to this idea that we are owed an easy and comfortable life, and that any discomfort is some sort of injustice or harsh punishment. Discomfort and hardship was all they had, it did not seem like something unusual. It was obvious to them that a good life, or something approaching that, was not owed to you by default, but had to be obtained through hard work.
We often see people today complaining about the economy, big corporations, inflation, globalization, gas prices, the academia, the real estate market, corrupt politics, and other things as causes for their lack of personal thriving. These are all real problems and real concerns. Just as were bad weather and fungi to our ancestors. They were not complaining about it though: they were trying to do their best with what they had, anticipating the problems and finding ways around, praying to God for his help, being courageous and creative to get ahead. And also: they were singing. Being depressed was not an option.
Looking at popular peasant songs I almost never found something which looked like a lament. If anything, it was more the “thank God I’m a country boy” vibe.
Thinking about my ancestors gives me strength. I hope it does for you too.
Women used to work, but not in the same way
I also wanted to add some thoughts on the problem of “working women,” intimately tied to this discussion about men’s competency. We often speak of the issue as if there were only two alternatives, the one being the wife working a full-time corporate job, the other being the wife staying full-time at home, only taking care of the children and the domestic tasks (this being considered as “the traditional way”). It seems that from a historical perspective the picture is a bit more complex.
Speaking about our farming ancestors, in these kinds of families women were taking care of all sorts of tasks related to the agricultural business of their husband or of their father, in which they played an essential role. They were usually carrying the tasks that required the least physical strength, even though from today’s standards these tasks could seem quite unfeminine (milking cows, feeding the cattle, weeding the garden, sowing and mowing, etc.), along with more traditionally feminine tasks related to clothing, weaving and sewing.
From a peasant’s perspective, a good match would be a girl who is serious and strong enough to carry this kind of work alongside with the education of children. The Bible also speaks of this working housewife type as the “valiant woman,” who “bought a field” and “planted a vineyard” in it, portraying her in a very laudatory way (Proverbs 31: 10-31).
Needless to say that in craftsmen families, the wives were also taking care of their husband’s workshop, helping in the business as much as they could. Our Blessed Lady most likely worked in Saint Joseph’s carpentry business, helping her husband in all sorts of ways. Many small businesses today also rely heavily on the boss’s wife.
Transposed in nowadays context, it would mean that the “most traditional” way of life for a woman would be to work in her husband’s business, in a way which also allows her to take care of the children and of the home. That’s all the more reason for men to think about starting their own business, if they only encounter women who are worried about the prospect of never working.
The biggest problem in modern society and in modern women is not necessarily their desire to work: it is rather their distaste for education and homemaking, their blindness to the emotional and spiritual needs of their children and husband, their excessive attachment to leisure and frivolous things. These could be in fact the true reasons why she “wants to work:” the pursuit of vanity and ease of life, the disregard for motherhood.
It is a different issue if while she sincerely wants to be a good mother and make the necessary sacrifices, she is also worried about being bored and isolated inside the home. Depending on one’s personal character and abilities, and depending on the particular situation of the family, it can be a good thing for the wife to work on something else than the purely house-related activities.
There can be ways in which a woman works for the good of the household, for the interest of the family, while fulfilling her most essential duties in the education of children. There can be ways to delegate most of the household tasks to employees, under the supervision of the housewife, provided that you have the financial means (hiring a cleaner, as wealthy families used to hire housemaids). However, delegating the care and education of children, especially the very young children, is a thing that was done sometimes but which is certainly very imperfect and often harmful. Babies and toddlers have a very strong need for their mother: it is well known that if this need is not properly fulfilled, there will be lifelong psychological consequences (see the Attachment Theory and the Hospitalism syndrome).
The saintly mother of Saint Therese of Lisieux, Zélie Martin (1831-1877) was a business owner. She was a very skilled lacemaker who started her own shop in 1853, aged 22. After getting married with Louis Martin (also a business owner, a clockmaker), in 1858, she kept working in her business (which was employing up to 20 workers) until her death, while raising five girls who all became nuns. The Martin family was very devout, and both parents had a profoundly supernatural vision of life. I don’t know exactly why she decided to keep the business going after the birth of her children, but it was most likely because she felt it was her duty and not because it “made her happy.” She still managed to be a very good mother in spite of the lack of time available she had to spend with her children. But some things have to be noted:
– Out of nine children born to the couple, four died in infancy and at least one of these died because of bad treatments received from the nanny, who did not really care about the baby as it often happens.
– The couple was rich enough to hire housemaids and nannies, and to pay for good schools.
– Zélie had little to no distractions in her life. She was extremely busy, and if she could manage to both educate her children and bond with them, run a successful business, and have a profound spiritual life, that is because she had an uncommon capacity for work and sacrifice. She died aged 45, and it is not impossible that her busy life hastened her death.
In other words: it is possible to have a virtuous life and a happy family while the wife is working full-time. But this is an imperfect situation (as we can see with the episode of the neglected baby), and it is possible only at the expense of the greatest sacrifices, a true supernatural life and confidence in God’s grace. It should not be seen as the “default situation” or the “normal life” everyone has to be in, as most people who live this double-income situation are actually neglecting their children, neglecting their duties before God.
This being considered, it is quite sad to see men indulging in mediocrity, not making the necessary efforts to improve their career, based on the assumption that their wife will work full-time so that the household lives on two incomes, and assuming it is “impossible to live otherwise in our world.” All things considered, the best interest of the family is that the household does not absolutely need the wife to be a full-time employee. The needs of the children require them to have their mother by their side as much as possible, especially when they are very young. She could work from home part-time and still take care of the children most of the time, perhaps, which would be much better than being forced to commute on some corporate job and coming home tired. As said before, she could help in her husband’s business while never being too far from the home and the kids.
In the “double income” situation, what you often see is this: mom gets home tired from her day of work, she picks the children out of the nursery or the school, then the children are fed, and before they are put to bed, they are left in company of some sort of screen which will keep them quiet: there is almost no time to bond with the children, and they are not educated by their mother, but by whoever is in charge at the school, and by the screens. And neither the teachers nor the screens can give them the love they need. Then mom argues with dad because he is “doing nothing” for the family, letting her do most of the domestic work, which is “unfair” because she works as well and domestic tasks should be shared, etc. This is what people today call a “normal life:” we, trad men, don’t want that. Let us aim at something better.
Tristan Berthelot
