This article is brought to you by PocketSmith. 

I should start this article out by saying that in the context of our time and culture, I am a total weirdo.

I am completely unimpressed by status. By wealth. By celebrity.

I don’t think anyone who has more eyes on them or more dollars in their bank account is better than me. And by the same token, any minor successes I’ve had in life do not make me better than anyone else.

By my estimation, we’re all human beings, and the most important parts of what make us human are what make us similar. Hierarchy has no place in it.

I do tend to be impressed by people with strong values. With integrity. With curiosity and an interest in changing their perspective when presented with new information. (In other words, people interested in perpetual learning.)

But I find myself underwhelmed by status symbols. And for that, I know I’m odd.

Timepieces are a luxury status item

Today we’re going to take a look at one luxury item I’m particularly unimpressed by:

The Rolex.

Or really any fancy timepieces.

We’ll take a deep dive into how they became such a symbol of wealth in a historical context, and some of the ways they were used as a tool of exploitation.

Is it just a technology thing?

You might be thinking that if we’re looking at the history of timepieces as luxury items, then surely if we trace back far enough the expense of owning a new piece of technology must be the primary driver behind watches’ place as a status item. And that is part of it.

But it’s not really the whole thing.

The measurement of time is not necessarily a new technology that just emerged over the past few hundred years unless you’re looking at it from a completely European context.

In the centuries prior to precision time measurement in Europe, Islamic cultures had extremely accurate technology that measured the passage of time in another cultural context. We know that for millennia, there were things like water clocks in places like China and even as far back as Mesopotamia. The idea of a 60-minute hour was Babylonian, and Plato himself built alarm clocks for his students.

Starting in the 14th century, Europe really started getting into developing more precise measurements of time within its own respective cultures. Things advanced and advanced, with the speed of innovation skyrocketing in the 17th century through the current day.

The thing that granted watches and other time pieces luxury status wasn’t necessarily the development of technology or the measurement of time on its own. It was the fact that this development collided with several other cultural changes in the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries, including:

• The separation of the public and private spheres.
• The introduction of capitalism as we know it.
• The Industrial Revolution.

The place of small business prior to the Industrial Revolution

For the time period we’re talking about, we’re looking a little past the introduction of fiat currency as the end all and be all in European societies. We’re skipping over the initial domino falling on feudal state arrangements (which played a large role in fanning the fires of colonialism.) Instead, we’re looking at a world where our initial point of reference is more of a mercantile economy.

In this time and place, you’ve got your ultra wealthy land owners. You’ve got some farmers. And you have a defined middle-ish class made up of artisans and specialists like blacksmiths. You could also call it a mercantile class.

Is this an oversimplification?

Yes.

Are we gonna roll with it?

Also yes.

Labor in this economy was largely task-based. Time wasn’t the important factor. The important factor was whether or not you got the work done. And whether or not you had enough resources for the time being. Most people were in effect small business owners, and it was super common to keep the business in the family.

In fact, a lot of people worked from home. Whether your home was the farm or a shop attached to your living quarters, there wasn’t a huge separation between the public and private spheres. This is why in colonial America (which we’re counting as an extension of European culture,) we saw a ton of women engaged in small business endeavors. Because everything was more of a team effort.

That’s not to say that gender roles and norms didn’t exist. But the economics of those gender roles functioned differently when the home and workplace were one.

There’s this really interesting (and old) paper by E.P. Thompson that looks at these time-measuring-related topics in England in particular. Here’s what he says about the nature of this era of mass self-employment:

“The work pattern was one of alternate bouts of intense labour and of idleness, wherever men were in control of their own working lives. (The pattern persists among some self-employed – artists, writers, small farmers, and perhaps also with students – today, and provokes the question whether it is not a “natural” human work-rhythm.)”

Even though the paper is from the 1960s, I’d argue that this assessment of self-employment holds true decades later. And the proposal about natural work rhythms is thought-provoking to say the least.

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Capitalism according to The Wealth of Nations

As we get into the late 18th century, this guy named Adam Smith publishes a book called The Wealth of Nations. The man is a bit of a delusional fool who projects his viewpoint of his contemporary economy as a privileged British man onto the whole of humankind and history.

But that doesn’t stop him from being super popular and influential.

He introduces the vision of what we commonly interpret as capitalism as the best and only way. Because everyone bought into his ideas (and the ideas of similar men from a similar time like John Locke), we all live in the world we do today.

Which is not ideal.

This un-idealness is compounded by the fact that around the same time, the Industrial Revolution is gaining steam in England, and will follow suit in America a bit later.

Stay with me. I swear we’re getting to the Rolexes.

He who controls time controls labor

The Industrial Revolution arose with technology that mechanized production. That means the mercantile class was hit pretty hard. Instead of goods being made by skilled individuals, they were now made by machines en masse.

Small, family businesses weren’t quite as sustainable. People flocked to the cities to work in the factories, but the pay wasn’t super great as it was considered unskilled labor. The conditions you lived in were typically pretty terrible, too.

The labor in this field required more synchronization. You’d go in to work a shift for a set (often obscenely long) period of time, and that made time all that much more important. The way our work is time-based in our culture today is a remnant of the cultural shifts imposed by and adopted during the Industrial Revolution.

Knocker-ups

When you didn’t live in the city and worked for yourself, you could wake up whenever the heck you wanted. But a lot of times, you’d be woken by church bells in Western, Christian European cultures. The measurement of time wasn’t standardized, so you’d have different “times” in different localities.

Once you moved to the city and started working in a factory, your boss cared very much about when you woke up. They wanted you to get to work on time, because if you didn’t synchronize, their entire labor and manufacturing schedule would get messed up.

But what is “on time”?

Time gradually became more standardized, but by and large, the factory owners or managers dictated time.

As you can imagine, there was manipulation involved.

The clocks would often be set forward in the mornings and back in the evenings in order to keep laborers past their already unreasonable hours.

To ensure you woke up in the morning, the factory would employ “knockers-up” or “knocker-uppers.” If you were a knocker-up, your entire job was to bang on workers’ windows in the morning to get their butts out of bed.

Because time pieces weren’t initially widely distributed to the populace, you’d just have to trust that the knocker-up was coming at the right hour. But in all reality, the factory or mill might send them out early to squeeze some extra labor out of you.

The standardization of American time

If your boss is manipulating time to exploit extra, unpaid labor out of you, the standardization of time becomes pretty important to you as an individual laborer. When there is a hard, agreed-upon measurement of time, you can then call your boss on any abuses.

In America, the standardization of time was important for another reason, too. The country spanned multiple time zones by the 19th century, and trains were becoming increasingly important for industry, trade and development.

But if you’re relying on localized times to set the train schedule, you’re going to have discrepancies. And discrepancies lead to train crashes. Especially when trains are making long journeys between places with more disparate measurements of time.

So in the 1860s, a Pittsburgh-based astronomer and physicist named Samuel Langley set out to standardize time in the U.S.

The Allegheny Observatory took some of the most accurate astronomical measurements in the world (and continued to do so until the 1990s.) From here, Langley and his team would keep an eye on the measurements and telegraph them out, standardizing time for the first time in America.

This was known as ‘Allegheny Time,’ and before it even went out to the first railroad in 1869, it went out to jewelers. Those jewelers could then keep their clients up on the most accurate time measurements.

The democratization of time

Initially, watches were completely unaffordable to the masses. The only people who could afford them were wealthy, so you’d see them decked out in gold bedazzled with jewels.

It took a beat for watch manufacturing to get good enough that portable timepieces could be produced en masse. American manufacturing did play a big role in the less-expensive watch industry.

Some more “affordable” options came onto the market in the 1850s. You did usually have to save up for one, though, even if it wasn’t luxe. Some workers saw it as worth the investment as once they were armed with a watch, they could challenge factory owners on their unethical floor clock practices, putting a little more power in the hands of laborers.

It wasn’t until near the turn of the 20th century that watches were widely available to all at a truly affordable price. You could finally mass produce accurate-enough time pieces with cheaper materials, which meant more if not most workers could buy one.

Because they were pretty accurate, it made it harder to manipulate not just that one worker who had saved up, but your entire workforce.

The decked-out luxury pieces remained a status symbol, though. You’ll still hear arguments to this day that certain components help measure time to the millisecond better than the Mickey Mouse watch you’ll find at Walmart. And the reason that’s important to people is because of the history.

He who controlled time controlled labor, and that ultimately allowed factory owners to build up obscene amounts of wealth through exploitation. Claims over possessing the most accurate time mattered.

When Rolex comes on the scene

Rolexes were admittedly a little late to the game. The company wasn’t conceived until 1905. However, it was very much focused on that precision part of timekeeping. As in, my time is better than yours, so you are therefore subject to my judgement of it.

In 1914, Rolex watches received a class “A” precision certificate. They were the first watch company to receive the honor — until that point in time, only marine chronometers had merited class “A” status.

The company also has a fun little history with tax evasion. Which is another standard feature of wealthy-people behavior under industrial capitalism.

It was all done legally, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t done. Originally, Rolex was based in London. But during the Great War, Britain put some pretty hefty levies on luxury items, including gold and silver.

That prompted the founder, Hans Wilsdorf, to move the company to Geneva in 1919. The company is still based there today.

Do I hate you if you’re proud of your watch?

If you derive power or status through the exploitation of others, I do not respect you.

That said, I don’t think that’s why most people buy Rolexes today.

People aren’t necessarily thinking about the separation of the private and public spheres when they purchase a luxury timepiece. They’re not conjuring up images of knocker-uppers, or thinking about clock manipulation on factory floors.

Instead, I think most people today see the purchase of a Rolex as a sign that they’ve “made it.” It’s something they’ve worked hard to achieve, and having that status symbol makes them feel some sense of accomplishment. It’s also a tool to impress others.

So while I remain utterly unimpressed by your Rolex, I don’t hate you for wearing one.

But if you know the history and want to wear a Mickey Mouse wristwatch or even keep your wrist bare, I happen to think that’s a pretty cool demonstration of resistance.