The 1950s Tupperware Party
Earl Silas Tupper came up with the Tupperware brand of kitchen items, which are mostly plastic food containers, in 1946. In the early 1950s, Brownie Wise, a single mother from Florida, started holding “Tupperware parties” to show off and sell Tupperware products to her friends and neighbours. This got Tupper’s attention, so he made Wise the vice president of marketing for Tupperware. At a time when a woman’s main job was to take care of the house, Tupperware parties helped women gain more independence by giving them the chance to start a career in sales. Even now, people still have Tupperware parties as a tradition.
Russia: Pulling Barges and Other Ships
From the 17th to the 20th centuries, poor or landless peasants in Russia would gather on riverbanks to wait for barges or other medium-sized boats. Then, these peasants, who were called burlaks, would be paid a small amount to use their own weight to pull the boats upstream. Most burlaks were part of an artel, which was a group of people who worked together. Some artels had as many as 150 burlaks in them. At the start of the Industrial Revolution, the number of burlaks began to go down. By the start of the 20th century, there were almost no burlaks left.