On Humans in Anaxas
Background
Humans in Anaxas have a fairly low status and are barred from many professions and duties. Still, they are not uniformly a vast sheathing underclass of proletarian laborers (though there is indeed such a class). There are also shopkeepers, artisans, soldiers, sailors, tinkers, tailors, merchants, and even secretaries and clerks. In even the loftiest of professions there are jobs that are considered beneath the dignity of the galdori, and so the humans take up the slack.
In the roughest of senses, the human population of Anaxas can be divided into two parts. The smaller part is what might be considered to be the class of skilled tradesmen, artisans, and the lower rungs of the professional ladder. A class with some interests, some small degree of personal property, and a more stable position in society.
The second, and larger, class is comprised of laborers, farm hands, miners, navvies, longshoremen, servants, laundresses, tanners, and others who work long hours for little pay and fewer rights. Here is the teeming multitude.
The distinctions between the classes are somewhat fluid, though census records do their level best to track each class as it matters for assessment of taxes and various other niceties. These are not generally endogamous castes, and humans may rise and fall within these hierarchies.
In the roughest of senses, the human population of Anaxas can be divided into two parts. The smaller part is what might be considered to be the class of skilled tradesmen, artisans, and the lower rungs of the professional ladder. A class with some interests, some small degree of personal property, and a more stable position in society.
The second, and larger, class is comprised of laborers, farm hands, miners, navvies, longshoremen, servants, laundresses, tanners, and others who work long hours for little pay and fewer rights. Here is the teeming multitude.
The distinctions between the classes are somewhat fluid, though census records do their level best to track each class as it matters for assessment of taxes and various other niceties. These are not generally endogamous castes, and humans may rise and fall within these hierarchies.
The Artisan/Merchant class
- The class that consists of those who perform the actual skilled work of making things, running shops, doing menial professional work, and so forth
- Admittance to this class is defined in the census and dependent upon legal approval, profession, and often the good word of some galdor or other
- Attached to traditional trades, go through bonded apprenticeships or are part of businesses etc. Writs of residence and literacy are provided upon completion of apprenticeship or equivalent. Rising the the trades or promotion to certain occupations likewise signals admittance to this class
- Some legal protections (can call on legal council attached to their trade, a community advocate, or related, or request a public barrister for court)
- Can be considered the ‘very lower middle class’ or ‘upper working class’
- Can own the lease of real property, but generally not the real property itself
- All portable property can be owned
- Example occupations of this class
- Shopkeepers
- Barbers
- Barber-surgeons
- Clockmakers
- Smiths
- Apothecaries
- Potters
- Weavers
- Merchants
- Cobblers
- Tailors
- Low-level clerks of all kinds
- Tenant farmers
- Servants
- soldiers
- Non-commissioned officers
- Sailors
- Warrant officers from time to time, petty officers, boatswains, etc
- The laboring classes
- No formal legal representation rights
- Informally many of them will go through better connected relatives
- More akin to a serf class? Or is that even lower on the scale?
Example occupations- Servants
- Factory workers
- Longshoremen
- Tanners
- Rag and bone traders
- Farm hands
- Miners
- Navvies
- Sailors
- Soldiers
- Cab drivers
- Cleaning staff
- Shepherds
- Range hands
