One of Thoreau's signature quotes is: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," which was written in 1854. In the year 1850, for the weekly manufacturing labor hours in America, the Weeks Report estimates that the average weekly hours work was a staggering 65.5 hours, which is confirmed by the Aldrich report which estimates an even higher 69 hours. Clearly, those days, were days of quiet desperation, because many men had to work literally from sunup to sundown, with perhaps Sunday as the designated day off for religious services. All these hours worked was necessitated because that was what was required in order for a man to make a living, so that those that are somewhat ignorant of history and consequently believe that the workweek has always been 8 hours a day for 40 hours a week, with appropriate overtime given for additional hours worked are hopelessly oblivious.
The fact that men had to work those hours back in the 1850s, meant that his leisure time was virtually non-existent, and that his life besides his working hours was consequently filled with chores, upkeep, and the daily drudgery of just getting by, with little or no time for reflection, contemplation, education, or the like. Anytime, that man is reduced to simply working at a job that he derives no just satisfaction from, his life is hardly one to be envied or desired. Not too surprisingly, hard work with only enough money to fulfill the most basic of necessities, and with little opportunity to do anything constructive, other than reading, prayer, and family activities, would lead in many instances to a given man consuming alcohol to dull the frustrations of their daily struggle.
Of course, Thoreau added the word quiet, which itself is highly important. The reason that people don't live lives of loud desperation or riotous desperation, is that the ruling class, will not long allow, the working class to be loud, vocal, and disruptive, so that therefore a man in many instances just quietly accepts his lot in life, adding to his desperation, because he is unable to vocalize his frustration, because the risk of doing so is so great. That is why, people are so quick to believe the lie that certain workers or slaves back in the day were so happy, while forgetting to recognize, that biting the hand that feeds one, will provide only a momentary respite, before the whip of force comes snapping upon their bent back.
The great thing is that over time, those lives of quiet desperation, turned into a substantial and vibrant middle class in this nation, a middle class that sustained the notion that this is indeed the land of opportunity as well as realistically offering to many people the good opportunity of ownership of their own land and home, a nice car, good healthcare, vacations, sick leave, leisure time, entertainment, and the like. However, unfortunately, in an era of massive federal deficits, stagnating wages, the destruction of the manufacturing class, the replacement of humans with robots, the off-shoring of jobs in service to large corporate interests, and a service economy that employs many but pays pathetically, we are in the process of re-creating a huge divide between the haves and the have nots, to which the have nots appear to grow daily, sustained only by a government that borrows from tomorrow to pay for today, and subsequently writing the tale that we have seen before, that the mass of mankind does indeed live lives of quiet desperation.