This intense commercial system offered families undreamed-of opportunities and penalties. The affluent became more restricted by bourgeois convention and the need to earn salaries: men had to work long hours at offices and obey a new sort of master, now known as the ‘boss’ – from the Dutch baas; virtuous middle-class women were confined to work unpaid at home; and the regimented poor, including women and children, toiled in unrelenting factories, often under abusive bosses.
