Families and households of the poor: The 19th-century Slovenian gostači

The present study examines the position of day laborers, a social category still awaiting comparative study by family historians. In 19th-century Slovenian sources these laborers, called gostači, were a very mobile group that did not own property; they could be married or single and could be involved in various occasional jobs, agricultural or industrial, skilled or unskilled. By comparing two communities (one agrarian, the other centered on iron production), the study shows that the living and working arrangements of gostači were profoundly affected by the economy and by natural resources. They therefore developed different residential patterns, though in neither case did their families constitute a part of the owner's sub-household in the Laslettian sense. The study concludes that in the 19th century this poor social group should not be treated as a homogenous workforce but as flexible and dynamic.