The practice of men and women gathering in public settings in search of work
dates back to at least medieval times when the feudal city was originally a place of
trade. In England during the 1100s, workers assembled at daily or weekly markets
to be hired (Mund 1948, p. 106). Statutes regulated the opening of public markets
in merchant towns and required agricultural workers (foremen, plowmen, carters,
shepherds, swineherds, dairymen, and mowers) to appear with tools to be hired in
a “commonplace and not privately” (Mund 1948, p. 96). The City of Worcester
created an ordinance that required laborers to stand “at the grass-Cross on the
workdays . . . ready to all persons such as would hire them to their certain labor,
for reasonable sums, in the summer season at 5 a.m. and the winter season at
6 a.m.” (Mund 1948, p. 100–101).