The author tries to answer the question of the role which work played in the every-day life of workers and in their system of values on the basis of studies of the textile workers' culture in Łódź before 1939 (carried out in the years 1976-1985). She discusses the ways of looking for work, the age at which people started work and occupational training, the valuation of working conditions, the estimation of social relations (the relations between workers as well as between them and their foreman, their director or the factory owner), and the general evaluation of wage labor (the instrumental and autotelic approach). The situational differences between the population of city-dwelling workers and newcomers from the country as well as differences in sex and age of the workers are stressed in the analysis. In the last section of the paper the author briefly discusses the influence of occupational work on family life, patterns of consumption and ways of spending leisure time as well as mechanisms of creation of cultural standards in the society of a big, multi-ethnic and quickly growing city. Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 dofinansowane zostało ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej naukę.