Changing Society Dbq Analysis

Blaire Carney December, 1, 2017
Changing Society DBQ DiPrimo 6

During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, there was a great abundance of civil issues with American politics and society. Reformers are those people who not only took notice of the problems but also took actions to amend them. Society was such a mess that most citizens were in danger, be it from food unfit to eat before it was further defiled by workers and animals in the abhorrent circumstances found within most food-processing factories, illnesses spread through closely confined living quarters lacking ventilation or necessary access to bathrooms for basic hygiene, corruption, and bribery inherent in the structures of political machines, or discrimination

Document four describes events typical to the life of coal miners in lines 9-10 “There were five of us boys. One lies in the cemetery ―fifty tons of rock dropped on him”. This specific text supports the claim that common laborers in this time were subjugated into frightful work environments that held their occupants in bleak hardship for so many hours on end. Lines two through three of document two states “We are tired of toil for naught with but bare enough to live on”. Not only were laborers conscripted into these extremely dangerous harsh conditions by their need to feed their families, they were barely paid enough to keep themselves and their families alive. Another critical grievance against society performed by many affluent employers was the exploitation of the new generations. Not only were fully adult workers being brutalized through an abhorrent working environment, children as young as six years old were exposed to many of the same or similar conditions. Document three is a photograph of two little boys who look to be no older than nine years of age changing the bobbins in a giant machine without any safety equipment while the machine is running. Not only are these kids forced to work in danger of losing digits or other body parts to the hazardous contraptions they worked with all day, this eliminates any chance they have to complete much, if any amount of education that might have helped them rise up in society and break the vicious circle that makes and keeps the poor the way they are, impeding any hierarchical progress. After a grueling day of hard work with little income to show for it, as people went home to their families to eat, they were presented with virtually inedible meat that was then compounded with rat hair, and feces. This “food” was processed in factories bearing the