ipl-logo

Chapter Summary Of Scraping By By Seth Rockman

706 Words3 Pages

Scraping By written by Seth Rockman is a powerful book that focuses on three points. First the book is richly researched on multiply account of poor, and unskilled laborers in the city of Baltimore. Baltimore at this time is an economic Atlantic port city powerhouse. Second Rockman exemplifies the labor history through race, gender, and class. By using this point of view Rockman has given us a unique look at the artisan labor in early America. Third and final point is that the book has a political and moral ideology of America that many of us see the nation and its history. The book beginning talks about the labor of literally “scraping” crap off the streets of Baltimore in 1829. Rockman uses the background of four men who believe that they …show more content…

Chapter two “A Job for the Working Man” focuses on the working men experience in the city of Baltimore. Rockman does a good job of illustrates the variety of jobs and experiences within the city. Rockman also begins to explain the difference between the low wage labors and hired-out slaves. Chapter 3 “Dredging and Drudgery” goes in to detail about busy harbor of Baltimore and how it operates off of the wage labors, and how harsh life was working on the …show more content…

Many of these stores are heartbreaking, and came to a shock to me on the conditions, in which these people endured. For an example: Zachariah Stallings life was reduced by the overseer of the almshouse. Teenager Equillo was enslaved young men who work at the pumps of Jones Falls. A runway Irish man Michael Gorman was an indentured servant turned into a “Mud machine” worker. All of these characters that Rockman uses in his book face unimaginable odds and challenges during these interesting times in

Show More
Related

Sadie Frowne's 'The Story Of A Sweatshop Girl'

587 Words | 3 Pages

The Gilded Age Workers’ Experience After reading Sadie Frowne’s account, in The Story of a Sweatshop Girl. I was shocked how difficult the lives of the people that worked in these factories, during the Gilded Age, were. Frowne has always been poor and her family has always struggled with buying food and keeping their business running. Once Frowne’s father died, her family had it worse. Frowne started her working experience in her family’s shop, and when she got a little older her family came to the United States by ship.

Read More

Theme Of Survival In Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon

1228 Words | 5 Pages

Randy Bragg, a young man in Fort Repose, must rise up to save his town from their crisis and help rebuild it. This novel tells the story of how the community of Fort Repose puts aside their normal social boundaries and prejudice to come together to achieve a common goal: survival. Pat Frank uses difficult settings, challenging conflicts, and indirect characterization to convey his theme that during a catastrophe, a community must work together to survive. First of all, the formidable settings help convey the theme by showing that the characters are working together. For example, during the August heat, the fish stop biting because they swim to the bottom of the river bed to keep cool.

Read More

Industrial Revolution In Lynn Chapter Summary

533 Words | 3 Pages

The Industrial Revolution in Lynn explores the impact of the 19th-century revolution on the shoemaking community of Lynn, Massachusetts. Before the Industrial Revolution, those workers were part of a system of masters and apprentices with the household as the center of the community and of work. After the revolution, the apprenticeship system was broken, and workers became dependent on the factory, weakening the household as the center of life and work. Limits of class conflict and corruptness of factory employers, the workers went through hardships to improve conditions that held the community and its people together in equality.

Read More

Analysis Of Class And Community By Alan Dawley

505 Words | 3 Pages

Class and Community by Alan Dawley depicts the development of Lynn, Massachusetts from before to after the industrial revolution, focusing on the shoemakers employed there. Throughout the novel, Dawley calls attention to class conflict, concentrating on the difficulties and poverty that laborers experienced, as well as their determination to improve their working conditions. Lynn is seen as a microcosm of the United States industrial revolution because it portrays a sweeping trend across the United States−the rise of factory working and its effects including terrible conditions such as low pay, long hours, and an unsafe workplace. These shoemakers eventually revolted when the conditions did not improve.

Read More

Analysis Of The Street By Ann Petry: Chapter Summary

885 Words | 4 Pages

Poverty, sexism, and racism are all aspects of American life that dictate the lives of people, and each aspect affects the population in their own way. In the novel The Street, Ann Petry captures the setting and identity of Harlem in the 1940’s. The story explores the good and bad obstacles faced by Lutie Johnson, a young woman struggling to find a place to settle with her son. As a single mother Lutie battles to balance her home life and work life while facing monetary and social pressures. She must juggle all of these responsibilities while staying morally sound, a balance that is hard to maintain.

Read More

Out Of This Furnace Sparknotes

917 Words | 4 Pages

Kracha experienced first hand the harshness that working as a laborer in the Gilded Age entailed. While Kratcha was working on the railroad in White Haven he had to line and surface railroad tracks, repair railroad tracks that were already built, and fight fires, all while only being paid ten, or even sometimes nine, cents (21). This difficult, dangerous, and low paid work made it tough for Kracha to earn enough money to be prosperous. When Kracha, Andrej, and Dubik tried to achieve the American Dream in the Steel Mills they were faced with the many dangerous conditions. Hoping to make more money Kracha worked in two of Carnegie’s steel mills.

Read More

Fredrick Law Olmsted: Article Analysis

306 Words | 2 Pages

This story is about a journalist, Fredrick Law Olmsted, describing how inefficient the South’s economic system, during pre-civil war, is at developing its communities. The passage starts off with Frederick pointing out an error that led to the rebellion of the Southern States. The error was the idea that in order to gain wealth and power within a community, there must be a slaveholding community that can generate the necessary labor. Furthermore, he points out that making more money and creating surplus aren’t the only steps involved when it comes to developing a country. On the contrary, one must reinvest in the communities and decide how to distribute the surplus.

Read More

Ernest Hemingway's Impact On American Culture

1555 Words | 7 Pages

Part 3: How does this author and his or her novel impact the culture of America? American culture began to change during the 1920’s due to certain conditions and the uprising of new ideas. It was a time of great social change, new ideas, techniques and ways of life were modified to adjust to the depression of World War I. Numerous war veterans had experienced certain happenings in which had left them traumatized, hardened or even weakened with no one to relate to.

Read More

Justice In The Gilded Age

648 Words | 3 Pages

The Civil War not only abolished slavery, but also threw the significant challenge of rebuilding a war-torn nation. Although initiated with the best hopes and intentions, the ‘Reconstruction’ of the USA had collapsed miserably for it had failed to establish a nation with equal rights for all. As a consequence, class discrimination and racial injustice had engulfed the American society. Besides having similarities and differences, the struggles for racial justice in the late 19th century and the struggles for economic justice in the Gilded Age are not only reminders of the failed ideology of the reconstruction, but are also evidence which shows us that the upper class of the society in that era were reluctant about the upward mobility of the poor.

Read More

Selling Manure Bonnie Jo Campbell Analysis

457 Words | 2 Pages

In her personal narrative, Bonnie Jo Campbell describes to her readers the time she sold manure the summer after school let out. At first, Campbell was embarrassed to deliver manure; however, over time, she began to realize selling manure was beneficial for both her and the customer, and quite fulfilling as well. Campbell (1996) states, “Within about a week, however, I began to see the absurdity of our situation as liberating” (p. 30). She begun to understand that selling manure was an honest vocation as opposed to her first thoughts. Not only is manure delivering effectual, but also are the other countless overlooked jobs often seen as low class citizen jobs.

Read More

Market Revolution In America

488 Words | 2 Pages

Some Americans could enjoy the changes since the market revolution whereas others saw it as the end of their liberty. Farmers were happy before the market revolution they had the freedom to be their own boss. However, after the market revolution, they were forced out of their home, breaking up families and the community system, which was a form of support. “Although many Americans welcomed the market revolution, others experienced it as a loss of freedom. Especially in the growing cities of the Northeast, economic growth was accompanied by a significant wondering of the gap between wealthy merchants and industrialists, on the one hand, and impoverished factory workers, unskilled dock workers, and seamstresses laboring at home, on the other.

Read More

Symbolism In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1433 Words | 6 Pages

However the dangerous working conditions were not the only reason for the nightmare like conditions of the work place. Another factor was the constant speeding up that the workers were subjected to. The workers felt that the factory managers were “… speeding them up and grinding them into pieces…” (76), which was not far from the disturbing truth. For, the inhabitants of Packingtown did not live this American dream too long with the severe conditions that were imposed upon

Read More

Planter Vs Laborer

451 Words | 2 Pages

Before the Civil War, the south depended on slavery to sustain its economy. Slaves provided free labor in which they were responsible for tending to the planters land. This included planting, growing, and yielding cash crops to be able to deliver a profit for the plantation owner. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationship between the planter and the laborer, as well as deliberating on the interactions amongst mill owners and mill employees to be able to explain how the shared theme of why labor had to change in the south was prevalent in both articles.

Read More

The Jungle Critical Analysis

1202 Words | 5 Pages

They take you on a journey full of dream-crushing brutality and deception of what seems to be the ideal place to work and built a life. They settle near the stockyards and meatpacking district, where Jurgis finds his first job at Brown’s slaughterhouse. Jurgis, thinking the U.S. offered more freedom, finds that the working conditions there are very

Read More

Social Injustice In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

513 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel “Of Mice and Men” John Steinbeck portrays the theme of social injustice throughout the story in the lives of several characters that include Lennie, Curley’s Wife, and the stable buck, Crooks. All of these characters are mistreated in some way, shape or form. The hardships that these characters faced help guide us to see the social injustice that is prevalent in the story. Lennie is a victim of social injustice due to the fact that he is mentally disabled. He is not treated fairly when he was accused of rape.

Read More

More about Chapter Summary Of Scraping By By Seth Rockman

Open Document