Comparing Farragher's 18 And The Bitter Cry Of The Children

Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, life in America was changing drastically, the increase of technology leading to bigger corporations, longer working hours, and worse working conditions for all laborers. Although the rich whites were getting richer, the laborers worsening conditions led to them searching for different ways to lash out at their oppressors and gain better conditions and hours for all. This era of the burgeoning labor movement is spoken of in Zinn’s 13th chapter, Farragher’s 18 and 19th chapters, John Spargo’s “The Bitter Cry of the Children”, and in Christopher Setaro’s lecture on labor. All these sources describe the economic boom of the nation being followed by the rebellion of laborers. Beginning in the 1860s there were many immigrants flooding

Farragher’s 18th chapter speaks of this immigrant flood and also shows that even as a young nation, the immigrants were secondary to the original citizens, as they were forced into worse jobs and worse conditions, however soon the poor were also subject to these conditions. With so many more citizens of the nation, life began to change. The racism flooding the nation led to the need for better lives, and technology became the way to gain a better the life. Advances were extremely important and many were helpful, such as Edison’s light bulb and the Bessemer process, but with these helpful innovations came big corporations, monopolies, Unions, and worker fairness strikes. Farragher’s 19th chapter detailed both the positive economic changes and the negatives, such as it being a time of the fight for equality and better wages over the loss of leisure and the rise of labor after the life altering inventions. It also mentions the problem of child laborers working so that their families wouldn’t starve. The job market was so unstable that parents were forced to send their kids to work for some semblance of job security. John Spargo’s “The Bitter Cry of the