Essay On The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age was an era marked by major advances in technology, the forming of robber barons, and the dismal living conditions of masses of working poor. It was an era where the worker’s rights were put on the sidelines for the and industrial growth of the nation, to uphold the image of American exceptionality. This dismissal of the rights, and in some cases dignity, of the majority of the population I believe was a major driving force in the development of contemporary worker’s rights. Through the accounts of the lowest class of workers, immigrants, we will see the common issues faced by the largest percentage population of city dwelling people. People who were clearly in dire need of reform and who often turned to what was typically the only option, unions. Union’s

Alongside these new and electrifying innovations came the need to create, furnish, or build them faster. This initiative was what lead to the creation of factories, which could employ untrained cheap labor. Labor such as that of Thomas O’Donnell, an immigrant who worked for cheap wages of $1.50 a day, which according to his own account was not much to live on. People such as O’Donnell who worked for large factories or major employers often found themselves in dire straits, with little to feed their families and to even sustain themselves with. As corroborated by O’Donnell when he reveals his family had possibly had no food sense a loaf of bread in the morning of the day he had his examination . This lifestyle of not earning enough wages to support one’s family or oneself, I feel shows what would often lead to a laborers dissatisfaction with their position in life, and would cause workers and their families to wish and act for change of some form to permeate their lives and improve their living standards. One form of action taken by a number of workers were labor