ipl-logo

Japanese Silk Factories DBQ

1045 Words5 Pages

Beauty Doesn’t Come from within a Silk Factory

Machines rumbling, tears falling, hands aching, this was the plight of the Japanese silk workers, during the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution came to Japan in the 1800’s, according to the background essay reading: “The Industrial Revolution had a quiet beginning but by the mid-1800s the movement from farm to factory was producing an all-out ruckus - Steam engines belching, gears grinding, conveyor belts slapping. This was true in Europe, in America, and beginning in the 1880s, it was true in Japan,” (Silk Factories: DBQ: Background). During this time, many women were employed in silk factories. These jobs didn’t pay well and the conditions were poor. Silk is made from harvesting …show more content…

They were signed away by contracts to a silk mill. It was extremely expensive if they quit their jobs at the silk factory, so it made it almost impossible to leave. Family was important to the Japanese and it still is today. It must have been painful to leave their homes and see their family give them away, just for extra income. The money they earned in the mill was not nearly enough to pay for them to leave the job at the mill. The family also received earnest money for selling their daughter into the mill. As you can see by this line in a silk workers contract, “If there should be any infringement [violation] of this contract whatsoever, as reparations we will pay without question a sum of (20x) the said earnest money.” (Doc E), the penalties were intense. This would be a large financial hardship on these families, since lots of female workers were working to get out of poverty in the first place. Women were not valued greatly, as well. This could mean the girl would have to work in the mill, just because her family did not think her happiness was worth that amount of money required to buy their …show more content…

In a picture from 1910, it showed women in a dirty factory hunched over pools of steaming hot water pulling threads of silk away. (Doc A). Of course, this was after the Industrial Revolution. This gives you the clue that working during the Industrial Revolution would not have been any better and most likely was much worse. The hot water burnt many women, as you can imagine. Since their hands and fingers were imperative to their job, injuries often left them unable to work. The women were exhausted and had one job that had to be repeated again and again. It would have been easy for them to faint, while working. Occurrences like these would increase the injury rate even more. According to the graph from Government Report on Mill Workers in Japan, it says that three hundred ninety-three people left their job in 1909 from issues related to work. (Doc D). Working there must have been bad if that many people left in one year. Silk mill workers were treated like animals. It dehumanized them, making their managers disassociate with them and lose empathy. Respect between the employees and the managers could not have been high. This would leave them treated like the machines they worked

Show More
Related
198 Words | 1 Pages

According to the chart in Japan 1892 “Average daily wage of a female silk factory worker is only 13 Sen.” (Doc C) female workers get pay only 13 sen a day. this amount of paid was not enough for living because at that time a pair of ladies indoor sandals already cost 7 Sen. It is just not right to pay the worker with little money especially when the workers spend all their day in the horrible factory conditions. A survey of the Japanese Silk Worker “70% said the pay was good and 0% said it was poor, overall experience 90% said it was positive.” (Doc F) . Almost everyone said the pay was decent and none of the workers were complaining about the wages.

Read More
1032 Words | 5 Pages

Eventually, the United States took over in order to keep the order in place. Many of the Japanese descendants were relocated more than once. There were camps for Japanese who proved themselves loyal and segregated ones for the "disloyal" Japanese people. Through this relocation, many family members were separated. In many camps, friends were separated as well and had strict visiting time.

Read More
589 Words | 3 Pages

The costs of the industrial revolution outweighed the benefits for the women; they had to work long hours, were trapped in the factories, and had little to no personal time. First of all, Women in silk factories had to work long hours. In document B it states that normal working hours in Okaya was 13-14 hours. They would work from 4:30 am to 7:30 pm. They did not have work straight from 4:30 am to 7:30 pm.

Read More
1091 Words | 5 Pages

Despite the stigma of the wives to be extra mouths to feed, ¬many of these wives would make the food, soap, clothes, and even shoes for not only her family, but also to sell to other families in the area. Alongside this, the wives were employed to take care of the dairies, teach the slave women and girls how to spin thread, make cloth, and act as midwives and nurses to any and all peoples on the plantation. Because of this extra activity and larger role on the plantation, many of the women worked alongside their husbands, rather than beneath. (Sandy 488). For many of these couples, the role of both the man and the women created the perfect training period before they could save up enough money to buy their own land and hire their own slaves.

Read More
703 Words | 3 Pages

There are countless examples of the horrible treatment that happened in the silk factories. One example from Document A states that worker had to pull threads off silkworm cocoons in hot water basins. Continually having someone's hands stuck in in hot water all day doesn’t seem the best. The worker’s hands could’ve gotten blisters or burns from the water and that isn’t very safe. Another example from Document F includes that inspection managers were sometimes physically abusive to the women.

Read More
917 Words | 4 Pages

The conditions were dangerous, and accidents were common in the mills. Due to faulty equipment and lack of proper training, many workers were injured or even killed on the job. But immigrants, like Kratcha were always available to fill the space. The pay was bad

Read More
796 Words | 4 Pages

They compared in their unpleasant treatment, lack of freedom, inferiority to men, and equal cost of provisions. Another last comparison between the two is their geography, because both countries are isolated islands, and pretty independent (Doc 1). The Industrial Revolution may have led to many great improvements over time, and definitely improved lives, but it also came with its downsides, such as the treatment of the workers and their life quality. The two main countries that began the revolution were England and Japan, and women in textile industries were a major part of that. Their lives and difficulties were not too different, in fact they were really comparable and shared many things, so it can be said that they had similar

Read More
677 Words | 3 Pages

Without a doubt, industrialization was one of the biggest factors in how the United States developed. It gave us the means of mass production, better transportation, and eventually the consumerist society that the United States is today. Industrialization did drastically change American society, but did it change America for the better? Did it do more good than bad? While industrialization did lead to multiple social and economic problems, the advantages significantly outweigh the disadvantages.

Read More
1369 Words | 6 Pages

Introduction- The discourse community of scientists in the field of genetics attempt to find solutions to problems with genes, and heredity. For over a century, popular articles have played a crucial role by building a communication medium between scientists and their audience who are people interested in keeping up with the upcoming science. These articles have been influenced by changes in the audience, exigence, and constraints experienced by the community. Therefore, by analyzing the changes in the popular articles through the years we can understand the growth of the discourse community.

Read More
1433 Words | 6 Pages

The workers were often subjected to sweltering heat in the summer and frigid conditions in the winter. But, that was not it, at the time there were no laws in place that required businesses to ensure their employees' safety, and this regularly lead to many injuries and fatalities in the workplace on a daily basis. There was not a single work place that did not have injured or mutilated employees, and this was due to the unsafe working conditions of the factories, “Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle-rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one… There were men who worked in the cooking rooms… in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour.” (109).

Read More
1647 Words | 7 Pages

The industrial revolution woke up the sense of humanity in people, yet at the same time It turned it off. To begin with, from the year 1819 through 1901, Great Britain was beginning to face an all new era called the Victorian Era. In fact, this era was named like that, because of queen Victoria. Also, this era was very important because it introduced medical advances, scientific knowledge, and technological knowledge that helped increase work efficiency. However, not all the things that occurred were great.

Read More
406 Words | 2 Pages

Thesis Statement: In their respective ads, Cadillac and Ford communicate messages about their costumers ' lifestyle -their consuming habits worth comparing and contrasting. Aspect 1 : Consumer’s lifestyle The Cadillac and the Ford ad were really different when it comes to their idea of their average consumer’s lifestyle. Cadillac weint for a basic family with a couple and two children while the Ford ad on the other hand went for a single lady with no kids. The Cadillac company chose to illustrate their consumer as a rich white male with a good job and lots of ambition for himself while Ford decided to show their representative as a black independant female with an ecological job helping the environment.

Read More
1577 Words | 7 Pages

The Gilded Age was to describe America in the late nineteenth century. The outside of the US seemed glamorous and splendid alongside industrial development and massive economic growth. However, the dark sides were hidden beneath it. In my perspective, I believe we are living in the 2nd Gilded age.

Read More
1383 Words | 6 Pages

The men during this time were paid significantly higher than women were. While men were paid higher than women, factory owners thought it was beneficial to hire women because they were unaware of what “good pay” was. Even if some women were strong enough for the job, all women were often excluded from it. Men were the dominant figure which meant they could all of the jobs

Read More
799 Words | 4 Pages

So my main question today is what are the working conditions like during the industrial revolution? Working during the industrial revolution had no laws existed, therefore working in a factory can be very dangerous. Some industries such as cotton trade are hard for workers to work for long hours of labor. The conditions of a normal factory had to be very hot as we are using steam engines every day.

Read More

More about Japanese Silk Factories DBQ

Related Topics

Open Document