There was an abundance of workers, and the items they were producing were being found in homes across the country. Industry was making a lot of money, but due to the number of able workers, these same companies believed that they did not need to treat them well. The workers were putting in ten to twelve hours a day, five and a half, or six days a week (p. 9). The working conditions
Unsafe working conditions plagued next to, if not, all factories during industrialization. Thousands of workers grew ill or suffered injuries as a consequence of their labor, and would yield their jobs, surrendering their source of income. Taken in the early 1900s, “Lewis Hine’s picture depicts two children working on a very dangerous machine” (Document 8). The matter that children were allowed to manage these machines is awful enough, ignoring just how dangerous the machines were. In addition to this, the children did not appear to be well supervised, which made it all too easy for a disastrous injury to occur.
Work Conditions in the 1800’s were worse than bad. A regular work day was 11.4 hours for Men women and children. Many factories had rapidly moving pieces of machinery. Those machines where very dangerous to work around. These machines being fast moving belts to crushers that wouldn't stop on a dime.
In one machinist’s testimony to the Senate, he described how completely and truly machines had taken over industry, erasing any need for skilled labor (Doc C). His testimony landed on deaf ears, but shows us how corporations controlled all aspects with workers having no leverage, basically meaning that they had to be submissive, or they would lose their jobs and starve. Anyone was replaceable, as machines did all the skilled work, and they also could pay workers much less as now there was no skill to go with a job. It was a scary amount of power that was barely challenged with the exception of the Sherman Antitrust Act, an attempt by the federal government to destroy monopolies. While representing a landmark piece of legislature, at the time it was incredibly weak and barely enforced, and had little effect.
The nineteenth century was the result of the U.S. growing urbanization and the early twentieth century marked the new industrial age. The workplace was dramatically changing bringing in women, children and immigrants, most unskilled workers. An abundance of workers were available for these jobs making them expendable in dangers conditions while wage continued to decrease. Most workers had at least a ten to twelve-hour work day, making less money than what was necessary to live a decent life. Health and safety conditions were a concern in the workplace, Federal laws offered little protection and poor workers had limited resources.
On document C economist David A Wells compares the way that people worked in these factories to working in the military, because each worker was taught to perform one simple task. This took away from workers' pride in what they did. Mass production techniques led to the specialization of Labor decreasing the workers Drive and lowered their skill level making them relatively easy to replace and become unemployed. Document G entitled "What Does Labor Want?" by Samuel Gompers shows how workers were unmotivated to continue their work. Gompers states that people should not be considered property and adds that the mass production techniques being used were dehumanizing.
One of the bigger issues surrounding this age was the awful factory working conditions. Nobody listened to what the workers had to say during that time. “The employer desires to reduce wages and lengthen the hours of labor, while the desire of employees is to obtain shorter hours of labor and better wages, and better surroundings.” (Document C) This selection of document C shows that the employers wanted their employees to get paid even
Prior to the advent of labor unions, workers suffered under the oppressive treatment at the hands of those who employed them. At the dawn of the industrial revolution, factory workers faced long hours with few, if any, breaks, poor air quality, and no days off. Many workers were women, children, and newly-arrived immigrants who were subjected to low wages and, in some extreme cases, even sexual abuse. Young women, like those in the Lowell System, were under strict control by their employers who watched their every move. Once industrialization occurred more and more people moved from the country to the city in search of factory work; these too were left to the control of their employers.
These workers faced dangers everyday and received little pay. At the same time, many other people also had more money and leisure time. Henry George’s book, Progress and Poverty, talks about this divide. “ It was as though an immense wedge were being forced, not underneath society, but through society. Those who are above the point of separation are elevated, but those who are below are crushed down” (Document 3).
The Progressive Era lasted from the 1890’s to the early 1920’s. It was centralized around socialism and political reform. One of the major changes that took place during this era, was the labor legislation. Many workers were working long shifts, for several days straight, making their work life just about unbearable, and unworkable conditions. The job environment had become to where it was unsafe, unsanitary, and unregulated conditions for very low wages.
The life in the 19th-century for labor worker was from far easy. With all the wealth being generateing during the Gilded age very little of its wealth were given to the wokers. Even the best wages for a industrial worker were low, with long hours, working in awfully poor conditions. With safety rules and regulations being unexisted, it was hard to blame employers responsible. It was worse for women and children, who worked as hard or even harder than men, often time only revcieved only but a fraction of what a man earned.
The life of an industrial worker was very hard. Workers had to work long shifts and get paid very little. Some worked ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week, and made less than one dollar per hour. Along with long hours and little pay, there was no regulation for breaks, safety, or age. Due to this, one in eleven workers died on the job.
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).
Factory owners also lengthened the hours of workers shifts, to the point where employees were working over 14 hours per day, regardless of age (Source G). The long hours workers of all ages were subjected to shows that the industrial revolution had a significant impact on the lives of textile workers. Secondly,
College admission based tests have been around for centuries, they are used to measure the levels of intellectual and academic potential of students transitioning from high school to college. These test are the “make it or break it” point for students applying for intercollegiate college programs. There has been an ongoing debates as to whether college admissions based test help measure educational quality, but I personally believe that they do not, because these exams are culturally biased and discriminatory for non-English speaking students and students with disabilities. Not only that but these test do not measure the accurate educational effectiveness of students rather just an inference.
