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Working conditions in factories in the 19th century
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Nester's excerpt begins with a description of where she worked and what her coworkers did to pass the time. She also mentioned an attempt at maximizing their wages under the piecework system. Next, she recounts the company's additional fees for their machines such as oil, needles, and the electricity necessary to operate them. Along with this, the foreman instituted absurd rules to keep the girls in line. When the company introduced a trial procedure that would subdivide the work. The banders group walked out after this announcement and were supported by Nester's group of workers. One of the banders went to the press and news spread to the Chicago Federation of Labor and they began recruiting the women of the factory to the union. However,
On July 13, 1900 Joseph Aschs’ new building plans in New York City are approved and by January 5, 1901 the building is complete. In 1906, the eighth floor of the Asch building is bought by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company who opens a factory there. Three years later, a letter is sent to the management of the Triangle Shirtwaist building from a fire prevention expert. He suggests they that a discussion about evaluating and enhancing safety measures. Unfortunately, management does not take the letter seriously and “the letter is ignored.” (Linder, “Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Trial”) The inhumane work conditions in the factory led to the decision of twenty-five ILGWU workers to declare strike against th...
She wanted to change the law for the unfairness of the children. The text states, “They would march the mill children all the way to the president of the United States-Theodore Roosevelt.” (Josephson, 6). The author explains what she is planning to do to hopefully change the mind of President Roosevelt. The author writes, “Their bodies were bone-thin, with hollow chests.” …”’some with their hands off, some with the thumb missing, some with their fingers off at the knuckles’ - victims of mill accidents.” (Josephson, 5). This means that the children weren’t being fed properly and they were injured while working. Some of the children lost body parts because the job was too
The textile industry was, at one time, one of the largest industries in the south. Starting in the late 1800’s with small local looms, and spreading to become corporations who controled the south and whose influence stretched internationally. One of the first textile industries came to Gaston County North Carolina, and its huge success led to the opening of mills across the Carolina’s and Virginia. As these industries grew they began to control more and more of its employees lives. These huge corporations were permitted to take advantage of individuals because of their inability to fight back. The employyees of these mills lived in conditions resembling that of slaves before the civil war. They were worked greuling hours in inhospitable prisons called textile plants, yet were paid on average less than any other industrial worker in America. In the early twentieth century a sentiment of contempt began to grow between the laboring class and the all-powerful corporation. The masses began to push for union representation.
The owners of the factories in New England, like in Lowell, Massachusetts, oppressed young girls by being careless with their safety. It was already terrible that women made one-eighth of what men made; their affordability for employers made girls, especially immigrants, desirable to save money. That could be the cause of the employer’s lack of regard for their safety. In the factories, from sunrise to sunset, women, men, and children had to breathe in unhealthy and unventilated air. In addition, men and women were being injured and killed because of hazardous surroundings, as Mary S. Paul writes to her father, “My life and health are spared while others are cut off.” Workers have been breaking their necks and ribs and being killed by cars (Doc F). It is an employer’s responsibility to keep his/her employees safe because, in reality, it would be in their interest to keep their workers alive to make them money. Still the girl’s well-being and interests were ignored because it would trouble the factory owners. As a result of the owner’s profiteering, employees were dying.
O’Donnell who was with his company for eleven years, would lose their jobs to a machine who could do the job quicker or to a worker who would work for a lower wage, like young boys or immigrants. O’Donnell described how men would gather to be picked for work in the mill and the men with young boys to serve as “back-boys” always got picked first because they could do the work faster and the young boys worked for $.30 or $.40 a day as opposed to the $1.50 O’Donnell usual took home for a day’s work. He also described how it didn’t take a skilled worker like himself to operate the new ring-spinners that expedited the cotton spinning process. But skilled workers and laborers weren’t the only ones who were “under the plating” of the Gilded Age. In Document 19-2, women described the struggles of working as domestic servants. Many women went to work during the late 19th century to help out their families in this time of financial anguish. Many took up jobs as domestic
Factory workers of this time had very little freedom. Aside from having to work outrageous hours for 6 days of the week, there was no job security, no solid way to survive day-to-day, and if a family member were to suffer an accident, families had no financial means to carry on. In the early 1900s, there were no labor laws, including the right to organize, an eight-hour day, safety standards, or unemployment/disability pensions. M...
9. Clarke, Allen. Effects of the factory system on women & children. Bolton [England: Pendlebury and Sons, 1899.
Many factories became short-handed and had to hire women to cover the jobs. The factories were very dangerous and unhealthy, and the women were only getting paid half the wages of men. The women were not unionized because the Labor Union said that they had to hire many women to replace one man and that the skilled tasks were broken in to several less skilled tasks. They had no protection, so their lungs and skin were exposed to dangerous chemicals. Many women worked in munitions factories, where they worked with sulphur.
Industrial reform began days after The Triangle Waist Company fire, beginning with the Committee of Safety, Tammany Hall legislators, and the founding of the Factory Investigating Commission. The Committee of safety’s goal was legislative reform. They were upset by the social and political support that was not received after the fire. The committee was made of the public that investigated factory conditions in hopes to get legislation passed to protect factory workers. Middle and upper class business men and women pushed for legislation to improve factory life, Tammany Hall legislators decided to reassess the situation. Democratic Party leaders Alfred Smith and Robert Wagner, being politicians, changed their views to become the party of reform. The founding of the Factory Investigating Commission (FIC), led by Smith and Wagner of Tammany Hall legisl...
...had to help work outside the home so there would be more money. Mary and the other women would board other people to earn money for the household, while the men would work the factory. Once the war started, there were less immigrants comming to America and the ones that did wanted more extravegant living conditions. George comes to live with MAry and they help eachother with paying for the household. John Joseph starts to work at the mill later on and Msry becomes sick. The mill gets the A.F.L looking at the mill and the tension makes it to where wrokers are given time-and-a-half after they work over eight hours. The fear of the union is what was roomered as to why this change occured. Strikes at the mill make Joseph leaveand work in construction. HE does go back to the mill and the strike end later on. Workers now get 10% increase in thier pay. Later on, Mary dies.
Norma Rae a loom operator in the weaving room is an outspoken individual and is very out spoken about her poor working conditions such as excessive noise, long hours with short breaks, physical stress from standing for long periods and abnormally high temperatures in the work areas. Added to all this is management¡¦s apathy for the working conditions, as seen when her mother looses her hearing temporarily with little or no sentiment from the company doctor, who knows this is a common problem for the workers. With this setting, the film progresses through most of the stages for employee organization. While management tries to get the workers support to keep the union out, and labor struggles to get a foothold to develop worker unity and get the union elected as the official bargaining agent both sides violate federal laws or come precariously close. First the Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) of the union will be examined.
The formation of the factory was based in capitalism. Financial capital is used to gain access to resources. The textile factory that employed Norma Rae may not have been a purely capitalist environment, but the society in which it was constructed was fundamentally capitalist. That society permitted establishment of a union in the factory to ensure workers rights. The Textile Workers Union of America sent a representative to the factory to ensure that the company was obeying the laws of the greater capitalist society. Those laws were established with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (Wagner Act) which protects workers rights to unionize. The representative, Rueben Wychofsky, understood the provision of this law and its subsequent amendments and used his rights and the rights of the workers to create a union. This process occurred with the help of Norma Rae, an employee who rallied the other workers to exercise their rights. Society’s sanctions in the form of labor laws forced the factory to obey the conventions of capitalist society in the form of better working conditions and a fair wage.
Young girls were not allowed to open the windows and had to breathe in the dust, deal with the nerve-racking noises of the machines all day, and were expected to continue work even if they 're suffering from a violent headache or toothache (Doc 2). The author of this report is in favor of employing young women since he claimed they seemed happy and they loved their machines so they polished them and tied ribbons on them, but he didn 't consider that they were implemented to make their awful situations more bearable. A woman who worked in both factory and field also stated she preferred working in the field rather than the factory because it was hard work but it never hurt her health (Doc 1), showing how dangerous it was to work in a factory with poor living conditions. Poor living conditions were common for nearly all workers, and similar to what the journalist saw, may have been overlooked due to everyone seeming
In the early 1930s, the Great Depression was in full swing. Businesses were cutting wages and laying off workers in order to maintain high profits. Workers faced sweatshop conditions, low wages, long hours, and the constant threat of being laid off. The conditions of the coal industry in Minneapolis were typical for the time. In the Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs; a member of the Communist League of America and one of the leaders of the 1934 strike describes his own situation: “We were just squeaking by when I was cut to forty-eight hours a week. It was a welcome physical relief since coal heavers had to work like mules, but there was also a two-dollar cut in weekly pay…. The thin flesh of mere subsistence was being scraped down to the bare bones of outright poverty…. On top of all that, I could expect to be laid off in the spring…. And I could be fired at any time without recourse merely at the employer’s whim. (Pg.30-31)”
The late 1800’s and early 1900’s were difficult times for children in the work force. Underpaid children worked long hours in harsh conditions such as high temperatures, exposure to chemicals, and with cuts and bruises. In concern for their well being the National Child Labor Committee was formed. This organization fought to expose and change the hard conditions children were forced to face. Numerous labor movements and reforms began to fight against child labor since child labor began to come into view for many (Fried).