Out of This Furnace by Thomas Bell was a captivating tale that follows three generations of Slovakian immigrants who venture to America in search of a better life within a new world full of great opportunity. The story allows the reader to follow along with the trials and tribulations of George Kracha’s family and the pursuit of the American dream during a time of turmoil in our history. The story begins as George Kracha joins other first generations of immigrant workers who came to the New world to establish roots and find jobs, such as those in the mills. Most of this first generation of workers started families in and around Braddock and were learning to become Americans. Kracha was learning too as was the steel industry at the time. The …show more content…
Mary married Mike Dobrejcak a struggling immigrant steel worker not unlike her father. The story of Mary and Mike Dobrejcak is told during a time when the steel mills were described as thriving. Still the hours were long and conditions were dangerous. Workers in the mills had little time with their families. Poverty and dislike for Slovak workers by the bosses and corporations running the steel mills struck like disease coursing through the veins of the industry. “Hunkies” was the derogatory name that they became known by and Mike tells his wife Mary during one conversation “They don’t give good jobs to Hunkies.” (p. 185). His words were true because Mike never did get one of the good jobs, he died in an accident at the mill and Mary was left alone to raise their children with little to survive …show more content…
Dobie is later afforded the opportunity to accomplish is goals because of the Great Depression. The Depression hit the steel industry with a blowing force massively cutting hours and wages and the silence echoed through the mills with massive layoffs leaving them empty for months at a time. Entering the mill was like walking through a “deserted city” and “Leaving them was like coming out of a tomb.” (p.269). With the blame being placed on the rich and powerful because of the outspoken way they were handling the devastating hit to the mills, the worker became very upset sparking the movement for a union. The final pages of the book take the reader through Dobie’s journey from the rage to dealing with the corporation effectively through union action. Bell’s story takes his audience through this time in history through the eyes of the workers and how it affected one generation after the next. Each one fighting to survive and make a better life for the next generation to come. Bell expresses this triumph in the end with the thoughts of Dobie “the world my kid grows up in ought be a little better than the one I was born into, and if it is as I think I’ll have the right to say I had something to do with making it better.” (p.
Life of the Immigrants in My Antonia William Cather provided a great amount of information about the "old wild west" and the expansion of the United States. In My Antonia, Jim Burden tells a story of his childhood, the people in his life, and the struggles he and his surroundings faced during this time. At age ten, Jim Burden was sent by his relatives to be raised by his grandparents in the Nebraska prairie after his parents died. When he arrived at his new home, he was introduced to a Bohemian family that had just immigrated to America: the Shimerdas. Jim and Antonia, the Shimerda's daughter, quickly became friends.
In his book, “…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him,” author Tomás Rivera documents through a fictional non-traditional novel, the life experiences of a child that endured many difficulties, he describes the hope, struggles, and tragedies of the Mexican-American migrant workers in the 40s and 50s, and how they travel from home to work to survive. The book’s focus is in Texas, although other areas are mentioned throughout the United States. Divided into 14 different short stories and 13 vignettes the author records the predicament of the Mexican-American migrant workers in Texas and explains how the migrants had to overcome constant discriminatory actions by the White Americans and endure difficult living situations because of poverty as well as unsatisfactory job
For the Kracha family, a slow rise to proud business ownership was ended by a series of events: (1) a summer of drunken abandon by Djuro; (2) his return to the steel mills (3) his daughter's (Mary) marriage to a fellow countryman also in the mills; and (4) his grandson's growing discontent with unfair labor practices and abuses. These events in the Kracha family's lives become intertwined with the story of America's own transformation between the 1880s and the 1940s. At the time that this family arrived in the United States, a new wave of Eastern European immigration - spurred by growing industrialization and the advances in technology leading to the establishment of steel mills and other manufacturing and raw material processing factories and plants - was reshaping the American labor force. Djuro's experiences, and those of his son-in-law, Mike Dobrejcak, reflect a certain level of hostility towards these Eastern and Central Europeans from "mainstream" Americans and earlier, more acculturated groups of immigrants including the Irish.... ... middle of paper ...
In the late nineteenth century, many European immigrants traveled to the United States in search of a better life and good fortune. The unskilled industries of the Eastern United States eagerly employed these men who were willing to work long hours for low wages just to earn their food and board. Among the most heavily recruiting industries were the railroads and the steel mills of Western Pennsylvania. Particularly in the steel mills, the working conditions for these immigrants were very dangerous. Many men lost their lives to these giant steel-making machines. The immigrants suffered the most and also worked the most hours for the least amount of money. Living conditions were also poor, and often these immigrants would barely have enough money and time to do anything but work, eat, and sleep. There was also a continuous struggle between the workers and the owners of the mills, the capitalists. The capitalists were a very small, elite group of rich men who held most of the wealth in their industries. Strikes broke out often, some ending in violence and death. Many workers had no political freedom or even a voice in the company that employed them. However, through all of these hardships, the immigrants continued their struggle for a better life.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once asserted “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people,” in belief for a change, for a better nation, and for guidance to those who have lost all faith in humanity. During the Great Depression, the United States faced many different scenarios in which it caused people to doubt and question the “American Dream.” The Great Depression began in 1929 and ended in 1939. In these ten years, people went through unemployment, poverty, banks failed and people lost hope. President Herbert Hoover thought it wasn’t his responsibility to try and fix such issues in the nation.
The Transportation Revolution in the 1800s, sparked up industrialization and the building of railroads that stimulated every other industry causing an economic boom known as the Gilded Age. From the outside, America seemed like the place to go to make all your dreams come true. But in reality, in was an era of serious social problems mainly caused by an economy with a free market policy, low tariffs, low taxes, less spending, and a hands-off government. This type of economy would eventually lead to the development of monopolies. These monopolies would then, in turn, lead to worker uprisings ‒caused by the suppression of unions created mostly by unskilled workers‒ that would contribute to the rapid rise and downfall of America. An example of this suppression is the Homestead Strike of 1892; due to hostility created by the unions, the employer fired all the workers, and rehired them on the basis that there would not be any more unions. After the workers started working again, the conditions were still unbearable, so the workers shut down the facility. The police got involved, the workers were pushed back, and the facility was reopened union free.
Life in the early 1900’s wasn’t easy. Competition for jobs was at an all time high, especially in New York City. Immigrants were flooding in and needed to find work fast, even if that meant in the hot, overcrowded conditions of garment factories. Conditions were horrid and disaster was inevitable, and disaster did strike in March, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York set on fire, killing 146 workers. This is an important event in US history because it helped accomplish the tasks unions and strikes had tried to accomplish years earlier, It improved working conditions in factories nationwide and set new safety laws and regulations so that nothing as catastrophic would happen again. The workplace struggles became public after this fire, and the work industry would never remain the same again.
"America's Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal."DPLA. Digital Public Library of America. Web. 20 Nov 2013. .
Dobie want a union but not this kind of union he did not want a union that trough money around like this. This is why he refused to vote. There was no law saying that he had to vote (Bell, 1979). His company still wanted 100 percent to vote. Dobie had refused a promotion he did not want to have to carry out Todd’s unpleasant orders. After fifty years the union had come back to Braddock. In the shop E.R.P opened and inglorious career, they elected representative and one of the two that they choose was Hagerty. This did not make a big difference because most of what was discussed at these meeting did not even make it to the minutes. When Hagerty was raised to the chairman he immediately asked for a ten percent pay increase and vacation days. “The only reason that they had started this union was to keep the real union out.” (Bell, 1979). Dobie joined the union and got others to join to. Dobie was going every night in the week this upset Julie because she was always left home not knowing anybody. Dobie was finally glad that he could do something during the depression other than just work. Dobie then got elected to secretary. Kracha ended up dying. Mikey came to his funeral at this time he was working in New York main 80 cents an hour. Over the years there continued to be fighting within the unions.
Most Immigrants who enter the United States are searching for work and the opportunity to live a better life. They are from small towns deep within Mexico that do not offer much opportunity for the people of the town to live a prosperous life and to provide for their family. In the small town of Sierra Mixteco, men women and children arrived in town at various times of the day bent over loads of fire wood gathered from the mountains to sell in the town market. For those who did not sell fire wood, they spent their time making straw hats to sell in the markets of larger towns, both of these jobs only provided pennies a day for the families to survive on. So the stories that the men brought back from the North gave the people of the small towns the hope that a better life did exist.
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...
...n the trying time of the Great Migration. Students in particular can study this story and employ its principles to their other courses. Traditional character analysis would prove ineffective with this non-fiction because the people in this book are real; they are our ancestors. Isabel Wilkerson utilized varied scopes and extensive amounts of research to communicate a sense of reality that lifted the characters off the page. While she concentrated on three specifically, each of them served as an example of someone who left the south during different decades and with different inspirations. This unintentional mass migration has drastically changed and significantly improved society, our mindset, and our economics. This profound and influential book reveals history in addition to propelling the reader into a world that was once very different than the one we know today.
A common trend was always that wages were not keeping up with the cost of living. Many could not make ends meet and were struggling to simply survive. They started to question the effectiveness of the National Recovery Administration (N.R.A.). It was unfair to them that businesses were still making enormous profits while its employees were forced into poverty. Pushing for a unionization was disowned by factories where they threatened to close their doors if a worker’s union formed. Some thought businesses were crooked and angled themselves to take advantage of the economy to increase their
...s became even more desperate at the time of the great depression that ultimately led to the great railway strike, in which many workers lost their lives at the hand of the Pennsylvania militia. This act proved to be a major turning point in the evolution of the labor movement in the United States.
This confusion can be seen in two reports from separate journals that differ greatly--so much so that the ability to attribute them to the same issue seems unlikely and unrealistic. William Alexander Abram, a journalist and historian in the 1860’s, wrote an article about the vast improvements made during the industrialization process (Doc 6). Abram specifically mentions the Hours of Labor in Factories Act of 1844 that prohibited excessively long work days. Additionally, Abram mentioned the increased wages and the subsequent increase quality of life. Abram attempts to justify any issues with the industrialization by addressing the new, more spacious cotton mill and the lower sickness and mortality rates. Abram describes the positive forces that arose during the industrialization to outweigh the mass concerns people had about the laboring class’s working conditions. This positive opinion is counteracted by an image included in a magazine from the 1870’s that shows the visual of a bridge and its surrounding factories at the time (Doc 7). The Graphic, a weekly magazine that dealt with social issues, included the view from Blackfriars bridge over the River Irwell that contained the numerous factories concentrated in the one location. The Graphic was famously influential within the art world for its use of imagery and attempt to conquer grand social issues with art. The factories are all emitting gas and the general conditions of the streets and buildings is less than ideal. This negative portrayal of the industrialization sheds a different light on the effects of industrialization. Between these two conflicting articles, it is difficult to see the true extent of the industrializations process’s benefits and harms. This uncertainty also supports the proposed