The working conditions in the mills and and mines were horrible, nasty, and disgusting. Elizabeth Bentley who started to work at a factory when she was only six years old said that she would work from 5 in the morning all the way to 9 at night. Imagine waking up that early to go to work for more than 12 hours. She also said that she didn’t have any time to get breakfast. When workers didn’t claim their food “the overlooker took it, and gave it to his pigs” (253, Bentley). This shows how much the owners cared about their workers. If people working at factories were late to work, they were beaten and she says that was a common thing at the factories. One view that caught me off guard was of Hannah Richardson, a mine employee that said she said …show more content…
Here you can see that Harter expresses the negatives that would come out of government intervening and reducing the hours of laborers. He goes on to say in his answer that his silk mill is “calculated to produce a certain quantity of work in a given time” (254, Harter). So, he is basically saying that if the hours of his workers are cut then how is he going to produce the set amount of silk that his mill is calculated to produce, but now in less time than before. He concludes by saying if he is going to lose hours of working time by workers then he is also losing money, so he would then need to be willing to sell a portion of his business. Another individual who doesn’t agree with government intervention was Thomas Wilson who was the owner of Three Coal Mines. He stated “I object on general principles to government interference in the conduct of any trade” (256, Wilson). The main reason why he objected it was because of the “present provisions of the Factory Act with respect to the education of children employed therein” (256, Wilson). He went on to talk about how it wasn’t fair for all employees and that to provide separate schools for different classes was something that could not be
When a group of people must adapt to a lifestyle distinct from the agricultural lifestyle one would not know what to expect. Like a nation that is just starting, it would take time to construct and enhance laws; it’s a trial and error process. These businesses were starting out and there were no regulations as to how to run them. Unquestionably, there were no laws imposed to aid the labor conditions of these employees like we know today. The testimony and interview proved that the 1800’s took advantage of the work of children, often depriving them of food. It was obvious most children stuck around due to the urgency of money, therefore I am sure employees threatened to replace them seeing how the money was needed for families. For those who worked in factories with heavy, dangerous machinery, they were prone to accidents or even death. According to the sub-commissioner, the young girls picked the coal “with the regular pick used by men” . It is typically easier for a grown man to lift a regular pick than it is for a young girl because of the physical development and obvious age difference. Still there weren’t any regulations to protect children against the harms of labor and their wages were unreasonably
Working in the mills is physically demanding. The work that men due are dangerous and accidents and injuries take place at the mill. Life in the steel towns involves the same twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week. Every week there is a shift of working days and nights. On turn days the men work a twenty-hours straight, which leads to tempers and accidents. “Hope sustained him, as it sustained them all; hope and the human.” (Bell, 47) They hoped that the jobs would be there and the money would steadily come in. As Pervosky says, “No work, no pork, no money, no boloney.” (Bell, 268) Without work the men would not be able to provide for their families.
Work in the mills was hard and dangerous. The men worked from six to six, seven days a week. One week on day shifts and one week on night shifts, at the end of every shift the workers worked twenty-four hours. When the men worked the long shift they where exhausted, this made it fatally easy to be careless. Accidents were frequent and the employers did little or nothing to improve the conditions that the workers h...
The textile workers at the O.P. Henry Mill are used to struggle and adversity as both characterized thier employment in the factory and the hardships they had to face in their everyday lives. Many of the factory employees had been working in the mill for their entire lives, enduring the worker cruelty that the company dealt out with alarming regularity. However, many of the workers in the factory had little or no choice in seeking other employment, as the Textile Mill was the largest employer in the area, especially for unskilled laborers. While the employees were not forced to work in the factory, they stayed so as not to risk unemployment.
The Lowell textile mills were a new transition in American history that explored working and labor conditions in the new industrial factories in American. To describe the Lowell Textile mills it requires a look back in history to study, discover and gain knowledge of the industrial labor and factory systems of industrial America. These mass production mills looked pretty promising at their beginning but after years of being in business showed multiple problems and setbacks to the people involved in them.
The leaders of big business didn’t give workers the rights they deserved. In the text, Captains of Industry or Robber Barons?, it states, “Workers were often forbidden to strike, paid very low wages, and forced to work very long hours.” This evidence is a perfect example of the dehumanization of workers. The employers treated their workers like interchangeable parts, which were easily replaced. The big business leaders started paying less attention to the working conditions, and more to the production rates, and money. They didn’t care about worker’s family or the worker’s wellbeing. Due to the horrible working conditions, the workers were more likely to be injured, and sometimes, die. The capitalists didn’t give their employees the rights and respect they deserved, because to them they were just unskilled, cheap labor. If the workers were unhappy, they would easily replace them with other unskilled workers. That’s why they were considered interchangeable parts. This evidence shows the big business leaders only cared about money, and didn’t treat their workers
The O.P. Henley Textile Mill had a significant divide between employees and management and the working conditions were poor. There would have been many opportunities to make improvements such as improved working conditions, training and promotion programs, communication, and the building of trust. Significant wage increases may not have been necessary as long as they were competitive for the local market. In fact, a well-structured profit or gain-sharing program, benefitting both parties, may have been sufficient.
The meatpacking industry in the 1900's was backbreaking labor, unsafe conditions and extremely unsanitary; with meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had trampled and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. With people lacking supervision and being underpaid. Under aged children were often employed and forced to work long hours for very little pay.
The slaves worked long tiresome hours under all sorts of weather conditions but it couldn’t compare to the factory girls. Inside of a factory was excessive heat and noise.
They were paid by the quantity of fruit and cotton picked with earnings ranging from seventy-five cents to $1.25 a day. Out of that, they had to pay twenty-five cents a day to rent a tar-paper shack with no floor or plumbing. In larger ranches, they often had to buy their groceries from a high-priced company store” (Mass Exodus from the Plains 1). To put it differently, migrant workers already had it extremely tough, but their employers were making it worse. The hardships for the workers were immense, and they just kept adding on. Most can’t even imagine what people went through back then, or what George, Lennie, and all the other workers in Of Mice and Men experienced as
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
They spent all day bent over and often the workers would come home with blisters and scars on their hands from picking the leaving off o the stock. Most people from foreign countries temporaioly. Iiving conditions were cramped and dirty. In source #1 its said that most of the workers were unhappy and wanted to return to their homeland after the contract they had signed was over. The schedule that was in source #2 lists that the foreigners would wake up to the morning call at 5:00 AM and would fall asleep at 8:00PM. They worked six days a week and were alerted with one siren to another. When the laborers were allowed to discontinue working, they would only be able to stop at 4:00
The development of the Lowell Mills in the 1820s provided American women with their first opportunity to work outside the home with reasonable wages and relatively safe work. About ten years later however, working in the mills wasn’t the same. Working conditions became more vigorous, the mills were unsafe and the pay received didn’t match the amount of work done.
Rebecca Harding Davis wrote “Life in the Iron Mills” in the mid-nineteenth century in part to raise awareness about working conditions in industrial mills. With the goal of presenting the reality of the mills’ environment and the lives of the mill workers, Davis employs vivid and concrete descriptions of the mills, the workers’ homes, and the workers themselves. Yet her story’s realism is not objective; Davis has a reformer’s agenda, and her word-pictures are colored accordingly. One theme that receives a particularly negative shading in the story is big business and the money associated with it. Davis uses this negative portrayal of money to emphasize the damage that the single-minded pursuit of wealth works upon the humanity of those who desire it.
In the factories, working conditions often felt quite harsh, but overall was good work to help support my family. Everyday, except on Sundays in which we had off, I had to wake up extremely early at five o’clock, already tired due to the previous day. I had to work on a spinning mule, which turned cotton into thread at large quantities. I would have to do this until seven at night, which left me exhausted, and I usually fell asleep immediately as I reached my bed. Although, luckily for us mill girls, we were never pushed to do more work than we could bare. Ultimately, all the labour was worth it upon receiving the paycheck I worked so diligently to earn.