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Child labor in factories 1840
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Child labor in factories 1840
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The Underlying Truth of Living and Working in Poverty
AJ Check - October 24th, 1903, New York City
In this article, I will show you what I have discovered first hand about living in poverty, and doing the labor that goes hand in hand with it. You will learn about the cycle of life that emerges from living and working under the corrupt owners of our nation’s industries.
It is no doubt that our country's larger cities are poverty stricken, but how many of us know just how awful it is to live in these communities? For the past month I have been going from one housing building to the next, going inside and seeing for myself the harsh living conditions people have to cope with.
Every building has 3 - 4 stories, each divided into quarters
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With all these factors, the wages of the workers compared to how long they work still baffles me. For a meatpacking worker, their workday is over 10 hours long, and their pay amounts to under $500 a year, which is barely, if not even, a living wage. To earn this wage, they work in a place where everyone is wielding knives and sharp objects, and everything is unclean and uncared for. If ill, a person does their best to continue working, as they desperately need the pay. This can quickly make everyone else fall ill, as they seldom wear gloves while working, and the managers and bosses couldn’t care less about health issues. The same goes if working in other industries, such as textile, where machine related accidents and an average workday occurrence are one in the same. To me, the most outrageous prospect of this lifestyle is child labor. When investigating textile mills, I observed many children being forced to work the same hours as adults, and in even more dangerous conditions. They are made to replace spools and threads, which can result in the loss of a finger, and in turn the company could fire them, as the child is useless to them. When given the rare opportunity to speak to one of these children, he told me that he and many others working in the factory were under 12 years of age, and because of this, they earn less than adults. It was hard for me to ignore the fact that many
Compared to other developed nations in America there is a large gap between the working poor and the wealthy and it has increased in the last 40 years (Mankiw, 2014). By gauging a better understanding, Shipler makes the reader want to fight for the working poor with the way he describes their struggles in detail. By interviewing workers from around the country with different circumstances, demographics, professions, and located in different regions Shipler was able to gain a realistic data of the working poor population. After interviewing individuals he was able to gain an insight into the struggles of those that are invisible like having to choose between the luxuries of the middle class like having a cable or a cell phone or paying their bills, the meager wages and hard hours single mothers like Caroline have to struggle through to provide for their family, and feeling like they don’t matter to their employers. Along with detailing the struggles of the working poor Shipler mentions possible solutions along the way that society could assist with like increasing minimum wage so the working poor could have the opportunity to survive, possible programs that would focus the children of the working poor so they could have a better future in high school and beyond, and if employers were able to reduce some of the requirements more opportunities could be provided to the working poor. With the creation of state and local communities that provide outreach like teaching job etiquette, proper hygiene, education, and transportation more individuals would be able to gain better self-esteem and have reliable transport to work. In order, to have a fighting chance the invisible American’s need society to fight for them, so those that make up the working poor know that they
Today we see the labor reforms put in place along with organizations that hold business to safety precautions like OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Association. Today, worker’s fight for higher minimum wage but outside of America, there are worker’s fighting for the same rights we did back in the 1900’s. Back in 2013, in Bangladesh, a series of fires occurred. This raised questions about safety and treatment of workers. Within a few months, the government allowed the garment workers to form trade unions along with a plan to raise the minimum wage. And soon after, the United States pushed for Bangladesh to improve their labor standards. All of this happened within half a year, where back in the 1900’s it took over 50 years, starting with the coal miners. Without the workers as a sturdy base for the business, the company with crumble and fall. And without those businesses to help the economy grow, the government will cease to
In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K. Shipler describes the lives of United States citizens who live within poverty. He highlights the U.S.’s disregard for its working poor, the nature of poverty, and the causes of poverty faced by low-wage earners. Shipler performs an amazing job of describing the factors that play their parts into the lives of U.S. citizens who live in poverty and are in poverty. Shipler explains the effects of tax payments and refunds, the abuse of the poor by private and public institutions, the spending habits of the working poor, the culture of the U.S., and the presence of money as a factor in the lives of the working poor. In dealing with government bureaucracy or private business, the working poor are vulnerable to the abuse of con-artists, employers, financial service providers, and public service providers.
In The Working Poor by David K. Shipler, Shipler analyzes the effects of poverty and the accountability of working poor in America. Chapter six of the book focuses on traumas of childhood that affect the later life of a person. In this chapter, Shipler speaks of sexual abuse within families, neglectful parenting, and other factors that contribute to a poverty-stricken life. He gives real-life experiences and the effects that an individual’s childhood has had on his or her life. Although his examples are based on real lives of the poor in America, it appears as though he has found the most extreme cases. While these situations are horrible, not all poverty-stricken people are classified under these extreme conditions. Shipler offers excellent points and facts involving the traumas of childhood affecting the future, but fails to acknowledge that not all children will succumb to the struggles of poverty nor does he offer plausible solutions to his criticisms.
In order to be radical about poverty, we need to understand the difference between wealth and income. Income is a transfer of money by working or by gifts. On the other hand, wealth is more of a total of accumulated assets that has been stored for a period of time (Conley, pg. 253). Wealth is not distributed equally among the public. (NCH, 2016, http://nationalhomeless.org/about-homelessness/). Declining wages has also caused a lot of stress and increase people’s inability to pay for their housing or other needs. If there are affordable housing, it’s usually in an unsafe and polluted environment or it’s extremely overcrowded that people have a higher chance of being homeless or inadequate housing arrangements than getting their applications accepted (Why Are People Homeless Research, 2016, NCH). Also, privatizing housing will increase the accumulation of wealth of the power elite or those that own property and lands by their pricing in rents. Most people go through depression because of loss of home, jobs, or a sense of self. Often times, the lack education about health and they don’t receive adequate support for medical care if they are homelessness. Poverty is also treated as a criminal offence and if people were to ask for public assistance, they have to prove their eligibility. If they have a criminal record, they are
The United States, a place where anyone can “pick themselves up by the bootstraps” and realize the American dream of a comfortable lifestyle. Well, for over 30 million Americans this is no longer possible. Though we live in the richest and most powerful country in the world there are many who are living under or at the precipice of the poverty level, “While the United States has enjoyed unprecedented affluence, low-wage employees have been testing the American doctrine that hard work cures poverty” (The Working Poor, 4). This translates to families of four making around 18,850$ a year. And as soon as they find work or move just slightly above that 18,850$ a year (which is still a meager and deprived way to live) they are cut off from welfare checks and other “benefits”, “they [working poor] lose other supports designed to help them such as food stamps and health insurance, leaving them no better off-and sometimes worse off-than when they were not working” (The Working Poor, 40). The working poor find themselves in a trap of dead-end, minimum wage jobs, and complicated, under funded government programs.
Poverty is a tremendous problem in the United States. Unfortunately, many of the families who are living in poverty have much more difficulty finding good jobs than those who are not. In The Working Poor, by David Shipler, there are many different circumstances that cause people to get to that point. Many of those in poverty have too many barriers in their way for them to be able to rise above the poverty line and support themselves. Some circumstances that cannot be avoided like disabilities or being born into a poor household can create biases that make it more difficult to get employment. Seeing what causes many to become impoverished and how some people were able to rise above the poverty line may be beneficial to others and possibly prevent
The urban poor are often put out of view because of the need for an industrialized society, yet the consequences of both an elite and middle class directly influence the people who cannot support that type of lifestyle. The gaps created need to be looked upon and treated, as Mike Davis believes this planet will become so dependent on slum life that urban life will disappear.
During the Industrial Revolution, working conditions for children and adults alike were appalling, worked long hours for very little pay was the norm. For example, two boys worked on pushing a cart up and down a tunnel filled with coal for up to 19 hours and don’t see the light of day. Also in textile factories there were many machines with exposed parts run by unskilled labourers which led to many accidents. Poor working conditions including child labour has been in use for many centuries but in the industrial revolution the work conditions were particularly po...
Working conditions were described as dangerous, dirty, unhealthy, polluted, dark, dim and drafty. These workers who worked very hard with their strong muscles in these horrible conditions were not valued. If they were hurt and could not work, they were simply replaced. This was also stated in Document 4, with the same thing happening to children. In conclusion, both adult and child workers were not valued equally and treated like garbage.
Poverty has been a growing problem in America, and it most likely will never stop being one. Someone who is identified as being in poverty lives beneath the poverty line determined by the Federal government. The poverty line in 2015 for a family of four was $24,250. These are the people who are really considered poor. Poverty isn’t just a problem in the United States; in fact, other countries struggle just as much, if not more, than the United States does. Many people struggle to keep themselves above the government’s poverty line, shown by the fact that the percent of poor people in America hasn’t drastically changed over the years. However, it is possible to get out of, and ultimately stay out of, poverty.
In many parts of the world, labor violations are still present. Workers are forced to work in dangerous and unsafe places under harsh conditions. They work for long hours, yet receive little pay. Employees are not guaranteed protection or rights. Many
Unfortunately, only in the United States there are 500,000 children who work on farms run by their families, and 300,000 children legally hired into agriculture by landowners who are not relatives (AFOP). An estimated 33,000 children have farm-related injuries each year in the U.S. More than 100 of these children die as a result of their injuries (AFOP). The scenario is painted in red, the red of the blood of children to whom our consumerist society stole the childhood first and then life, for mere profit. Can life be worth less than filthy lucre? Indeed, no. Banning child labor is an effective way to solve the problem from the root, by eradicating the eagerly diffused idea that working is a positive way to develop skills, regardless of the
Poverty, also known as the silent killer, exists in every corner of the world. In fact, almost half of the world’s population lives in poverty. According to the United States Census Bureau, there were 46.7 million people living in poverty the year of 2014 (1). Unfortunately, thousands of people die each year due to this world-wide problem. Some people view poverty as individuals or families not being able to afford an occupational meal or having to skip a meal to save money. However, this is not the true definition of poverty. According to the author of The Position of Poverty, John Kenneth Galbraith, “people are poverty-stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls radically behind that of the community”, which means people
Child Labor had begun around the era of the Industrial Revolution. As the world was becoming more dependent on the workings of machines and all of the advancements the revolution was bringing along, more workers had to be employed in these massive factories in order to keep them running, and to handle smaller day-to-day tasks. Children around the ages of four or five would be found working in these factories, the conditions in these factories were incredibly dangerous, and much of the time, fatal. Looking at child labor in this way, many countries have deemed it a...