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Importance of workplace safety essay
Labor unions 1875- 1900
19th century working conditions
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In Britain, there were many different jobs during the middle to late 19th century and the early 20th century. In the midst of the large multitude of jobs during this period, there were a few that were relatively safe and had a decent salary, there were the less desirable ones that were dangerous with a smaller salary, and then there were the extremely ridiculous jobs that nobody wanted, but had to unwillingly take due to the high levels of poverty during this time period. During class, we were to watch videos documenting what workers had to do if they had these ridiculously dangerous and terrible jobs. The videos started out with jobs that were mainly based upon repetitive manual labor. The first job from the videos was the water caddy, who had the tedious and backbreaking job of filling a barrel with about sixty-six pounds of water, and carrying the barrel across the city in order to deliver water to personal residences. This job served the same purpose as running water, but was carried out by people instead of pipes.
The next job was an early firefighter, whose only equipment was a man-powered helmet that had fresh air pumped into it by a contraption called a bellows from outside the building so that the wearer could breathe. The firefighter helmet was very heavy, bulky, and awkward and the wearer couldn’t see the ground due to the rectangular eye windows that didn’t allow sight below eye level. There were two more jobs that went along with the firefighter. One job was the Pumper, who stood outside and pumped on the bellows with their foot in order to pump air to the firefighter helmet. If they stopped pumping, then the firefighter would suffocate and die. The next job is the climber, who’s only equipment was a long ladder that...
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...a pugger as a tremendously tedious and tiring job. After deciding that I probably wouldn't like the task of being a pugger, I began to look through the aspects of the tanning job. Since the only present concerns that I had about the tanning job was the smell and the heat of the environment, I decided that it was a fairly tame job that wouldn't produce many negative affects. Through this long process of studying and analyzing these jobs, I came to the conclusion that being a tanner would have suited me the most if I had lived the late 18th and early 19th centuries. What job do you think that you Would be best suited for considering their situations? Why do you think that your choice of job would be the right choice for you? Do you think that you would be able to keep that job, and work it for a career in order to support yourself and a family during this early time?
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.
Evidence can be gleaned from the remaining copies of newspapers from this time period as to the types of jobs that women were pursuing. There were three types of ads offering work for them. The first, which comprised about 43% of the total, was for those who had involved herself in some kind of economic activity ad was seeking to market her product. The second type was for women who were ot presently employed, but seeking to find a particular type of work. This could include nurses, seamstresses and domestic help. The third ad category was seeking to employ a female as a wet nurse, housekeeper, and even plantation and dairy managers, shopkeepers or teachers.11.
Children as young as young as five or seven years old worked in dangerous factories. Many times if the children fell asleep while on the job, they would slip and get stuck in the machines, resulting in death. Child labor in the late 1800’s was very unsafe and put the lives of young children in danger. The children worked in very dangerous conditions, most of the time it was factories. The conditions were very poor, the factories were dirty and unsafe for children. The children would work for up to sixteen hours with little to no pay.
The working class faced conditions in the factory that wealthier skill workers did not have deal with. These men were not in a comfortable financial situation at home, and could not find comfort in hazardous working conditions with the dangerous machines they had to operate. Workers were harmed daily and among these injured employees were children (Shi 62). Many of these children were as young as nine years old, and due to financial reasons their families sent them away to work in workshops, mines, and even in factories surrounded by dangerous machinery. Realistically, these children were doomed to working in a factory for their entire lives. They did not attended school and worked to help provide for their families. With no education, they would not be able to find a more prestigious job with higher pay. The waged for factory workers were low, but they were not always guaranteed. The Knights of Labor pushed for a federal law that would force employers to “pay employees weekly, in full, for labor performed during the preceding week” (Shi 62). These people were only working in harmful conditions to survive but were not guaranteed enough money to feed their families. Charity handouts did not necessarily help feed a poor family, but aimed to “... produce most beneficial results to [the] community” (Shi 60). This meant that the wealthy didn’t directly give citizens money, but
Many people that did not come from rich families lived a life of extreme poverty. They sent kids to work in factories to help pay for things needed to survive, such as food, clothing, and other necessary materials. There were many poor families living in poverty during the Victorian Era: ‘I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea industrious,...
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...
“Child labor is work that harms children or keeps them from attending school.” Back then in the U.S., children were working between ages 5 to 17. Between the 1800s and 1900s, many children worked in agricultural fields, fishing, mining, manufacturing, and even drug trade and prostitution. Even though child labor laws are still avoided around the world, the effects on child labor in the US, before, was unbelieveable. Children were suffering from health issues, reform movements grew and other countries followed enforced child labor too.
During the 18 and beginning of the 19th century in certain regions of the U.S child labor made up more than 40 percent of the population (Wolensky). That’s almost half of the working population. Since the beginning of time children have always been known to help their families with domestic tasks. Most of these kids worked in factories because they were easy to control and paid less than adults. Kids earned less than half of what adults made in the work force. In these factories they usually cleaned under and inside machines while functioning because of their small size.. That’s how these kids felt as it was described in a article in our history book. They were always in danger of getting hurt or even dying, which many did. Kids as young as five year olds worked 12 hour shifts, seven times a day with no breaks or lunches. Children during this time period of the 18th and 19th century, worked just as hard as adults did and did not even get to live a regular childhood where they played outside with each other. Child labor was a big problem and the majority of kids were forced to go to work because their family needed the money to make a living in America. Child labor showed us how children worked in some of the most dangerous environments risking their lives for just a dollar a week and working as hard as adults did by doing these exhausting 12 hour shifts that tired them out.
The Industrial Revolution in America began to develop in the mid-eighteen hundreds after the Civil War. Prior to this industrial growth the work force was mainly based in agriculture, especially in the South (“Industrial Revolution”). The advancement in machinery and manufacturing on a large scale changed the structure of the work force. Families began to leave the farm and relocate to larger settings to work in the ever-growing industries. One area that saw a major change in the work force was textile manufacturing. Towns in the early nineteen hundreds were established around mills, and workers were subjected to strenuous working conditions. It would take decades before these issues were addressed. Until then, people worked and struggled for a life for themselves and their families. While conditions were harsh in the textile industry, it was the sense of community that sustained life in the mill villages.
...his was because at the time, thanks to machinery, a worker only needed a small skill set, to accomplish a job that was formerly difficult. They were also employed for their size. This did not come without it’s problems. Child workers faced harsh conditions. They were beaten and abused. They were also paid much less than any regular worker. 13
The children work in various conditions, suffering numerous injuries. In boot factories, children are forced to sit so close together that they poke each other with needles: “many have lost an eye in this way” (595). The children work “unreasonably long hours” (595). Chimney sweepers in particular work long hours, starting at about four a.m. and working for twelve hours. These chimney sweepers sleep in bags of soot, wrapping themselves in the bags and straw. They are subjected to suffocating steam, heat, flying hot metal, and the “unhealthiest kind of grinding known” (595). Those who are employed in mills endure lung problems, scrofula, mesenteric diseases and asthma.
Imagine being forced to work in conditions that might cause you to lose a limb, to be beaten daily, or to be left with long term respiratory conditions. These terrible conditions were realities to families who worked in textile factories in the 1700’s. England was the first to adopt textile factories which would benefit with mass production of cotton material. According to the power point, “Industrial Revolution; Life in English Factories”, low and unskilled workers, often children, ran the machines and moved material, this helped lower the cost of goods. During this time, commissions investigated the working conditions of the factories.
Although employment did not come that easily for women, the working conditions were horrible, and women were paid significantly less than men. Another big controversy at the start-up of women working in factories and workhouses was that they were taking jobs from men, who were thought to deserve these jobs over women. In The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-century Britain, Barker-Benfield retells a story of two women being wrongfully and unreasonably punished for a simple recreational walk through the fields in their town after their church service. For their simple and peaceful walk they were sentenced to either pay a great amount of money for prophane walking or to be laid one hour in the stocks, what would be equivalent to modern day community service type work. “Women’s leisure activities were occasional and heterosocial; they had no equivalent to the daily, public, institutional, homosociality of men” (Barker-Benfield 54).
All over Britain new factories were being built and with them, the demand for workers increased. Even though the pay was low for adults, it was still too much for the factory owners to afford. They also needed workers who were small enough to fit into the tight spaces in the new machines. Child labour was the only option. There were many more dangerous jobs which children had to perform, some included crawling under the wool and cotton machines to fix threads. These children had to work for the majority of the day with little or no breaks. Some of them were as young as four. Children were made to work in mines as rushers and harriers. These jobs as well as many other jobs often meant very young children had to work long hours. “I am a harrier. I am fourteen years old and I have been employed ever since I was six. I come to work at seven o’clock, and sometimes leave at four, five or six in the evening in summer, and in the winter near seven.” (Speed and Speed, 1985). As stated in that quote, children had a hard life working in mines and other work places. The pay was also much lower than adult workers in the same factory. Injury was common in work places for kids; they ranged from broken bones to death. The factories had very poor sanitation, which led to...
The factory system, that developed during the Industrial Revolution, had a large impact on society and the lifestyles of the citizens of England. Beginning in 1760, many people were forced move from their farms outside of the major cities to inside of the cities. The farm landowners closed off their land and they were no longer available to lease, which caused numerous workers to lose their jobs.The development of machines that were water powered, such as the spinning jenny and water frame, made the process of weaving and spinning cloth easier and faster. With these technologies, the textile industry flourished and factory owners became very wealthy by forcing workers to work long hours for low salaries. Their low wages did not afford them to live comfortably, which meant that many people had to live in crowded buildings that were unsanitary. Not only did these factory workers have poor living conditions, but the working conditions in the factories were dangerous, especially for children. Life in England changed a considerable amount during the Industrial Revolution and the views of citizens were altered.