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Worker’s Plight

Worker’s Plight. American History 11 th Grade. Industrialization . Affected various aspects of workers lives - where they worked - where they lived -the size of the workforce -nature of the work Workers were forced to make the transition from skilled to semi or unskilled labor.

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Worker’s Plight

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  1. Worker’s Plight American History 11th Grade

  2. Industrialization • Affected various aspects of workers lives • - where they worked • -where they lived • -the size of the workforce • -nature of the work • Workers were forced to make the transition from skilled to semi or unskilled labor. • It took little training to tend a machine

  3. Problems • Work became monotonous • Unfair Conditions of Employment • - long workdays 10-14 hours • -average income inadequate • Health and Safety Hazards • -miners breathed coal dust • Factory workers breathed sawdust, stone dust, cotton dust, or toxic fumes • Very high injury rate • Child Labor • Job insecurity

  4. Company towns • Built and run by the companies • Usual practice was for companies to deduct money from the workers’ pay for rent and advances to the company store as well as medical and fuel fees • Some companies paid workers a “SCRIP” or company money that could only be redeemed at the company store • Workers remained in constant debt

  5. Labor Unions • Hard to organize • Mobility and diversity of American labor force • Differences in language, religion and customs among immigrants made it hard to unite them • Different union leaders had different goals • Strong opposition from employers • Blacklists (records of troublemakers) hard to get a job elsewhere if blacklisted • Lockout- factory was shut down or union members fired • Scabs- replacement workers • Collective bargaining- negotiation between an employer and a labor union

  6. Railroad Strike of 1877 • Following the depression of 1873, 5, 000 businesses closed, causing widespread unemployment and homelessness • 3 million workers were unemployed- no unemployment benefits or relief from state or fed. Gov’t • B&O workers held a work stoppage as a result of wage cuts. Troops went to Martinsburg WVA to bring order to the town many more clashes between workers and employers followed- Pittsburgh, Buffalo, San Francisco etc. • Workers killed in Phila. and Reading • In the end 76,000 miles of track stopped running, 100 people were dead, 1,000 jailed and 100,000 workers had gone on strike

  7. Immigration • Old immigration- German Jews seeking religious freedom, Germans leaving crop failures, Irish escaping potato famine, Chinese came for gold during gold rush • New Immigration- people coming from Southern and Eastern Europe- Italians escaping unemployment and economic misfortune, Eastern European Jews escaping religious persecution. Slavs Eastern Europe left Russia and Poland to escape economic woes and looking for political freedom

  8. City Life • Urbanization- more and more people moved into cities • Lack of Social Services- shortage of police and firefighters, City water was impure and sewers were often clogged. Garbage collection was sporadic and there were no attempts at city planning. Rivers and harbors were polluted by sewage and factory wastes. • Increase in crime

  9. Cultural Life • Education improved- lengthened school year, grade schools developed, free secondary education in 1900 the average child received only 5 years of schooling. • Mark Twain, Penny Newspapers, Dime novels • Sports and Entertainment

  10. Farmers struggled • Plague of grasshoppers took over the Great Plains region-ate everything in sight. • Also the threat of prairie fires, dust storms and drought • Railroads would take advantage of their hauling monopoly and charge high prices for short trips.

  11. Reform Movements • Temperance Movement –favored prohibition and pushed for it politically • Woman Suffrage-Susan B. Anthony- by 1900 four states-CO, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho had granted women the right to vote • Women and Union- not uncommon for women to work in sweatshops for very little money

  12. Experiments in Socialism • Something seemed wrong with a society that had the idle rich, who lived in mansions and the unemployed poor who lived in slums. • Socialists communities developed didn’t want to change policies politically (New Harmony 1820’s) • Karl Marx and socialists in the late nineteenth century were dedicated to changing the entire social and political system.

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