Unskilled workers fared poorly in the early U.S. economy, receiving as little as half the pay of skilled craftsmen, artisans, and mechanics. About 40 percent of the workers in the cities were low-wage laborers and seamstresses in clothing factories, often living in dismal circumstances. With the rise of factories, children, women, and poor immigrants were employed to run the machines. Industrialization of the New South was a major change to the economy, after the civil war the agrarian lifestyle was abandoned. Due to the substantial industrial growth labor unions were formed to protect the workers and desire for better wages plus safe working environments (AP&P, pg 248-251).
WW1 ends – The ending of WW1 meant that the European countries were able to meet their own demands and therefore did not need any more supplies from America. Farmers suffered from overproduction and could not afford to keep their homes or pay mortgages, some farmers even decided to become sharecroppers. In 1924, 600,000 farmers went bankrupt. Also, there was stiff competition from Canadian, Australian and Argentinean farmers who were selling vast amounts of grain to the world market. Over-production – Fewer products such as cars, consumer good etc were not being sold as factories were making more goods than Americans needed or could afford to buy.
During that time of course there was debt and poverty, but mainly among the black population. Although, America was booming with industrial goods, blacks still had trouble finding jobs and often weren't accepted into Unions. That has difinately changed today, many blacks and other immigrants are successful in America. During the Progressive era woman were givin new freedoms and gender roles changed dramatically. Woman worked as office workers or as telephone operators and eventually wer e able to use birth control legally.
During the war many African Americans migrated from the southern countryside's to the southern towns and cities for work. More than 1 million African Americans migrated to the north to work in factories; by 1945 50% of African Americans lived in towns and cities. This push towards industrial employment was increased in machinery in farming witch resulted in less demand for labourers to work on the fields. Agricultural work was the main source for income for African Americans. In factories African Americans earned more money than they did as farm labourers.
One major cause of the growing strain between traditional and modern ideologies was the growing gap between socioeconomic classes. Many groups, like the farmers and urban workers, were left out of the middle-class prosperity of the decade. Other groups were culturally excluded. The 1920 census was the first in which more people lived in the cities than on farms. These people insisted on reforms that they felt would return them to “normalcy”, like immigration restrictions and prohibition.
What started off as a local labor revolt against harsh conditions for workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company turned into a cataclysmic nationwide showdown between labor and capital. Workers in conjunction with the American Railway Union vociferously protested against abusive labor practices and policies. Eugene Debs, the zealous leader of the American Railway Union, strategically strengthened the strike that soon mushroomed into a boycott. The railroad strike and boycott paralyzed half the nation and ultimately interfered with the United States mail delivery. President Grover Cleveland stated, “if it takes every dollar in the Treasury and every soldier in the United States Army to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that postal card shall be delivered” (Papke, Pg.
McMath, Jr., Edward C. American Populism: A Social history 1877-1898. Hill and Wang, 1992, 211 I believe that McMath wrote the book because he wanted the reader to understand the hardships of the lower classes back in the populism era. He gave us key area’s to look at such as New York and Texas. It shows how the workers and farmers were treated unfairly as well as looked down upon by the upper class. He captures the populism of that time from the strikes all the way to the farmer’s debt.
During the progressive era, there was tension between urban and rural life. Tension derived from immigrants migrating to America to take the factory jobs and drive down wages for the working class Americans. In response to improving impoverished urban life, places like Hull House, developed by Jane Addams, were established. Hull House became a social, educational, and artistic center for the working class in Chicago. It was places like Hull House that incited social reform to help unify the urban and rural populations.
Due to the large growth of the Afro-American population in the Northern cities, there was an increasing competition amongst the migrants for employment and living space in the growing crowded cities. Besides, racism and prejudice led to the interracial strife and race riots, worsening the situation between the whites and the blacks. Racism was no longer a southern problem, it became a national issue. In the book, The Promised Land: The Great Migration and How it Changed America (1991), Nicholas Lemann reiterated that “the very notion that an enormous racial problem existed in the North caused the whole consensual vision of American society to crumble.” (as cited in Hard,
But it also had its downsides: it spread its benefits unevenly; depersonalized commercial transactions, created difficult economic relationships that destabilized the economy; depended on an enormous wage labor force, made up of tens of thousands of workers men, women, and children by the 1840s, when such labor was generally seen as a temporary evil at best and seemed to carry disease and moral vice to the nation's rural, supposedly "purer" interior. On balance, though, the canal's success represented the virtues of "free labor," and thus it contributed to some northerners' sense of cultural superiority over southern slave