Sarah David Period 5 U.S. History October 15, 2012 Industrialization Essay In 1860 to 1915, industrialization had a great impact on American society. Natural Resources helped the growth, thick forests were cut down for lumber, and they also drilled the first oil well in 1859. There were coal mines along the east coast. During 1881 750,000 immigrants came to America year, and by the 1900s over a million were coming a year. According to document 8, living conditions for immigrant workers in the United States was poor; they stayed in small rooms, with little resources.
They had jobs such as railroad track layers, brick layers, grave diggers; fruit, vegetable and cotton pickers, doormen, elevator operators.Almost 1 million black farm workers lost their jobs, many moved to the cities where they shared similar experiences with the immigrants; low paid jobs and poor housing conditions.In the northern states, decent jobs went to the white population and discrimination was just as common in the north as it was in the South and many black families lived in ghettoes in the cities in very poor conditions. On the other hand one reason that black Americans did benefit as before the war less than 2% of the population in the southern states could vote but by 1945 around 15% of black Americans in the southern states had been registered to vote. Another reason that the black Americans did not share in the economic boom was that the living situations for them was appalling. 40% of housing available to black Americans in Washington DC was found to be sub standard where as only 12% of white housing fell into this category however as a result of boom the amount of unemployed black Americans fell. It fell from 937,000 to 151,000.
The Triangle Fire In the late nineteenth century, many fields of American labor progressed from hand tool limitation to booming, breakneck productivity. Output in many industries, including the clothing industry, extended exponentially. Statistically, America was thriving. However, the gears pumping the American economic engine were human beings who were excessively overworked and underpaid. The focus of the typical business tycoon laid dead set on profit and production, and left scamp or no spot on the agenda for employee well being and safety.
For a long time, Russia had been considered backward, both in its political methods and its ways of life. 80% of the population were peasants and Russia itself was a very large country to govern. Modernisation was a way for the country to keep up with its European neighbours. There were two key areas that Sergei Witte, Finance Minister for Russia, was focused upon: Industry and Transport. He felt these areas would help to solve Russia's three biggest problems; Communication, Size and Social Divide.
Andrew Carnegie: The Epitome of Industry Andrew Carnegie was born to a poor Scottish family that immigrated to America while he was an infant. He lived in poverty as a child but was able to rise to riches through hard work and intelligent business decisions. Carnegie built his first steel mill in America in 1872, shortly after meeting Henry Bessemer. Carnegie used two innovative and effective business strategies: horizontal integration and vertical integration, which would allow him to become a captain of industry. In vertical integration, Carnegie bought companies that produce resources for steel making.
In the early nineteenth century only men with above a certain amount of wealth or land were able to vote, and people, especially the working class concluded that this wasn’t fair and started to in a sense, rise up, and join the charter movement which is tracked back to eighteenth-century radicals. Let’s look at more specific economic reasons that led to the charter being formed. Firstly, industrial and agricultural workers were still facing harsh conditions in their workplaces, mainly low wages, periods of low unemployment and high prices. This led to a country felt resentment of the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the sense of not being able to change anything through mainstream parliamentary politics, which was of course at this time dominated by upper classes. This leads on to another cause that led to the Chartism movement, the disappointment of the 1832 Reform Act.
“Life in the Iron Mills,” by Rebecca Harding Davis is a story about Hugh Wolfe who is in the laborer class in society. The story is told by an unknown narrator but is obviously part of the working class during that time. Davis uses the story of Wolfe to describe the living and social conditions during industrialization in America. One passage in the story seems optimistic but is actually an irony that Davis uses include in the story to contrast it to what actually happens in the rest of the story. "Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great man?
Ruling class, who live in the cities sponged-up much of the produce of the countryside through taxes and tribute, making them become very wealthy. On the other hand, in capitalism, cities and town produce most of our output today. Another important difference between ancient economies and today’s capitalism were slave labor. Slavery appeared nearly every ancient economic society. Slaves were nothing than a source of labor, who worked in the mines, on the latifundia, in the galleys under sickening conditions to “provided a major impetus in keeping the economic machinery in motion”.
In the early 1840’s, a great depression takes place, causing a downturn in the economy and a deterioration in the quality of life and increase in suffering of the working class. Although the industrial revolution had economic ups and downs, this time period made significant advances in civilization. Many historical texts written by scholars such as Thomas Macaulay and Charles Kingsley held differing opinions and debated on whether the changes that occurred in the economic system with the expense of the people were a blessing or a curse to society during the industrial time period. (Greenblatt) Many blessings came to the industrial revolution which made England a strong economic power. In the turn of the eighteenth century, England and other European powers started changing from an economy based on colonization to a power centered on industrialization.
They were very prosperous and led a life of luxury. The workers worked in the factories and received wages for their labour. The workers were an exploited lot and lived in great hardship. Emergence of towns and cities - The introduction of machines in the late eighteenth century led to the development of the factory system. People working at home could not compete with factory-made goods.