1930s Working Conditions

During the early stages of the Twentieth Century, the labor force was focused more on industrial jobs than agricultural jobs as technology was evolving. About 24 million Americans ranging from 10 years and above were employed. The number of women working in the workforce was about 19 percent as children in the workforce was about 6 percent of the labor force. The work force was dominated by men as culture deemed them to be superior than women. Children worked as some parents couldn’t provide enough for their families, so they sent their children off to work in dangerous conditions. As the second industrial revolution was nearing its end, many people were employed in factories which received low pay and dangerous conditions as the average week was 53 hours. At the start of the 20th Century, only 15 percent of people that got injured in the workplace were successful in suing their employer and received money for the damages. This type of exposure of human labor would cause a shift in the labor force as

Life in the early 1900’s wasn’t easy. Competition for jobs was at an all time high, especially in New York City. Immigrants were flooding in and needed to find work fast, even if that meant in the hot, overcrowded conditions of garment factories. Conditions were horrid and disaster was inevitable, and disaster did strike in March, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York set on fire, killing 146 workers. This is an important event in US history because it helped accomplish the tasks unions and strikes had tried to accomplish years earlier, It improved working conditions in factories nationwide and set new safety laws and regulations so that nothing as catastrophic would happen again. The workplace struggles became public after

     Not only did a big portion of the urban working class experience unsuitable working conditions, but their pay and skill level was often not enough to promote them out of industrial employment. Employees found themselves trapped with employers and earning low wages, with many hovering in the poverty range. Reform was necessary to help the poor. Now, with the strife-torn 1890s behind them, reform became an absorbing concern of many Americans (597).

In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, labor was anything but easy. Factory workers faced long hours, low pay, high unemployment fears, and poor working conditions during this time. Life today is much easier in comparison to the late 1800s. Americans have shorter days, bigger pay and easier working conditions. Not comparable to how life is today, many riots sparked, and citizens began to fight for equal treatment. Along with other important events, the Haymarket Riot, the Pullman Strike, and the Homestead strike all play a vital role in illustrating labor’s struggle to gain fair and equitable treatment during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The 1940’s was an interesting and critical time for the United States of America. World War II began in the late 1930’s and moved on into the 1940’s.

After the civil war, up until the early 1900s, the need for a larger workforce grew as industrialization expanded. Samuel Slater brought the industrial revolution from England, and even since then, there were people trying to get better working conditions. Due to the growth in population by immigrants and expansion of industrialization, the working conditions became worse and worse, causing workers to suffer. Many people fought to solve this problem and changed many American’s lives for the better.

In the years leading to 1930, the Great Plains experienced a healthy amount of rain. The drought began in 1930 when the rain ceased. That year proved tough for farmers in the Great Plains, but they had no idea what was yet to come. In 1931, dust storms began to sweep through the Great Plains. Behind the dust, families stayed hidden inside their homes using wet clothes and such to guard the window sills and door frames. The families affected by the Dust Bowl were trapped inside of their homes for the six years of raging dust storms. The Great Depression was a number of years that consisted of workers being laid off, no job openings available, and an overall economic low in the United States. The Great Depression, which started in the years leading up to the drought, resulted in poor living conditions, including little to no income, scarce food, and unclean water. The Dust Bowl amplified those conditions for the affected families. (Steinbeck, Lewis, “Dust Bowl”

During the 1845 till as late as the 1920s pioneer living conditions for women was harsh and rough. Their biggest task was helping to feed the family. In addition to preparing meals and cleaning up after them, they planted large gardens. Vegetables like potatoes, carrots and turnips were stored in root cellars. Cabbage was made into sauerkraut and stored in large crocks. Some vegetables like cucumbers were pickled in vinegar. Apples and sometimes pumpkins and squash were cut into small slices and dried. In the winter they could be soaked in water and cooked. When canning jars became available, they preserved corn, green beans and tomatoes. Farm women also raised large flocks of chickens. The hens supplied eggs which were an important part of

A miner from the 1800s had to work hard for little bits of money. One specific miner went to a school with his three brothers, although it was not a good school since schools back then were not the best, until he was twelve, when he went to pick slate. There were five kids that worked there, one of which was crushed by 50 tons of rock one week before he was to get married. There were many risks in mining, like falling rock, miner’s asthma, powder, smoke, poisonous gases, and bad air. Miners were living unfair lives and that was fixed well (Doc 1). In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt helped the lives of mine workers by decreasing the time for miners to work from 12 hours to 9. Roosevelt also gave workers a wage increase,

In the opening of 1873 the economy wavered consistently, creating tireless recessions every five to six years, all more regrettable than the last. Nearly all workers in the late nineteenth century would agree that there was a significant rise in their standard of living. Workers often sacrificed and worked in places with dangerous working conditions, diminishing control over their own work, and a growing sense of helplessness.

Women and children were able to join the work force, but for little pay and long hours. Many were face with poor work conditions, hazardous health issues and short lunch breaks. The economic success was often left unchecked by authorities, who were not ready to deal with the consequences of these uncharted waters.

Businesses, laborers, and farmers faced major challenges between 1877 and 1920. This was a time period that included both the Gilded Age and World War 1, and the challenges that these three parts of society faced were very different between each group and throughout each period. Businesses had to deal with things called “trusts” with other businesses. Many businesses desired to hold the monopoly of an entire industry, and competition was intense and cutthroat. Laborers, of course, faced the challenges of not having the previously mentioned working conditions, as well as pay cuts and unemployment during the depressions in the 1870s and the 1890s. Farmers had to deal with major drops in the prices for their crops due to the second Industrial Revolution and the development of new technology, as well as the already-difficult farming of the West. Many southern farmers were sharecroppers, as well, and as the prices for their goods fell, so did their standard of living.

The early 1900s was a time of many movements, from the cities to the rural farms; people were uniting for various causes. One of the most widespread was the labor movement, which affected people far and wide. Conditions in the nation’s workplaces were notoriously poor, but New York City fostered the worst. Factories had started out in the city’s tenements, which were extremely cramped, poorly ventilated, and thoroughly unsanitary. With the advent of skyscrapers, factories were moved out of the tenements and into slightly larger buildings, which still had terrible conditions. Workers were forced to work long hours (around 12 hours long) six hours a day, often for extremely low pay. The pay was also extremely lower for women, who made up a

Paradoxically, as many as 2.6 million people were unemployed during the 1930s, while at the same time 5.7 million radio licences were being issued by the BBC. Thus, much debate surrounds the true extent to which the effects of the Depression constitute to “depression, deprivation and decay”, which were undoubtedly present in 1930s’ Britain, as “unbroken” or, indeed, widespread. Traditionalists and Marxists, whose schools of thought dominated the immediate post-war era, label the 1930s as the ‘Devil’s Decade’. Revisionists, by contrast, counter that, despite powerful folk memory of such turbulent times, the 1930s was ‘a period of prosperity’. However, Consensus historian A.J.P Taylor suggests it is a case of determining “which was more important

The United States labor force history is bound with many changes especially because of the rippling effects of massive demographic alterations that happened within the United States populace. The United States was a major agricultural country until late in the 19th Century where significant industrial growth led to many Americans going to the city to work in factories. The environment was characterized by mass production, low wages, and a lack of skills, which led to the intervention of the government to protect the rights of workers using labor standards. They included the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that allocates the national maximum hours and minimum salaries people are required to work and receive respectively. It also prohibits child labor abuses and outlines rules for overtime. The 1964 Civil Right Act asserts that employers cannot utilize discrimination practices in hiring based on national origin, religion, sex, and race[footnoteRef:1]. [1: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ?Employment Projections ?2014-24: table 4 http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecopro.pdf]