Analysis Of Land Labour And Gold By William Howitt

In the past Tuesday in class, we read Assembling California by John McPhee. In reading the first few pages of the book, I was amazed about how much gold was present in California at the start of the gold rush. I can’t even imagine gold being so prevalent that people were digging it out of rocks with knives. Eventually, as more people came for the gold and to ‘strike it rich,’ they brought other ways of harvesting the gold out of California, such as panning and gunpowder. This search for gold, and any raw material at that made me realize how extensive the desire for raw materials really is. I realized that people don’t care about the repercussions of their actions, provided that the immediate result of their actions is beneficial to themselves.

The Mine owners had connived the perspective miners that it was in the best interest of the miners and their families that the company provided housing and the company store seeing that the mines had been open in “remote inaccessible areas”. But the miners began to see that this “convenience developed into methods of control” as the miner owners could control how much everything cost, from the beans to the rent of the shacked that the miners was using. Along with controlling the cost, the company could also raise prices as the felt and this was keeping the miners in the red, always owing the company. Many times, all of the money was taken out of the miners’ paycheck, leaving the miner and his family a balance of zero. According to one miner, “Because they take your car buy, they take your potter, they take your grocery for whatever you bought. Everything came out of there. Lights and all and everything. House rent, everything if you rented a house. They take everything before you’ve seen your statement.” When the miners were no longer in the red with the company, they would be paid in script. As described in “A Colorado History”, “Scrip is paper currency valid only at the company store” Thus further the need to go into debt with the company stores because they could not take the monies earned and buy foodstuff from outside of the camp. Since scrip was unusable out side of the company, miners were

Working in the British mines in the 1800s was not very different from slavery because both slaves and mine workers begin at a young age, had no rest during work hours, and were punished for a variety of reasons.

Between 1860 and 1880 several land reform laws were introduced, intended to halt the monopoly of the squatters by creating a new rural class from the diggers - now experiencing diminishing returns on the goldfields. These laws made available small freeholds of pastoral land for 'selection' by any man or (single) woman over the age of eighteen.... 15

The gold rush had a lasting impact on the political development of Australia. The uprising of the Eureka stockade formed the basis for democracy that we have in Australia today. The Eureka Rebellion was an important step towards democracy. It was an uprising against authority. The conditions on the goldfields were difficult. The monthly licensing fees that the diggers had to pay were quite harsh and unfair. A digger had to pay it even if he didn’t find any gold. The way the police collected the fee was also harsh. These people were ready to fight for change. The miners wanted better rights. They protested and pressured the government for better conditions, in hope to abolish the fees. The gold rush gave the diggers a

Despite the nation’s increase in wealth through urbanization and the façade of a prospering people, the fraudulency of the Gilded Age crippled the masses in their rise to security. The competiveness amongst laborers, a battle for control of

Rebecca Harding Davis wrote “Life in the Iron Mills” in the mid-nineteenth century in part to raise awareness about working conditions in industrial mills. With the goal of presenting the reality of the mills’ environment and the lives of the mill workers, Davis employs vivid and concrete descriptions of the mills, the workers’ homes, and the workers themselves. Yet her story’s realism is not objective; Davis has a reformer’s agenda, and her word-pictures are colored accordingly. One theme that receives a particularly negative shading in the story is big business and the money associated with it. Davis uses this negative portrayal of money to emphasize the damage that the single-minded pursuit of wealth works upon the humanity of those

The Gilded Age came down for you to decide your fate, from staying as an older guy and knowing how to farm or evolving into a new industrial hardworking man using your hands to bend, shape, twist, and melt huge iron beams Farming goes way back to early 1800’s unfortunately after the Civil War the economy needs a more efficient process for it to boom back up and the old farming technique wasn’t doing it anymore. Therefore, the Industrial business came to idea and here was the spark for the stock market skyrocketing back up; its no walk around the park, wits and devoted men are required for this task although their hard work and determination, paying off at the end of the day taking home an extra dime.

The Gilded Age was a period from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which Americans greatly increased the rate of industrialization, bringing rise to many economic and social problems. Although many people responded to these problems, two of the most famous were Andrew Carnegie, a wealthy “captain of industry,” and Upton Sinclair, a novelist. Industrialization brought about many economic and social problems. It brought a great amount of wealth to very few and brought poverty to many, widening the gap between the two classes and causing tension between the wealthy and the poor, the factory owners and the laborers. Laborers had to work in hazardous environments for wages and with few ways to advance their position.

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave” is repeated over and over again to emphasize the foundation and morals of our country. We are thought to be free and courageous from our triumphs on the battlefield by other nation. Funny thing is that song was written in 1814, 195 years after slavery was established in the U.S and was still occurring. “the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” There are many problems with the pledge, not only is does it sound like a cult pledge but it is also forced upon people. You are shunned for not being patriotic enough and pridefully singing the national anthem. America, the birthplace of the hotdog, the first one the moon, and the runner

Throughout Cultural Perspectives, many influential texts have been read, analyzed, and discussed. One text, Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis, integrates the thoughts of quite a few authors that have been discussed this semester. Through employing a Marxist view of history—there are always the “haves” and the “have-nots”—one can see that Life in the Iron Mills exemplifies the struggles that face many “have-not” citizens throughout history. One can then see the clear connections to various authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, W.E.B. DuBois, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, and Adam Smith.

The daily life of a miner was far from perfect. The way the papers and other means of propaganda had portrayed getting rich quick, but it was far from easy. All the equipment that was needed to start out as a miner was for the most part outrageous. The earning wages from gold was” sixteen dollars an ounce” pg.8. Even so, the work was backbreaking. There was swarms of minors trying to get rich quick. To many miners that traveled to get a piece of the precious metal they where resorted to taking land from previous land owner just to get ahead in the Gold Rush. Not to mention that the living conditions where also outrageous. The “rentals of hotels and other business structures, whether of boards or of canvas, reached even dizzier heights than did commodity prices” pg.8. This spaces where set prices at 3,000 dollars a month or 40,000 dollars for a year, there was also other prices around the area of San Francisco. And in some cases miners where resorted to living in a room filled to the brim with other miners. This lead to very poor conditions for any one to live in. But nothing was better then being rich in a few months or

First, I would like to consider the economic theory behind the gold rush and explain why on the surface; it is quite simple. Consider a modern theoretical case. Say a family of four is living in Cincinnati, Ohio and the main earner of the family works for a tool manufacturing company in Cincinnati. Suppose that the company decides during their yearly employee reviews that they aren’t going to give this certain individual a pay raise for the next year; also suppose that the employee does not see themselves climbing up the pay scale any further. Now suppose that this person is offered a thirty thousand dollar per year raise if they move out to Los Angeles, California for a new machine related job. Assuming

In early 1848, cries of gold findings flooded the West. White settlers flooded the area like a hurricane in search of riches never seen before to the common man. It was the single greatest migration of people in a shortest amount of time. The gold rush was a very dark period in American history and it shouldn’t be celebrated; the Native American’s were slaughtered in American thirst for gold Explosions of violence from both natives and settlers were common in this environment of prejudice and greed. Between 1850 and 1890 eighty percent of the total number of Native Americans in California died due to murder and massacre, disease, starvation, and forced migration from their native lands. The destruction of the culture and lives of the people native to California and the Black Hills of South Dakota. Greed changed the morals and values of the miners and Americans alike in the Gold Rush. The gold rush brought riches and highlighted racism of white Americans, while systematically destroying Native Americans in that region.

     What effects did the Gold Rush have on people? Some became forever rich, and some lost everything. In 1849, California was a rather uncivilized place, especially San Francisco. Miner’s came from every where to try to find their fortune, but most fortunes weren’t made mining gold, they were made because of mining. Sam Brannan was one such man who made his fortune this way. Brannan bought every shovel, pan, and every other mining related tool he could in the region. A twenty-cent metal pan now became a fifteen-dollar pan, and the only place to buy them was from Sam Bannan. Levi Strauss, a tailor who happened to have very popular canvas pants made his fortune from the Gold Rush. Phillip Armour, of Armour Meat packing company, and John Studebaker just to name a couple more. Unfortunately, not everybody could get rich, for every one person that struck it big; there were thousands that didn’t. It is not uncommon to hear stories of men leaving their wife, kids and