How Does The Ties Changed Color Each Time?

In 1836 writers for a newspaper called The Harbinger had the opportunity to examine the life of factory workers. People had come forward and shared information about the poor conditions in the factories but they could not verify any of it. The writers wanted to provide readers of The Harbinger with a credible account of the day to day life of worker so they went to factories in Lowell, Massachusetts and Manchester, New Hampshire. While at the factories the writers inspected the boarding houses, interviewed female operatives, and even ate meals in the boarding houses to help understand the life of the average worker.

The “Struggle in the Fields” has always been a controversial issue. In the PBS series, we get to learn how many obstacles came along, when many Filipino farm workers along with Mexican American workers began to demand a change in the fields.

Despite the flushed predictions of prosperity that had lured new settlers to the plains, the reality was more difficult. The farmers claimed that they did not have enough land, money, and transportation (Doc C). The farmers went into in a never ending cycle if they did not have a good harvest. As Booker Washington explains the farmers had no money so they had to borrow money from the banks which charged 12 to 30 percent interest. The interest the farmers were hit with was nearly impossible to repay so they had to mortgage everything and if the mortgage wasn’t paid the land was foreclosure which led the yeomen to become tenant farmers (Doc B). With periods of drought growing good crops was hard. Leading Economic Sectors shows how the farmers predicament of not being able to make a very

Before Henry Ford adapted the automobile production, they had developed an assembly line. It worked more like a disassembly line because there were 80 separate jobs in one line in the whole process of getting the meat ready. The immigrants did the most dangerous jobs, they worked in cold weather in the winter and the hot dark room in the summer (Willie).”

climbing a prison wall, an alarm sounded, and some shots were fired . There were several

Though traditional history books paint the workers in the United States as all male, the women were very much a part of the labor force. However, the way in which labor affected gender roles very much differed. In some examples, work broke down gender roles. In the rice fields, both male and female African slaves were forced to work side by side. This is interesting because in rice-producing countries of Africa, women were the sole producers of rice. On the other hand, the British had seen agriculture as a man’s work, and women typically only worked in the fields during

The new technology used in American agriculture made it overall more productive and widespread while creating mixed results for the farmers. The advancement in machines like reapers, threshers, and mowers to harvest grains produced contrasting outcomes. An obvious benefit was some of the ease brought to the farmers. The human labor involved in harvesting grain by hand with a scythe or by a simple, one horse-powered machine was far greater than harvesting with a big, multi-horse powered machine. The devices made work simpler, faster, and more efficient for the farmers by relying on animal energy and technology (Document D). With promises of larger crops with less exertion, the new machines became very desirable to farmers in order to stay in competition with their peers; however, buying these machines also pushed many of them into unfortunate financial situations. Not only was the actual

After the compromise of 1877 and after slavery was destroyed a new farming style emerged. This was the agricultural ladder. In said ladder were five “steps.” The first step was the landless laborer. Normally these people were freedmen, poor whites, and (sometimes) immigrants who did not have enough money to buy their own farms to operate. Next was the sharecropper; this person was responsible for a crop but would still borrow what they needed from stores on a crop lien basis. This meaning they would earn one third to one half of their designated crops income. The goal of this person was to gain enough to buy a mule and other equipment so that they could move up in the agricultural ladder; which meant becoming the renter. The renter normally

* Many were gentlemen who felt it below their stations to clear fields or build stockades (barriers)

In the early 1900's a newly arrived immigrant worker faced numerous challenges that had to be overcome. Often times literally arriving with the clothes on their back and a few meager dollars, it was crucial for these

At the same time, as we learned in class, America’s population grew because of labor mobility. People began to migrate from rural to urban areas, and from Europe to North America, in search of better economic opportunities, and to improve their lives. The job market became more and more competitive Hubert Gutman’s “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America 1815-1919” sheds light on the struggle of farmers and tradesmen who were forced into unskilled labor positions during the industrial revolution and the many new immigrants that were finding their way to America Gutman states, “A factory worker in New

The 1930’s were a decade of great change politically, economically, and socially. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl wore raw the nerves of the people, and our true strength was shown. From it arose John Steinbeck, a storyteller of the Okies and their hardships. His books, especially The Grapes of Wrath, are reflections of what really went on in the 1930’s. John Steinbeck did not write about what he had previously read, he instead wrote what he experienced through his travels with the migrant workers. “His method was not to present himself notebook in hand and interview people. Instead he worked and traveled with the migrants as one of them, living as they did and arousing no suspicion from employers militantly alert against

In the early 1900's a newly arrived immigrant worker faced numerous challenges that had to be overcome. Often times literally arriving with the clothes on their back and a few meager dollars, it was crucial for these

“Many had lost their jobs to foreign slaves, who didn’t have to be paid for their labor” (Mellor & Mcgee 61.) “Others in the street crowds were poor farmers whose land had been bought by aristocrats” (Mellor & Mcgee 61.) These men were left jobless and couldn’t join the army because they must own land to.

Fortune Magazine, in July and August of 1936, sent James Agee and Walker Evans to research a story on sharecropping. In the preface of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Agee describes it as “a curious piece of work.” They were to produce “an article on cotton tenantry in the United States, in the form of a photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment of an average white family of tenant farmers,” (IX). James Agee and Walker Evans set out to write and photograph an article for a magazine, and ended up experimenting with the form of the novel itself.