Immigrant Industrial Workers In 'Life Of The Iron Mills'

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

How does Larcom’s memoir helps us to understand some of the market revolution on the lives of ordinary Americans? Larcom’s family circumstances pushed her to paid employment in the textile mill at age eleven. She was forced to sacrifice her childhood to provide much needed income to her family. But it was not and couldn’t be, the right sort of life for a child. Therefore, Larcom’s memoir indicates that effect of the market revolution has some positive side shifting work from home to factory and gives a chance for women and girls to work on factory to get some income in order to fulfil their basic needs and their families. While, forcing childhood to provide much needed income for their families, not respecting

The early 19th century in America saw the rise of industry and a booming economy, however, with industry came businessmen who saw an opportunity for power and profit. Even with help from the government, it would be a long time before the American people saw an improvement in the condition of the laborers and the regulation of corporations. Fast forward to the 21st century; two hundred years have passed and people are still struggling at the hands of a corporation-run economy. Throughout history, American laborers have been at the mercy of an industry controlled by a small few that did not have the best interest of the people in mind.

Rebecca Harding Davis’ “Life in the Iron Mills’ illustrates class conflict and the exploitative nature of American industrialization. It has been regarded as one of the first notable examples of American realism that portrayed the burdens of industrial factory workers. Davis uses slavery comparisons throughout the novella, this rhetoric threatens the potency of her work.

The industrial revolution introduced many new technology and improved our economic system. There have been a large increase in manufacture and machine tools since then. This led to better transportation, steam powered factories, consumer goods, a large workforce, and labour conditions. During the 1870’s , many financial issues had arise in the United States of America and in many European countries. Due to the financial crises that arise , it led to a major depressing era in history that is called the Panic of 1873. In “Standing at Armageddon” written by Nell Irvin Painter, the author discusses the progressive era and the United States economic crisis , as well as, social status during the ninetheeth century. Painter explains on how the high class white people owned most of the United States industry and due to their wealth, they owned fifty-one percent of the properties in America. They were the wealthiest one percent of the United States. There were different layers of wealth and social status which also integrates with race and ethnicity. Those who were wealthy in America weren’t the ones working hard and getting their hands dirty. Many low class were immigrants, women and blacks who worked in factories and were receiving low wages and poor work conditions. The low class owned only 1.2 percent of the properties in America. This caused major issues in the united states because the workers formed

This tragedy pointed out the negatives of sweatshop conditions of the industrialization era. It emphasized the worst part of its times the low wages, long hours, and unsanitary working conditions were what symbolized what sweatshops were all about.

From 1865 to 1910, the Industrial Age was an interesting time of great economic growth and prosperity for the United States as a whole, however the American citizens who worked to push this positive chain of success paved the way and paid the cost for that very occurrence. In The Jungle, a family from Lithuania travels to the United States in order to gain a better living than what they had in their home country. During their time of adjustment to life within the United States, some members of the Rudkus and Lukoszaite family especially Jurgis Rudkus, experienced extreme hardship while attempting to develop their lives into a better state for the sake of their family’s wellbeing. Upton Sinclair opens a small window into the lives of hopeful and hardworking immigrants to reveal how America’s Industrialization Age hindered many from true freedom. This was due to a lack of care for employees and their wellbeing in the workplace, poor sanitary conditions that led to unhealthy living conditions for workers, and political corruption which was held over certain citizens in order to allow corruption to thrive, making workers remain powerless.

For many Americans, the late nineteenth century was a time of big business, marked by economic and social evolution. In the period between the 1880 and 1920, the American economy was growing at a rapid pace. Many European immigrants without industrial skills flooded into American factories and steel mills. These "new comer's" came in search of better economic opportunity, which paved the way for Heavy, low paying labor that became the job description of the era for many immigrants. One such story of immigrants of the time is Thomas Bell's Out of this Furnace. This not only a story of three generations of Slovaks and the challenges they faced but also about the Americanization and "evolving

Following the end of the American Civil war, the Industrial Revolution came rushing in and brought with it tremendous changes – the mechanization of agriculture, the invention of steam and electricity used machinery led to mass production factories, and the emergence of a massive railroad system. Change in the economy and society brought great wealth to the United States. Consequently, it was a giant magnet for immigrations. However, the distribution of wealth across the population was not even. The American working class in the last half of nineteenth century suffered from poverty and oppression. Several documentations and stories were written in response to the people suffering. Two of them - “Child Labor in The Canning Industry of Maryland” by Lewis W. Hine and “Maggie: A Girl of The Streets” by Stephen Crane - vividly described the living and working conditions for the working poor.

The factory jobs were controlled by owners and bosses, who showed little regard for workers and their wellbeing. Workers forced themselves into work during even extreme illnesses; one absence or mistake and they might be replaced without question. These low wage jobs came with few benefits and no rights; there was nothing in place that protected the livelihood of the worker. Immigrant’s willingness to work all the time created these conditions.

When people think about of America society they thought are prosperity, equality and freedom. However, today in American society many people who are less privileged in different areas of their lives face discrimination by others. The segregation that people experience involves violence, inequality in their jobs and even in the neighborhoods. George Saunders in his article, “Exhortation”, argues the sadness that many people face in their jobs because they feel like slaves because the salary and condition of job makes them to realize that in order to get their check; they need to give their lives on the job; in his article, “Sea Oak”, he argues how Bernie sees that her lives is nothing because in order to be a part of the American system the people need to be happy being exploited. Finally in “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz”, he argues how the happy zone helps makes people face their emotions in front of the stress they experience’s every day in their jobs and how people are manipulate by their emotions in order to kept their values away in order to protect their jobs. George Sanders effectively argues the idea of exploitation in people lives. He states that the America ideals that people believe are not true because in order to succeed in the society they give their lives to the system.

In the late nineteenth century, America was a country in its prime of industrialization and immigration influx. Known as the Gilded Age, this period defined the United States as the bustling powerhouse it is today, but at the cost of many social and political injustices that lay underneath the guise of the “American dream”. Among the urbanization and booming industry, there was national and racial discrimination, gender inequality, child exploitation and labor,

In the novella, Life in the Iron Mills, by Rebecca Harding Davis an extraordinary compelling portrait is depicted of the 1830’s powerless and tired labor class. To further describe her subject, Davis uses body markers such as: race, gender, and class identification and limited language through her characters in order to shed light on the oppressive chains of industrial capitalism. Influenced by the events going on around her during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Davis focuses and addresses her short literary realism story towards the middle and upper class entrepreneurs who were polluting the Industrial Revolution. As new mills and factories were being established to only on produce profits, at the expense of lower class workers. Who, mostly consisted of, unskilled peasants, immigrants, laborers, and farmers.

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.

Class division has existed throughout time, both in its range of meaning and complexity of describing social division. The modern implications of class can be seen as a general word for groups or group distribution that has become more common. Rebecca Harding Davis’s short story Life in the Iron Mills, together with Raymond Williams’s entry Class delineates the oppressed lower class in a vivid and moving way, exemplifying the impact of social divisions on oppressed working labourers. Davis “embodies a grim, detailed portrayal of laboring life” (Pistelli 1) with an articulate correlation of Williams’s entry Class, structuring her narrative and focus of attention on gender, industrialization, immigration, and social divide. This essay