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Poor Working Conditions in the Age of Industrialization

Decent Essays

The age of industrialization brought many changes to American society. Industrialization had a huge impact in the development of the nineteenth century. Industrialization was important because it led to new technologies and inventions that tremendously improved every day life. The technical innovations and the inventions of railroads brought people into the cities. Due to this, industries grew and more jobs were available. The need for workers put women and children into the workforce, providing cheap labor, and resulting in poor working conditions. The texts “Modern America is Born” by Milton Meltzer, “Robber Barons and Rebels” by Howard Zinn, and “Hostile Employers See Yourselves as Others Know You” by Samuel Gompers, talks about poor working conditions that happened during industrialization. The working conditions in the late 1800s and the early 1900s were very poor. In 1869 the completion of the first transcontinental railroad was a new development in America. The railroad was built mostly by immigrants that would work for low wages. The employers that then worked on the railroad had certain issues. In “Modern America is Born” the author states, “For decades both freight and passenger trains suffered from two devices that kept service slow and dangerous […] The brakeman had to stand between the cars so he could slide the link into the socket and drop the pin to hold the cars together […] An even worse part of the job was the manual braking of the cars to slow or stop

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