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Industrial Working Conditions in 1900s
In the first decade of the 1900s, the most serious problem in America was poor industrial working conditions marked with low pay, overworking and job instability. This problem was mostly experienced by the factory workers who were mostly immigrants to the United States. For Example, Sinclair (1905) exposes the working conditions in the meat packing factories, which supplied Americans with meat. The products were produced in unsanitary factory conditions and passed forward to the American market. This problem was more serious than others because these workers determined the type of products that were sold in the United States (Barnes & Bowles, 2014). This made the problem of poor working and industrial conditions a pertinent issue at the time.
To solve the problems, Americans attempted to resist the working conditions by protesting over the issues affecting them. They engaged in unions and industrial disputes with the employers in order to fight for better working conditions (Brezzina, 2005). For instance, workers in the meat packing industry around Chicago organized the stockyard strike in 1904, which sought to advocate for their plight. The industrial actions were organized to fight for better wages and manageable working hours.
The efforts of the workers to fight for their rights were effective in exposing the problems in the industries. The strikes provided activists and writers like Sinclair with information about the problem, and a basis of exposing them. However, the industrial actions did not solve the problem because most people still remained under poor working conditions. Workers were still being paid poorly, worked for long hours and their working environment were not addressed fully at the time. According to Gilbert (2012), this is because factories sought for more profits by minimizing the costs of labor. This continued to the entire century and finds itself as a problem facing industrial workers even in current day.
References
Barnes, L. & Bowles, M. (2014). The American story: Perspectives and encounters from 1877. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
Brezzina, C. (2005). The Industrial Revolution in America: A Primary Source History of America’s Transformation Into an Industrial Society. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group
Gilbert, R. (2012). The Progressive Era. Retrieved From, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-ztBdclkYU> June 15, 2015
Sinclair, U. (1905). The Jungle. Girard, Kansas: J.A. Wayland Publisher