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Essays on children in the industrial revolution
Child labour in the industrial revolution effects
Essays on children in the industrial revolution
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What would one expect to be the sentiment of a young women who worked in the Lowell textile mills? It is just such a depressing story; and the sad heroines are the young women of Lowell - Lucy Larcom- who Stephen Yafa portrays in his excerpt “Camelot on the Merrimack.” A perception through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old Lucy Larcom reveals that, “For her and the other young girls, the long and tedious hours they spent tending to demanding machines robbed them of their childhood.” The imagery in “Camelot on the Merrimack,” from Big Cotton by Stephen H. Yafa disclose the working conditions in those sordid mills. Yafa’s description of the mills presents a setting that is ugly, monotonous, and rigidly regulated. The mills is a common fixture to a manufacturing factory in modern society, so the readers can identify with the uniformity Yafa describes. From five until seven in …show more content…
This was the first-time people had seen factories like this is America. Many famous, affluent, and powerful men visited these textile mills only long enough to admire the engineering advancements Lowell had made, and completely missed the inhumane treatment of the workers inside. Though the Industrial Revolution was supposed to bring an easier lifestyle to the world, however in reality only gave factory owners a chance to increase the amount of product they could produce within a shorter amount of time, and this prompted them to hire people desperate enough for jobs who would be paid in small sums of money to produce large amounts of product. Camelot on the Merrimack, this title is ironic, for Lowell was no fairy tale “Camelot.” For the girls, life in the textile factories was unmitigated
O’Donnell who was with his company for eleven years, would lose their jobs to a machine who could do the job quicker or to a worker who would work for a lower wage, like young boys or immigrants. O’Donnell described how men would gather to be picked for work in the mill and the men with young boys to serve as “back-boys” always got picked first because they could do the work faster and the young boys worked for $.30 or $.40 a day as opposed to the $1.50 O’Donnell usual took home for a day’s work. He also described how it didn’t take a skilled worker like himself to operate the new ring-spinners that expedited the cotton spinning process. But skilled workers and laborers weren’t the only ones who were “under the plating” of the Gilded Age. In Document 19-2, women described the struggles of working as domestic servants. Many women went to work during the late 19th century to help out their families in this time of financial anguish. Many took up jobs as domestic
English textile factories were very bad for the health of the working class families. As Dr. Ward stated, “Last summer I visited three cotton factories with Dr. Clough of Preston and Mr. Barker of Manchester, and we could not remain ten minutes in the factory without gasping for breath...¨ This shows that the conditions were so bad that they had trouble breathing because how bad the air was. Dr. Ward also says, ¨Cotton factories are highly unfavourable, both to the health and morals of those employed in them. They are really nurseries of disease and vice. These factories were very unsafe and you could get many diseases and injuries, especially if you were a kid as a lot were. The kids were in many accidents in the factories, as Dr. Ward states,
In Slavicek’s “Lucy Larcom: Mill Girl Poet” (2015), she discusses the life and literature of a famous poet and mill girl Lucy Larcom. Like most child mill workers, Lucy began as a bobbin doffer, Monday through Friday she spent up to fourteen hours a day at the mill, and eight hours a day on Saturdays. Lucy wrote in her autobiography: "I defied the machinery to make me its slave. Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts if I would let them fly high enough." She escaped the busy mill through her writing, a common escape for many Lowell mill girls. Lucy cut articles from newspapers and pasted them around the window 's wooden frame next to her spinning wheel. Several of Lucy 's poems appeared in the Lowell Offering, a monthly magazine for the mill girls that featured stories, songs, and poems written by the young mill girls themselves. This made them different from many of the other women of their time
The Industrial Revolution in America began to develop in the mid-eighteen hundreds after the Civil War. Prior to this industrial growth the work force was mainly based in agriculture, especially in the South (“Industrial Revolution”). The advancement in machinery and manufacturing on a large scale changed the structure of the work force. Families began to leave the farm and relocate to larger settings to work in the ever-growing industries. One area that saw a major change in the work force was textile manufacturing. Towns in the early nineteen hundreds were established around mills, and workers were subjected to strenuous working conditions. It would take decades before these issues were addressed. Until then, people worked and struggled for a life for themselves and their families. While conditions were harsh in the textile industry, it was the sense of community that sustained life in the mill villages.
Harriet Hanson Robinson, a “Lowell Girl,” Describes her labor in a textile mill, 1831 pg.239
This confusion can be seen in two reports from separate journals that differ greatly--so much so that the ability to attribute them to the same issue seems unlikely and unrealistic. William Alexander Abram, a journalist and historian in the 1860’s, wrote an article about the vast improvements made during the industrialization process (Doc 6). Abram specifically mentions the Hours of Labor in Factories Act of 1844 that prohibited excessively long work days. Additionally, Abram mentioned the increased wages and the subsequent increase quality of life. Abram attempts to justify any issues with the industrialization by addressing the new, more spacious cotton mill and the lower sickness and mortality rates. Abram describes the positive forces that arose during the industrialization to outweigh the mass concerns people had about the laboring class’s working conditions. This positive opinion is counteracted by an image included in a magazine from the 1870’s that shows the visual of a bridge and its surrounding factories at the time (Doc 7). The Graphic, a weekly magazine that dealt with social issues, included the view from Blackfriars bridge over the River Irwell that contained the numerous factories concentrated in the one location. The Graphic was famously influential within the art world for its use of imagery and attempt to conquer grand social issues with art. The factories are all emitting gas and the general conditions of the streets and buildings is less than ideal. This negative portrayal of the industrialization sheds a different light on the effects of industrialization. Between these two conflicting articles, it is difficult to see the true extent of the industrializations process’s benefits and harms. This uncertainty also supports the proposed
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 who desire it.
In the 1800's the construction of cotton mills brought about a new phenomenon in American labor. The owners needed a new source of labor to tend these water powered machines and looked to women. Since these jobs didn't need strength or special skills th...
The Lowell textile mills were a new transition in American history that explored working and labor conditions in the new industrial factories in American. To describe the Lowell Textile mills it requires a look back in history to study, discover and gain knowledge of the industrial labor and factory systems of industrial America. These mass production mills looked pretty promising at their beginning but after years of being in business showed multiple problems and setbacks to the people involved in them.
The mid 19th century was an age of growth like no other. The term “Industrial Revolution” refers to the time period where production changed from homemade goods, to those produced by machines and factories. As industrial growth developed and cities grew, the work done by men and women diverged from the old agricultural life. People tended to leave home to work in the new factories being built. They worked in dangerous conditions, were paid low wages, and lacked job security (Kellogg). It is difficult to argue, however, that the economic development of the United States was not greatly dependent on the industrial revolution.
A woman's job in the early 1700s was to cook, clean, teach the children and tend to the house while the men worked outside. However because of the Lowell system, women were viewed immensely different. Thanks to Frances Lowell, not only women but unmarried women were allowed to work in factories and raise money for the family or themselves. However, because the role of women changed, many people were unsure of how to accept their new roles in society. Many were spectacle of women rising society because for the past hundred years, society had viewed the role of the women as lower than men because they were not able to do as much work because most work during the time period was physically demanding and a woman's body is not built as strong as a man's. However, because of the Lowell system, women were able to work and earn money, thus rise to new level in society. But even then, people still viewed women working in the factories as inferior to those women who did not work in the factory. Mostly older women did not believe that the women should work in a factory. For example throughout the book Lyddie, whenever people saw a “factory girl” they always gave her dirty looks and talked about how they should be at home, not working in a factory. They still had an older mindset on the role of women. Even though the workers faced the prejudices of others, they still succeed in life are rose
Provoking thoughts occurred as a result of viewing a certain piece of art at the San Jose Museum of Art. This piece of art piece labeled Fallen Fruit by David Burns and Austin Young was the awe and inspiration for my topic of this paper. The piece made me think of working conditions and how far they have improved in the past century. The digital print coldly depicts assembly line workers packaging fruits for a company. The print displays the average worker in monochrome while the environment juxtaposes the workers with its tinted bright colors. The contrast between the monochrome workers and the tinted environment creates a feeling where the worker is lost in a sea of color and reveals a sense of seriousness of the morbid reality that most workers faced during the 1920s. This contrast was created by Burns and Young as a metaphor to illuminate the audience on the emphasis that companies placed on the workplace itself and the products that were being produced rather than the conditions of the workers. The angle and focus of the workers in the print also help establish a feeling of disregard for the workers. This cruel reality established by the print led me on the train of thought of the Progressive Era. An era of great change, Progressive reforms helped the quality of life for the average worker and helped pave the way for future improvements. Although Progressive reforms for the workplace were loosely enforced, these labor reforms were effective to help create better working conditions, help regulate big business, and push for the creation of unions and bureaus.
Although few employment situations exist in America today resembling the O.P. Henley Textile Mill, the story depicts an ideal scenario for organization and textbook strategy by the union representative. The mill displayed poor judgement in their response to the previously failed union attempts and forfeited the opportunity they had to improve working
The textile factory portrayed in Norma Rae, was not a pristine example of capitalism, since the factory was steeped with bad practice. Throughout the film, the supervisors and managers manipulated regulations in order to maintain an infer-structure that maximized profits. This film is an example of the system of checks and balances that have come to exist in capitalist society. These checks and balances permit manufacturing facilities to earn a fair profit and remain in business while, at the same time, provide workers with fair wages and decent working conditions. Because competition exists, both in terms of the labor market and the market for goods, the greater society is able to demand that industry conform to certain collective standards.
In the Child Labor in the Carolinas, photos and depictions of children working in mills show how working class children did not have the opportunities to branch out and have a childhood as defined by today’s standards. Though the pamphlet creators may have been fighting for better standards for child labor in textile mills of the Carolinas, they simultaneously show how working class families depended on multiple members to support the family: in “Chester, South Carolina, an overseer told me frankly that manufacturers [in] all the South evaded the child labor law by letting youngsters who are under age help older brothers and sisters” (McElway, 11). Children were used because they were inexpensive labor and were taken advantage of in many ways because they were so...