Working In Poverty

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The Underlying Truth of Living and Working in Poverty
AJ Check - October 24th, 1903, New York City

In this article, I will show you what I have discovered first hand about living in poverty, and doing the labor that goes hand in hand with it. You will learn about the cycle of life that emerges from living and working under the corrupt owners of our nation’s industries.

It is no doubt that our country's larger cities are poverty stricken, but how many of us know just how awful it is to live in these communities? For the past month I have been going from one housing building to the next, going inside and seeing for myself the harsh living conditions people have to cope with.

Every building has 3 - 4 stories, each divided into quarters …show more content…

With all these factors, the wages of the workers compared to how long they work still baffles me. For a meatpacking worker, their workday is over 10 hours long, and their pay amounts to under $500 a year, which is barely, if not even, a living wage. To earn this wage, they work in a place where everyone is wielding knives and sharp objects, and everything is unclean and uncared for. If ill, a person does their best to continue working, as they desperately need the pay. This can quickly make everyone else fall ill, as they seldom wear gloves while working, and the managers and bosses couldn’t care less about health issues. The same goes if working in other industries, such as textile, where machine related accidents and an average workday occurrence are one in the same. To me, the most outrageous prospect of this lifestyle is child labor. When investigating textile mills, I observed many children being forced to work the same hours as adults, and in even more dangerous conditions. They are made to replace spools and threads, which can result in the loss of a finger, and in turn the company could fire them, as the child is useless to them. When given the rare opportunity to speak to one of these children, he told me that he and many others working in the factory were under 12 years of age, and because of this, they earn less than adults. It was hard for me to ignore the fact that many

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