The Industrial Worker

A detailed Summary of The Industrial Worker

As a 15-year-old girl growing up in America, I had the typical teenager's life. I went to school every day, was involved in extra curricular activities, and on the weekends worked part time at a video rental store. My mother stayed at home and took care of my brother and me when we were little, and continued to be a house mom long after we were old enough to be in high school.

It is hard to imagine what life must have been like for women and children who live just one hundred years ago in the industrial cities of the United States. Sweatshops were their place of employment and the working conditions were awful. Children started working full time at the age of fourteen and even smaller children were forced to work at home after school to help their impoverished families make extra money. These conditions made living day to day a struggle for women and children at the turn of the century.

In Hilda Satt Polacheck's I Came a Stranger, the world is given one of many first hand accounts of what it was like to grow up as an immigrant child during what is now thought of as the Industrial Revolution. When Hilda turned fourteen years old, she was forced to leave school and join the workforce with her olde

r sister. It was at this time that a young fourteen-year-old "became an adult and a worker" (Polacheck 56). Hilda, like so many other young immigrants, went from enjoying her days as a schoolgirl to working "from seven thirty in the morning till six in the evening, six days a week" (57). From these sixty hour work weeks, Hilda took home only four dollars a week.

Work in the factories was also very dangerous. There were no safety laws during these times and women and children were injured without receiving any compensation from their employers. Hilda Polacheck told of one incident at her first job when she had only been working for about two weeks and "a girl had caught her hand in the machine" (Polachack 57). Many factory accidents lead to lost hands and even death in some instances.

"Florence Kelley's Testimony in the Sweating system," Report and Findings of the Joint Committee to Investigate "Sweat shop" System (Springfield, Illinois: HW Rokker, 1983), PP 135-39.

One common place of employment that bore the hardest working hours and conditions was the magazine bindery. At these factories, women often worked seventy-eight hours a week. The following is an example of the reports given to labor organizations - "They begin work at eight in the morning. They do not stop until 10 o'clock at night. Wages - $6.00 a week" (Kleeck 14). These women said that they would probably be fired if they refused to work the overtime.

Kleeck, Mary Van. Charity and Commons. 1906-1907.

Health risks were often found in many other tenements were work was brought home. These conditions were not only bad for those who worked in the tenements, but those who eventually bought the products that were made there. Flore

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Approximate Word count = 1164
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History