Chapter 18
Industrial Work and the Laboring Class
Underlying Assumption – Mobility and the Success Ethic
- Horatio Alger’s Rags-to-Riches Novels
- “Bootstraps” Theory of Success
Historical Question: Could Bootstraps Theory Work for the Working Class?
The Impact of Ethnic Diversity
- Impact of “New Immigration”
- 20 % of the labor force
- 40 % of laborers in manufacturing and related industries
- Settled in Cities
- Unskilled and often unable to speak English
- Impact on work, living circumstances, labor protest and politic
- Hierarchy – Social Stratification of Working Class:
Hierarchy
of Working Class
The Changing
Nature of Work - Impact of Technology and Industrialization
- Wage Earners, Not Independent Artisans
- Doubled workforce in manufacturing
(1880 – 1900)
- Expansion: unskilled and semiskilled
ranks (Immigrant workforce)
Work Settings and
Experiences
Working conditions
- Machinery and Monotony
- Productivity, Not Hours Worked
- Workers Organized into Work Groups –
Ethnicity and/or Task
- 10 hour days, 6 days a week, and
unhealthy, dangerous working conditions.
Limited Personal
Benefits
- Immigrant workers got jobs through
family and friends
- Foreman – who controlled the jobs ---
was a worker
The Worker’s Share
in Industrial Progress
- Working Class – More than 50% of the
workforce
- Unskilled and Semi-skilled workers – Most vulnerable to Economic Recessions/Depressions.
73% of the Population
The Family Economy – Immigrant
Workforce
- Yearly Family Budget for Workers -
$580
- “Breadwinner” - $384
- Shortfall: adolescent children
- 1880: 20% of the nation’s children
between ages 10 – 14 held jobs
- Wife/Mother – Piece work, borders,
laundry
Women at Work
- 1900 – 20% of American women in labor
force
- Necessity – Working Class
- Choice – Middle Class
- Discrimination – Paid Less than Men –
Same Job in a Factory
- Limited Job Opportunities
- Options:
- Factory Work
- Domestic Service
- Prostitution
- African American Women
- Had to Work – Racial Discrimination –
African American Men
- Domestics or Laundresses