They were the ones to suffer the blow. Wages for those who labored in factories were low and working conditions could be dangerous and monotonous. Unskilled workers had little job security and were easily replaceable. Children were part of the labor force and often worked long hours and were used for such highly hazardous tasks as cleaning the machinery. In the early 1860s, an estimated one-fifth of the workers in Britain’s textile industry were younger than 15.
According to Document 4, the slums in towns and cities are filthy due to the lack of a drainage system and have unstable buildings. The river going through the slums are also pitch black due to a factory’s waste. This shows how the neighborhood that many factory workers lived in had deplorable living conditions where there was overpopulation and possibly many disease outbreaks to to the filth being piled in the slums. Because the point of view comes from a German socialist, it shows that the person has traveled and probably seen enough slums in cities to say that most are filthy and cramped. Document 5 shows a testimony given by a factory worker about how numerous people died at two separate mills because of dangerous working conditions including hazardous materials in the air to dangerous machinery.
All ages got the enjoyment of life stolen from them in this rigid era. Lack of help would only ruin the these people as well as the time period as a whole. Poverty wasn’t always an issue, but came about with the increase of industrialism (Swisher 42). It was during the middle of Queen Victoria’s reign and was labeled England’s “biggest trouble” (Evans). The accumulation in population added onto the problem by leaving more people to be replaced by machines and eventually become poor.
The accumulation in population added onto the problem by leaving more people to be replaced by machines and eventually become poor. This generation brought many people and there wasn’t a sure reason on why, but the size multiplied by as much as three sizes (Avery 123). Most explanation on why population built was because of longer life span, immigration, and survival of infants (Avery 120). The men tried to get occupations, but all of the leftover positions were unskilled and still left them not being able to provide anything for their families. Wages were so low that even when one worked, they barely had enough to live on, so without a job there was no money to fall back on.
Industrialization at this time led to loss of jobs by many skilled personnel and even craftsmen. The laborers were forced to work for long hours in hazardous conditions and again the wages were very low. Though the country could accumulate so much wealth, little of it went to the industrial workers. Women and children formed the majority of industrial laborers (Licht,
As a result, they couldn 't supply their families with food, clothes, or medicine because of how little they were paid. Men and Women worked a lot, but children were often used to work long hours for very, very low pay because of their age. Children were taken advantage of because of their age, and small fingers. They were used to fix machines and
Immigration numbers were part of the reason it was so easy to build large factories, sweat shops, and buildings. These immigrants came to cities ready to work for whatever they could get. The idea of working in dangerous places for long hours and a few dollars was still better to them than staying in their home countries to starve of famine or be treated poorly because of their religions. The American people feared the immigrants for their new religions and customs, but also because the low wages being paid made people worry that it would drive down all wages. This also made it so many of the immigrants lived in ethnic slums turning areas of large cities into less attractive places (492).
“But their version of the American Dream is a nightmare: low-paying, dead-end jobs; the profound failure of government to improve upon decaying housing, health care, and education; the failure of families to break the patterns of child abuse and substance abuse” (The Working Poor). Suffering to live the American Dream, low-income workers face major complications in the society such as unemployment, low wages, healthcare, and lack of education. Unemployment is a major problem for the working poor in the sense that they only work two thirds of a year rather than the entire year. “The working poor are less likely to work full-time and year-round compared to other workers. Of those who do not work full-time, about half state that they are working part time because they cannot find full-time work.
However the poor could not afford housing in the city or in the suburbs and this led to the growth of tenement housing. Tenements were supposed to be great improvements in housing for the poor however they soon became known as “miserable abodes” that were overcrowded and had little to no indoor plumbing or central heating. The growing population also led to transportation problems. The downtown streets were usually too narrow for the heavy traffic that moved through them and most were not paved producing either a lot of mud or a cloud of dust. These problems led to what would later become known as mass
6.2 Unemployment According to Swanepoel (2016:7) unemployment is regarded as a source and effect of poverty in which people suffers from. It is a source because no job, no income. In addition, poor people cannot afford decent houses, nutritious food, medical aid and sending children to decent schools. Unemployment is the effect of poverty because weakness is caused by eating unhealthy food, poor housing and lack of access to education stop people from getting jobs. Unemployment is the effect of isolation.