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
She found many instances where workers were paid nothing and worked for up to six weeks without pay to earn their place at the sweatshop. Such instances spread diseases such as diphtheria, tuberculosis and other communicable diseases throughout the cities quickly. In 1906, it was estimated that more than 130,000 women were working in more than 39,000 factories in New York City alone (Kleeck 13). 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). She told of finding "a debt of $40 to a single family, on the part of a sweater who had left. Many children did not attend school regularly so that they could assist their families with extra income by working out of their homes all day. From these sixty hour work weeks, Hilda took home only four dollars a week. Many factory accidents lead to lost hands and even death in some instances. One common place of employment that bore the hardest working hours and conditions was the magazine bindery. However, this did not mean than children waited until they were fourteen to begin work. While many children assisted their mothers in sewing buttons and making flowers for a few cents a day, others were given the responsibility of caring for the smaller children and doing housework.
Common topics in this essay:
Hilda Polacheck,
Revolution Hilda,
City Kleeck,
Florence Kelley's,
Florence Kelley,
Industrial Worker,
United Sweatshops,
Brooklyn Kelley,
Polacheck's Stranger,
Charity Commons,
women children,
child labor,
labor laws,
florence kelley's testimony,
hilda satt,
age fourteen,
kleeck 18,
families extra,
florence kelley's,
conditions sweatshops,
dollars week,
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Acceptance Essays
