Problems Of Industrialization In America

*The Industrial Revolution brought America many new technological advances that were economically and socially benefical. During industrialization Henry Ford brought the automobile to America, whoch allowed people to live farther from their jobs and allowed farmers to become less isolated. Henry Ford also invented the moving assembly line which was a huge step in the future of industrialization. This assembly line made it possible to produce items faster, and this mass production process helped companies collect more profit. But industrialization also caused many problems that outweighed the gains of the machine age. It created mass poverty, overcrowding, horrible working conditions, unsanitary food, and increased city filth. Andrew Carnegie …show more content…
The Industrial Revolution provided many jobs in factories for immigrants and working class Americans in need of jobs. However, employers paid their workers scarce wages, especially women as their wages were half of what men earned for the same job. Employers were able to do this because people would accept scarce wages to survive and care for their families. They also could do this because machines could do the jobs of many people and replace them, while some machines did not replace workers but allowed employers to hire unskilled workers who would accept minimum wages. People made so little money some had to live in boarding houses that were overcroweded with poor families. Some women had to become prostitues in order to survive, and would be prostitues for the rest of their lives. The filthy conditions of the streets in cities would often spread diseases, but most people did not have money for medical assistance. Therefore, many people would die from various diseases and injuries all the time. Also, working conditions were horrible and if you were injured on the job you could not take time off to heal. Employers never compensated for the injury or death of an employee, and families suffered if the workers of the family could not work. Most of the population during the Industrial Revolution was poor and suffering from severe …show more content…
He discusses through his characters how meat factories lie about what meat goes into their products, how they mixed diseased meat in with the regular meat, and how the meat they throw into cans and packages for human consumption often goes unchecked for diseases. People would become ill from eating this disgusting meat, and some people actually died. Sinclair also mentions how filthy the streets were at this time, filled with mud and various filth. Also how the stench of excrement and decaying flesh of animals filled the air. We see just how dangerous this unsanitary was when Sinclair's character Jurgis's little boy Antanas drowns in the mud on the street, and this is also was a gateway for Sinclair to show us how people often turned to alcohol to deal with the pain of poverty and loss. This lead to the temperance movement to try to abolish, then limit, alcohol comsumption. In Sinclair's book, most of the main characters in Jurgis's family die throughout the book. They all die from things many people mainly died from during industrialization, which is disease, injury that goes unhealed or untreated, and the most common of all was the lack of medical attention and advancement. When Sinclair published this book he wanted to show people how naive they were, and after the bookwas released there were many movements that changed how life was during industrialization. After these movements