Laborer

In this source, Engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor proposes the idea of “scientific management” of the labor force, known as “Taylorism”. Taylor demonstrates an experiment to show the effectiveness of his method, by using fewer workers to improve efficiency and getting the absolute most out of workers. This document is introduced during the Progressive Era, where workers’ rights were being heard with the rise of socialism. His aim was to increase productivity with fewer workers. However, this…

Andrew Carnegie decreased production costs, and induced steel production by eliminating the union. Frick demanded pay cuts for skilled workers without the intention to negotiate or recognize the union, provoking strikes among laborers. However, steelworkers rejected the terms of the new contract and Frick locked the workers out of mill and only authorized non-union personnel to work. They reduced jobs, blacklisted union leaders, reintroduced twelve hour workdays, and cut wages…

from this point forward. Everyone’s lives were affected by this national revolution. With the advancements of many things, came the putting-out system. This new system split the work of one man and created jobs for many men. Now, many unskilled laborers had jobs creating one piece of the whole product. By splitting the labor, it…

in texts such as Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. Although labor has come a long way since the labor systems of the 1800s, the issues and patterns of the past have repeatedly resurfaced. Today’s low-wage workers occupy the same space that unskilled laborers of the…

My thesis is raising and answering the question: what argument can be used to advocate the existence of sweatshops? The answer to that question is the argument of the next best alternative. This argument comes from asking the question if the workers do not work at these sweatshops, is there are better feasible alternative for them or is there another place they can work? The answer is no, these employees have no better alternative than to work at a sweatshop. First, in order to understand…

Karl Marx describes the product of labor as not being strictly confined to the byproduct from the labor, but it is also the labor itself. The objectification of both the labor and the end product takes on a powerful role as it is viewed as “something alien, as a power independent of the producer.” In a sense, the labor that is put towards the commodity becomes something that is almost tangible and as a result, can be obtained “only with the greatest effort and with the most irregular…

Workers of the late 1800’s were overworked and underpaid and the amount of wageworkers tripled. Their ages ranging from children to adults and of all different skills and levels. The basic laborer were the most common type of workers. They are the ones that dug holes and helped build many of America’s first subways, railroads, bridges and buildings. Many were immigrants and would work for next to nothing running from the poor house and trying to scrape out a meager existence in their new…

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville is a story about a lawyer in New York City who, for a majority of the story, deals with an different type of employee named Bartleby. In the decades prior to Herman Melville's writing of "Bartleby The Scrivener," the United States underwent a complex process of economic transformation. The building of superior surface roads, the introduction of railways, and the invention of the steamship for hauling goods upriver marked a transportation revolution.…

The term “Gilded age” can be imagined as late 1800 century rebuilding its damaged pieces with gold. A time when many believed in the bask of wealth and political changes all across America. These changes came about after the civil war, creating a new era of american history, a period of industrialization, a rapid economic growth and socio cultural development. With both the economy, and the landscape morphing into large scale factories and cities, Labor workers and Farmers fell behind due to the…

opportunities to succeed in their lives compared to people who lived before them. Because there was a growing need for unskilled workers, it was quite easy for the average citizen to obtain a job. The positions needed to be filled ranged from a factory laborer, working long, difficult days, to a shopkeeper who sold tea for a living. The abundance of different types…