How Did American Culture And Economy Influence Urban Workers

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How American Culture, Politics, and Economy Influenced the Urban Workers The urban workers in the late 1800s experienced many hardships. Many urban workers were immigrants, women, and children. They were poor factory workers, generally in the Northeast part of the country. They worked in factories in places such as Lowell and Springfield, Massachusetts, turning raw materials in to finished products that were sent around the world. These products played a huge part in the American industrial economy. The urban workers became passionate about obtaining better conditions, workers’ rights, higher wages, and a shorter workday. They clashed with the industrial elite, their bosses. They considered them to be “robber barons.” American politics, economy, and culture greatly impacted the urban workers…show more content…
Factory workers were paid very little. They worked long hours in dark, dangerous factories, barely earning enough to subsist on. Many big businesses contained company towns where workers would live. Workers bought everything from food to clothes to furniture in the company town store, where they did not have to pay for goods with cash. They were designed so that workers would fall into debt due to the prices of goods within the town and their measly wages. Owners made it so that workers could not quit their jobs until they had paid off their debt, making it almost impossible for them to leave, as they were constantly acquiring more debt. Urban workers had an incredibly hard time building wealth, as they basically lived week to week on their paychecks. Families rarely had any money to spare after paying for necessities, even with multiple members of the family working in the factories. Workers were entirely controlled by their bosses, the industrial elite, until they began to organize into unions and participate in collective

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