Writing Assignment About Relating Myself To The Gilded Life (Essay Sample)

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Gilded Age
Introduction
The late 19th and start of the 20th centuries in the United States of America (USA) are frequently known as the Gilded Age (Clark, 2006). The Gilded Age involved an era of dreadful labor violence, because workers and industrialists clearly fought over workplace management. Employers were mostly just as strong-minded to end unionization as employees were to plan unions, resulting in frequent conflict. Constant violence and strikes ultimately made the middle class to be fed up with businessmen and union (Calhoun, 2007). This paper provides an analysis of workers during the Gilded Age in relation to the struggles that I faced.
Analysis of the Gilded Age
Since people currently live in an era where employee get protected by state and federal laws and by sound practices of business, it is not easy to imagine a period when employees, particularly unskilled, mostly immigrant workers, were totally at their employers’ mercy (Clark, 2006). The dilemma of most illegal immigrant employees presently might be comparable; on the other hand, with no legitimate status, they have minimal options to help in unfair practices’ cases. Prior to the industrial age, workplaces and factories were not many that the possessor knew each one of them by name and frequently worked together with the employees. The era of the impersonal management and modern factory transformed all that, and the obvious unfairness with which employees were handled turned out to be scandalous (Calhoun, 2007). For instance, if an employee got injured at the time of work due to a faulty equipment, there was no methods for getting compensation. If employees sued, they had to demonstrate that it was not their negligence, which brought about the accident (Calhoun, 2007).
There is a troubled history of an employee in the Western World. According to Thomas Hobbes, life was poor, nasty, short, solitary, brutish, and for majority of employees, that was the situation. Several political theories tried to clarify or get solutions for the working classes’ dilemma. Socialists considered evil as an unavoidable outcome when capitalism was allowed to its own mechanisms (Calhoun, 2007). Liberalism demanded for freedom from harassment, first from state, later from business. Communism, Leninism and Marxism considered man’s history as the history of struggle of class. Of the cited theories, Communism was thought to be the most striking to the bulk of employees, who worked day to day to make the USA wealthy, although who influenced few of the advantages of the wealth. Communism’s ultimate goal was labor possession of the production means and a government operated by the public, ideally in a society’s classless (Clark, 2006).
Classical economists considered labor as a product, to be purchased and sold in reference to demands of the markets, and were pessimists concerning hopes for the employees (Calhoun, 2007). Adam Smith considered government intervention detrimental and advocated universal labor division. According to Thomas Malthus, the immediate working class’ plight could only turn out to be worse due to growth of population. David Ricardo framed the Iron Law of Wages, which states that if salaries are increased, there will be production of more children (Clark, 2006). The children will storm the market place and decrease the labor’s value. The outcome will be imply that there will be production of fewer children, income will increase, and there will be repeat of the cycle. Hence income normally operate toward minimum mark.
Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx postulated the concept that struggles of class resulted in oppression, as seen in the 1848 Communist Manifesto (Calhoun, 2007). Eleanor Marx Aveling, Marx’s sister, together with her husband toured the USA and reported on conditions of labor. Marx considered slavery within the South as capitalism’s logical extension (Clark, 2006). Social Darwinism ideas like survival of the fittest functioned to overwhelm movements to enhance the working classes’ lives.
Andrew Carnegie demonstrated bitterness concerning the war involving labor and capital. He considered the drive toward cooperation as opposed to rivalry as individualism’s destruction, private possession and accumulation law (Calhoun, 2007). The wealthy need to utilize their millions to assist the public in raising the intellectual and moral masses’ level, and not dish out quarters to the poor people. According to Carnegie, capitalism philosophy rested on divine and natural laws. At last, wealth just comes to the moral person, material wealth makes the country sweeter, more unselfish, more joyous, and more Christ like (Calhoun, 2007). These arrogant capitalistic conceptions were resisted strongly by poor people.
Capitalists often did not understand their employees. Employers sought passive, sober employees who would perform their jobs reliably with no complaints. By 1880, 5 million Americans got engaged in transportation, construction, and manufacturing. They were remunerated workers, not producers and they were reliant on hourly income and their employers’ good will (Clark, 2006). The employee was deemed as an ordinary machine as he or she could not be involved in making the modest decisions and did not have self-respect. The humiliation of the class of skilled labor was amongst the leading labor grievances. Income was insufficient to maintain a family and work was stained by corruption and inequities. Being a working family, I survived just by ruthless under consumption. Employees were targets of business cycles, the change winds swept away a lot of them. Lower wages and piece work were presented to decrease costs of labor. Whereas employees in beginning periods had worked together with their employers, presently they got separated. Large business managers seldom had personal relations with employees (Calhoun, 2007).
Labor Conditions
Industrial protection was a leading matter, as work in the factory was very unsafe, and it was not easy if not intolerable to hold owners of the factory accountable for injuries and deaths. About 1900, 25-35,000 deaths as well as 1 million injuries every year took place on industrial jobs (Clark, 2006). A lot of deaths took place on railroads jobs that were particularly dangerous. Train wrecks, machinery accidents, fires, and other calamities were frequent. There were lack of enforcement of local or state safety regulations, as well as lack of federal safety regulation (Calhoun, 2007). P...