How does it feel?
During the U.S. in the 1870s, economy was getting richer and richer by business owners making profit from many things. Did industrialization produce more advantages or disadvantages? Industrialization was good and bad. It helped some people get richer and did not help the others. It was a long hard process. Hundreds and millions of people lived hopelessly lives, but as time pass by things got easier for people. There were few positives and advantages, but most of the consequences of industrialization were negative and horrible. Even though things were not positive they had many advantages to use in there everyday lives.
One of the things that made U.S. lives better for people was Thomas Edison. He made everyday technologies for people to do things easier. Following this further, document F, written by Thomas Edison, shows how lives for people were getting better by making more everyday things for people to use. Some of the things that Thomas Edison made for people were a vote recorder, printing telegraph, stock ticker, automatic telegraph, electric pen, carbon telephone transmitter, phonograph, dynamo, incandescent electric lamp, electric motor, talking doll, projecting kinetoscope, and a storage battery. Document D shows that people in high school are graduating and getting a diploma. It's increasing every year by 10% which was good. Another thing that showed how the U.S. was beginning to get better is the Infant Mortality Rate which is in document D also. The death of babies is decreasing every year from the ages of 1 year of age per 1000. Industrialization was good because the economy became stronger. American citizens benefited from this because they receive education and there were more technological advances for people to use throughout there life. The infant mortality rate is decreasing because they made hospitals and better medicines to treat babies if they were sick or ill. Additionally, people who were in high school graduated and got a diploma is increasing because they made better schools for children and teens to learn and they had teachers who helped them throughout there high school year. On the other hand lives for others were already worse too.
Unfortunately, people that worked in factories had to struggle to stay alive. They needed more money and fewer hours to work. Document A, for example, shows how men are dieing from starvation and puny infants suckle dry breasts. In addition, document E, from a book called The Jungle, shows how workers would treat the food that people eat which is the meat would be horrible. "A man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of dried dung rats." This shows that people who work there would obviously get sick from being in the factory. Furthermore, in document G, it shows the metal trade's member calling for a strike to grant living conditions, fair wages, and an 8 hour day to work in factories than to work for 14-16 hours a day. Industrialization was bad because the government needed to do something about this. To show them, in document A its telling us that they did not have enough money to live or to feed little infants. Women were starving because they couldn't afford food to breast feed their babies, so therefore the babies would die. In document E workers did not think about what would happen to others if they ate this. This would be a nasty product to eat because people that ate this would get sick, ill, or possibly die from eating poop that was mix in with the meat. Document G, explains that people wanted more money because they were getting paid low wages, and for that they couldn't live. People also had terrible working conditions and long hours of work. Even though some things help our economy it also damages other people from living in the world because of the business owners.


Did industrialization made lives for people easier or did it not? Industrialization was good and bad. It helped us with many things, but lives for most of the people were horrible. Life outside and life in factories were horrible for the factory workers and the poor. But U.S. lives were getting better by making more things for everyday use and the economy progress in the U.S is starting to become a better state. This whole thing is important because today we don't usually see what's around us and we need to be thankful that we don't have working conditions like this back then.